Received Ava's Certificate of Citizenship

It's Friday, the Friday before spring break. For those of us that work at colleges it is one of the biggest T.G.I.F's. of the year. I really need to catch up on things after being away from work for the adoption so I am looking forward to some quiet time at my office.

Today we received a letter from President Bush congratulating Ava, actually Huong Thi Nguyen, on becoming and American Citizen on January 30th, 2007. We also received her Official Certificate of Citizenship. It is very official looking. Now we can start the process of changing her name to Ava Linh and work on getting her US passport and social security card. People have asked how we came up with the name Ava Linh. Well, Kurt has a very long last name - 14 letters - so we wanted her to have a very short first name. After looking on several baby name web sites Ava made the top of the list. Our mothers' names are Belva and Marva - Ava seemed similar but not quite those two names. Linh is a Vietnamese name - actually pronounced "ling". Lynn is a family name in Kurt's family and we figured most Americans would pronounce Linh as Lynn, so Linh is in honor of Grandma Belva & Kurt's sister as well as Ava's Vietnamese heritage.

Have a great weekend and we hope that the families leaving for Vietnam with World Child next week have a very safe trip! Also, congrats to our friends who just received word that they will be traveling to Guatemala in a month to pick up their little boy.