A New Christmas Tradition

For the first time, I let Jack and Logan go to the store and pick one new Christmas ornament each. I showed Logan a retro wooden space ship. He said, "That's mine!" and that was the end of his search for the perfect ornament (which lasted a whole 3 seconds). Jack, on the other hand, looked and looked and deliberated. (He has some trouble making decisions.) He easily spent 20 minutes trying to choose (all the while Logan looked on with amusement while he clutched his ornament). In the end, Jack choose a little glass pig.

I think that the boys picking out a Christmas ornament each year could become a new tradition.

And though I wasn't planning on getting anything myself, these are the two ornaments were calling my name.

You can clearly see where my head is at...in China and Ethiopia.

The Slow Boat to China Takes a Detour

Imagine my family on a boat. A boat moving very, very slowly. A boat headed to China very, very slowly. In fact, this boat could easily take 8 years to reach China where we are adopting our daughter. So we've decided to take a bit of a detour...to Ethiopia.

It has always been our plan to grow our family through biological and adopted children, specifically two each. After Jack was born, we got pregnant very quickly with Logan and realized that we would be putting off our adoption plans for a bit. About a year after Logan was born we started researching our adoption options. At the time, adopting our daughter from China seemed like the best fit for our family. We became "paper pregnant" on 8/13/08 and estimated an 8 year wait before we'd met our daughter.

Though we knew, intellectually, that the wait was long, we could not guess what the wait would actually feel like. After a year, it was wearing on us and we felt, since we have always planned on adopting two daughters, that maybe we should focus on starting a second adoption.

Two months ago, Scott and I began researching other countries from which we could do an adoption while still “staying in line” for China. We quickly realized that we also had a daughter in Ethiopia. After picking an agency we started compiling our dossier. This time around it only took us 5 weeks (as opposed to the China dossier that took more than 9 months).

Yesterday, 12/16/09, we officially became a waiting family...again! If all goes as planned, we should be matched with our daughter from Ethiopia in 6-9 months. Approximately, 8 weeks after that our paperwork will go to court and approximately 8 weeks after that we should travel to pick up our daughter. So, hopefully, in a year we will have our family of five home! We are thrilled to be starting on another journey to grow our family.

This slow boat is picking up steam to Ethiopia...

My Darlin' Clementine

"Oh, my darlin'! Oh, my darlin'! Oh, my darlin' Clementine!"

Last year I inadvertently started a holiday tradition...a really yummy holiday tradition! And it was just too yummy to not repeat this year.

Here is a simple and easy recipe for chocolate and coconut dipped clementines. Make sure to get the kids involved...peeling and dipping and whatnot.

Ingredients:

clementines (sometimes referred to as an Algerian or seedless tangerine)

semi-sweet chocolate chips

sweetened shredded coconut

• Peel and section the clementines
• Fill a glass dish with chocolate chips and microwave in 30 second intervals (to ensure it doesn't burn) and stir
• Dip each clementine section in the melted chocolate and then in a bowl of shaved coconut
• Put the pieces on wax paper in the fridge to set

See, simple and yummy and fun for the whole family.

I am a Slummy Mummy...

"Don't you sometimes feel like calling up one of those missing-persons hotlines and reporting your disappearance? 'Help, I don't know where I've gone, I got married, had children, gave up my job, made everyone around me happy, and then disappeared. Please send out a search party.' "

-Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill

The Girl Effect

Considering that we are adopting our daughters from a Second and a Third World country (or a Developing and an Under-Developed country), I am very interested in learning more about girls that live in poverty. And I'm open to finding ways to help them that will, in turn, help those around them.

Take a look at this very powerful video, The Girl Effect, to see what I'm taking about.

I've read Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time and am currently reading Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Now it's time for me to act. And I think women, especially moms in America can make a huge difference. Interested in joining me?

Who's who?

Which little monkey:

• Always asks me the tough questions while I'm driving (like "do parents ever die before their kids?")?
• Wouldn't stop watching TV though his show was over because he couldn't turn the TV off and if it's left on with no one watching it he considers it wasting electricity?
• Draws his mama treasure maps where "X" marks a treasure chest with cookies?

Which little love bug:

• Went out for an after dinner walk in a huge winter jacket, a pair of shorts, a baseball hat, an adult length scarf and Elton John style sunglasses (though it was after dark)?
• Said his mama was "the best toast maker in the whole world!"?
• Loves to vacuum and do laundry?

November in review

November was both a slow but momentous month for our family. We didn't have much planned and the weather was still gorgeous so we spent a lot of time at parks.

The rest of our spare time was spent researching adoption agencies and getting paperwork together. Huh? Yes, we are pursuing another adoption though our first (a daughter from China) is still years away. We are excited to be getting back on this crazy rollercoaster to adopt a daughter from Ethiopia. More details to come soon...

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos from November.

The Sneaky Blogiversary

I missed my blogiversary! I guess it's not terribly surprising considering how little I post nowadays...

A year ago, if you had told me that I would be faithfully writing 5 days a week, reading countless blogs, "meeting" friends online and even would have another blogger fly 2000 miles to stay with my family, I would have thought you were insane. But, that is just what happened...for about 8 months.

And during that time, if you had told me that I would stop reading my new friends' blogs and only write very sporadically, I would have told you were insane. But, that is just what happened...for about 4 months.

Blogging was a large and fulfilling part of my life. And I very much want to get back to it. I'm not sure what the hold up is though.

In any case, I wanted to mention my blogiversary...even if it is a day late.