Monday, January 25, 2010

Leaving on a jet plane

In 6 hours we will be boarding a plane bound for China to meet and bring home our newest daughter. We are over the moon with excitement but also a bit misty eyed to be leaving our other children for nearly 3 weeks.

Follow our journey to Claire at our adoption blog:
www.lovejourneytochina.blogspot.com

Saturday, January 23, 2010

An oldie but goodie

 

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

stream of consciousness

Today sucked.
I never got the chance to shower before remembering I had to leave the house early to drop Emily off at school. My list of things to do before leaving for China keeps growing and I'm not able to finish the add-ons each day so I'm never catching up.

It was confirmed that Claire is still in foster care. The foster family will be bringing her to the orphanage next week. We are supposed to get a new picture of her at that time. There hasn't been another child from this orphanage who stayed in foster care this long. My mind drifted to another family whose child was not relinquished by her foster family so they could not adopt her. I had never even thought of the possibility of that happening. My brain thought of the money we just paid in the last week to finalize travel plans. My heart thought of the unspeakable pain that would cause us. Would God really bring us this far and then take us down that path?

I didn't get lunch before 2:30. In the middle of errands I get a call saying my plane reservations were issued in the wrong name and must be cancelled and repurchased but I had already upgraded our seats so we were going to lose our seats. The travel agent wouldn't take my call causing me to get increasingly irritated with the secretary. I finally talked to the travel agent but didn't get a resolution.

I inhaled both of my cookies at Subway from the stress. Usually I save one for J or a snack for myself later. My youngest son had his braces put on today during all the ticket breakdown. I think he looks adorable.

The melting snow trashed my van that I just had washed yesterday. I got home and found my boots arrived. We were strongly encouraged by other travelers to bring boots for Beijing. Every store and website was sold-out of them. I guess January is well past prime boot season. I had calmed down from earlier and was looking forward to trying on my boots. They didn't fit. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I finally cried. It freaked Jacob out. He rubbed my back and asked if I was OK. I was so touched to see his pre-teen heart showing some softness.

I didn't touch the kitchen for dinner. Thank you, Panera. After all was finally right in my world tonight I got another call from the travel agent. My flight in China has to be changed as well and they want me to pay the penalty. I surprised her with my abruptness and flat out refused. I don't know if the ticket was reissued or not. And with that I'm going to take a shower and call it a night.

Snow pop copycat

So, I read this cutesy little dessert recipe called snow pops over on MckMama's blog. Aren't those adorable? Emily was reading over my shoulder (which she gets in trouble for, often!) and then asked bugged me incessantly to make them for several days. So finally we did and I took pictures to share with all of you.
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First step- make a cake mix according to the directions. She used chocolate, we had vanilla in the pantry.
Make some frosting. I didn't have her ingredients so I threw a few together in a bowl and completely impressed my 9 year old daughter with my off-the-top-of-my-head frosting. I might add that is was mighty tasty! What did I put in it? If I can remember right, it was somewhere around 3/4 stick of butter, 1/2 tub of soft cream cheese (no bagels to put it on anyway), a dash of vanilla and enough powdered sugar to make it thick. Stir with a whisk until you think your arm might just fall off, and then stir a bit longer. Remember, it's a good burn.

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When your cake is cooled, cut it up and somehow get it into crumbles. MckMama used a food processor. I used a freshly hand-washed 9 year old who had just told me for the 100th time "I'm so bored, I have nothing to do" in her bestest voice.
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We mixed in some frosting to make it a good consistency for forming balls, then formed it into balls. Refrigerate until firm and then get ready to dip.

Again, I don't do many things by a recipe so I didn't have any white chocolate to make pretty colors for dipping. But, I do have a coat in each of her favorite colors, do I win a prize for that?
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What I did have was a half-used up container of the Bakers dipping chocolate so we used that instead. Insert your lollipop stick, dip and rotate then refrigerate until firm.
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The kids loved them, but when have you found a kid that doesn't like anything made of cake, frosting and then dipped in chocolate? For me? I thought it tasted quite similar to a coma-on-a-stick. Despite that I seemed to need a taste each time I opened the refrigerator.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Good neighbors

You know, I think having good neighbors can be, at times, life saving. At least if you are a 13 lb., fluffy, white, I-look-like-a-fat-bunny, dog it is life saving.

Our neighbors called Sunday morning to let us know there were three very large, dog-stalking birds hanging out in trees in our yards. They wanted to warn us not to let the dog out because they were certainly big enough to carry him off for a meal.

Bless our neighbors; I think they love our fluff ball almost as much as we do.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Not Me Monday

On this last day of Christmas break, I bring you a few things that I totally did not do in the past two weeks.

Being completely responsible adults, J and I would heed all weather warnings of impending blizzards and change our Christmas plans and drive home to family a day early. Of course we would. We would never do something like blow off TV meteorologists and their blizzard warning, keep our Christmas morning tradition and then drive several hours to visit family.
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When taking down outdoor Christmas decorations I would gather all necessary storage boxes and dutifully wrap all the lights before placing them in the box. I would never choose the coldest day of the winter, to date, to be the day I pull all the lights off the bushes. I would never grab the lights, yank them off the bushes and then run inside and form little piles all over the house.
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And lastly, I would never think it is the cutest thing to dress our family in cheesy, matching pajamas each Christmas and then post them on the blog for all to see the cuteness. Nope, never.
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