So little Budder and I are making a July 1st cheesecake tonight and he comes up with this one-liner as I tried to hurry him along-
Mom, cheesecake isn’t just a dessert… it’s a way of life.
Kids helping kids June 29, 2008
We had the sweetest thing happen on Friday. Three 10 and 11 year old girls dropped by to give my children a baggie of $237.00 from their lemonade stand. The money is to help pay for flights so that they can come with us to pick up their new siblings. Amazing. My kids were so blown away by their generosity. Thank you A, M, and J for that special gift!
Great Birthday Weekend! June 23, 2008
We had a spectacular time at our cabin this weekend! David got in at least three skis and he was looking fine! We ate way too much food (that’s what you do at our cabin!) and spent most of our days on the dock while the kids braved the cold water. Brrr! The water was 59 degrees this weekend and we sure could tell that summer came late in Manitoba.
Now we head into our last week of school! Peanut just got an invitation to her school’s awards ceremony. It seems she is being presented with an academic award. (and she thought she was done school for the year!) Budder is up to his usual silliness and can’t wait for his classes to be over (Wednesday) but at the same time already misses his teacher.
Tomorrow I enter all my marks and comments and then my responsibilities are done. I still have work until Friday and I look forward to planning for next year and getting my classroom organized. Teaching high school art does make for a lot of cleaning at the end of the year!
On the adoption front…. nothing. It’s been o.k. this week. I’ve only thought about it every half hour or so… 
I couldn’t resist… June 20, 2008
After I posted last night I realized I had all the ingredients to make another batch of those amazing samosas. I just couldn’t resist! Mmmm….Peanut and I finally finished the last batch at 11:00. Lucky she is done school already and I didn’t mind the fun company! They turned out even better than the first batch, but still need a bit of a tweak. We love spicy food and this recipe is quite tame. I did put some chili flakes in, but could have used MUCH more! We’ll try again soon! We’ll take them along to the cabin tonight and see if everyone else loves them just as much as we do!
Off for a birthday weekend! June 19, 2008
It’s David’s birthday today and we are celebrating by taking two amazing families with us to celebrate at our family cabin this weekend. We’ll have nine kids between all of us and I can’t wait! Summer has come slowly this year and David is anxious for his first waterski of the season. Usually we’ve taken at least one ski on May long, but not this year! That water is chilly! I’m sure the warm weather coming this weekend will get all the kids in the water at some point.
It will be a very relaxing weekend. Especially since all my exams will be marked and entered before I leave! I’ve had a great week at work. I always get a bit sad on these last weeks before summer… I really love teaching. Next week will be busy with grad, cleaning out the classroom for summer, and starting to plan for next year. My brain is already spinning with ways to change my courses to make them better! (being a list maker is a bit of a compulsion to me, so planning is always happening!)
There has been a lot of movement in adoption land this week. Visas/medicals are coming in for many excited families. I’m so excited for all of them! AND I can’t wait until it is my turn!
For those addicted to the yahoo group or blogs… imagine that I don’t have internet at the cabin for a whole weekend! It’s never bothered me before at all, but now I wonder how much I’m going to miss while I’m gone! I hope it’s a lot!
Have a great weekend everyone!
How Pathetic am I? June 17, 2008
I am so pathetic. I have become addicted to adoption blogs. It’s as if by being on other people’s blogs will actually speed up our referral because of some tiny little tidbit of information I might glean from their site. So utterly pathetic. After changing our ages for our referral, I’ve been on the hunt -trying to track down any sort of information that would let me know how this could affect our wait times. I’ve come up empty handed and frustrated. You’d think it would change the wait, but by how much? Do I dare hope for a referral this summer? Well if you’re an adoptive parent, you know the answer is yes even if it is unrealistic… because we can’t seem to stop ourselves from hoping. It’s all we have.
The second reason I am pathetic is because there are people out there who have been waiting SO much longer than we have. If I’m honest, it doesn’t comfort me very much. I live in fear that I might “catch” what they have and have to wait and wait and wait. You play the statistic game in your head and hope and pray you are one of the “lucky ones”. After all, averages are made up of those who have to wait longer (please please not me) and those who get their referral faster. (oh, that has to be me!) Pathetic.
The third reason I’m pathetic is because on days like this I lose perspective. I forget that it’s not at all about me. I forget the gravity of the situation. Something bad has to happen to my Ethiopian children so that I can provide them with my loving family. Sometimes I struggle with guilt, but then I remind myself that I can’t stop it from happening. Nor do I wish it to happen to them. It’s so humbling and overwhelming to be given the gift of children in any situation.
Now I feel better again. I just needed to ground myself. I just never expected this to be so hard.
Amendment is approved! June 16, 2008
We got an e-mail from CAFAC today (very friendly and helpful) saying that our amendment has been approved by the Manitoba Government and is now on it’s way to Medicine Hat to be notarized and authenticated. Then it’s off to Ethiopia to join our file there! This process has been very fast and we are so grateful. The staff at CAFAC have been amazing. We now keep waiting and wondering… how long is our “line”?
She said what?!? June 12, 2008
I can’t believe the gross ignorance of some people. I am usually very good about talking to others when they have questions about adoption. I realize now that some of my early questions to other adoptive parents might have been seen as insensitive because I didn’t understand. BUT a mother from one of the boards I participate in had a clerk lean over to her newly adopted son and ask “do you think there are anymore as cute as you over there that I could buy?” wow. That’s hard to digest.
I really do love talking about our adoption! I love answering questions and am not shy about sharing our journey as long the person is interested for a good REASON. It could be that they are interested in adopting themselves and want more information. They could be people who really care about our family and want to support us in our journey. (like our amazing family!!) But when I hear stories like this I wonder how I will respond to questions from strangers that are asked just because they want to know. How will I handle the strangers that come up to my child and touch their hair? (apparently this happens VERY often) I know I have to set a good example for my children, but it will be SOOOO hard! Maybe I should stroke the stranger’s hair back! Or perhaps rub their stomach or something equally as awkward!! I just spoke with another adoptive mom from our community and asked her if this was their experience? (They brought their daughter home in February) She said “Yes! We’ve had that happen more than once!”
So now I am pondering…. why is this? Are adoptive parents over-reacting and very sensitive? I really don’t think so if there are so many who are frustrated. Is this something that happens to our biological children too? I personally have had people comment that my kids are adorable, but never has a stranger tried to touch my children.
I just had to delete a whole paragraph because it was quite sarcastic… I was on a good rant!
I’ll get back to making samosas with my daughter. She has an project on Ethiopia due in school tomorrow and we’ve tackled making the oh so delicious samosa (or samboosa depending on the region). I have to admit I was leery of trying to duplicate a favorite from our local Ethiopian restaurant, but we did very well! They sure are yummy! Now we have to make more this weekend so that our family has some too! This recipe was for beef and leek, which we really like. Next time we aim to try lentils as well!
The work has begun! June 7, 2008
Today we spent the day cleaning out the garage. It was totally necessary so that we can host our garage sale in a few weeks. David got ambitious and built a great looking worktable with some storage underneath. Way to go babe! Peanut and I started sorting the rec. room. ugh!! We got about half of it done and need dad to sort his stuff now. It feels good to have started, but there is no end in sight right now. Now I know why I vowed to never move again!! To complete our renovation we need the whole basement and rec. room levels totally cleaned out. That’s half our house and most of our mess! At one point I must admit I needed a break. So what did I do? Took everything out of our pantry, vacuumed the drawers, washed them out, and put all all the stuff back in it’s place. David had a great laugh at my “break”. I told him it was fun because I could actually finish it in one stint!! Besides, I had just swept the whole garage out and he starts using a table saw! On my clean floor!! It was for his protection.
Adoption news is quiet. I haven’t heard anything yet about our amendment. I did make contact with a great adoptive mom in Alberta this week. Their adoption request is quite similar to ours and it was good to connect. We’re back to the never-ending wait. That’s o.k. it’s all part of the process.
Peace June 4, 2008
Here is a photo of my first flower from my peace vine! The greenhouse didn’t have a photo of the flower, but said I’d be really happy with it. Wow! I sure am! There must be over fifty buds ready to open in the next week or so! I think that all three of our local greenhouses know me by name by now! This week I vowed to stay away and have succeeded, but last week I made nine trips…. I’ve finished the front beds and am working on a fountain/hosta bed under a large maple tree in the back yard. I’m also re-staining our pergola. As soon as that is done we will be ready to lay a new interlock patio that will double our current space. It will be fantastic for our new little ones to have a place to splash in the kiddie pool, eat lunch, or have an afternoon nap in the shade. Dave has been very busy repairing part of our fence that blew down in a wind storm and is getting ready to build a small deck in front of our shed. It’s a busy yard, but we are having so much fun working on it!
On the theme of peace, we move to adoption related stuff… We met with our social worker on Monday night to change our age request to 0-5. We had a very good meeting and felt very at “peace” with the change. We are eagerly waiting for the paperwork to catch up to our file in Ethiopia and trust that our agency has already notified our representative in Ethiopia so they can change our file there and begin matching us with children. I have spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what our change will do to our timeline, but have had very little success. It seems as soon as you request children over three it gets really interesting! Some have had referrals in a few months and some wait nine months. With fewer people requesting children over three it is not as predictable. We do know that our agency will not get anyone through court before the closures if they don’t have a referral now already. So even if we get a referral in the next few months, we wouldn’t get through court until October or November. Which means a December or January trip at the earliest. Like all parents going through this process, you hope that you might be the exception! But then you realize that EVERYONE is hoping the same thing for their adoption and why should you be more special than they are? So we wait again. Only this time the timelines are seem even more unpredictable.
