my weekend

These are some pictures from the US Figure Skating Championships that I attended this weekend here in Greensboro. I posted a whole bunch of pictures and more of the story on my other blog Out on a Limb.

Scott Hamilton and Sandra Bezic

It was a wonderful experience and if you enjoy skating, I think you will love the other post I wrote.

ps. Don't have any updates on the situations. Will let you know when I do!

adoption situations...possibilities

Ok, so here's the situation. We have had two possible adoption situations this week, and they are still up in the air, so no decisions have been made yet.

Situation 1: One of the adoption referral networks that I belong to had a situation for a baby due in May that was in the range of fees we could afford, so I asked a couple of questions and we decided to have our profile submitted. We do not know the gender of the baby. The birth mother is looking at profiles on Friday, but we don't know when she will make the decision.

Situation 2: The children's pastor at our church, Sherri, has a mom who is a foster parent and is connected with other foster parents. One of the other mom's she is in contact with is fostering an 8 month old baby girl in a bad situation. The courts are considering terminating the parental rights. We said we were very interested, but this could be a long process.

So, prayers would be appreciated and we would love to have another match. One that leads to a baby in our arms and house!

TCIE, I know you are praying for us, keep it up! (and thank you!)

calming down

So, my last post was quite a pot-stirrer, I guess, and I expected that it would be when I wrote it. I'm not surprised in the least by that, and I handled the snarky comments better than I thought I would. Thanks to those of you who emailed me your support and lovely words. It meant a lot.

On Saturday we attended a wedding reception and then had a night out with two other couples. It was a fun day. I even got to sleep in on Saturday morning, which I love to do. Slow Saturday mornings are the best.


The wedding was for two friends that actually got married in Tacoma, Washington on New Year's Day, but the bride is a hometown girl and they held a reception here. It was a really neat reception, with some very personal details. The father of the bride spoke for a while, and then the bride and groom spoke. Because no one really knew the groom, he talked about his growing up and how he and the bride dated and how he really tried to win her over. We all laughed and ate and celebrated their marriage. We had a good time.

I happened to have my camera with me and took a couple of shots of the cake. This one was one of my favorites, and the purple theme they had could have been tacky, but was really well done. It was one of the best receptions I'd been to in a while.

Other than that, my weekend was pretty laid back. We talked adoption a lot, with people at the wedding and out at dinner. We tend to get asked a lot of questions about when will finally get our baby, and we don't know the answer to that. God does. Maybe he'll let us in on that soon. Randomly, today I found a baby book we bought that gives advice on newborn care. Of course, there are so many conflicting pieces of advice about babies, but I've always been a girl who likes to be well prepared. I spent a little time reading it today, although who knows when it might come in handy. I laugh on occasion when new moms look at me, after I've given some piece of advice that I've read in a book, when the just don't believe I should know these things. LOL. I've read all the same books they have, I just don't have a baby!

Soon, hopefully, soon.

my world in his hands

It's been a long road to this year called 2011. When I think back to how Charlie and I used to debate would it be "three years before we had kids" or "five years before we had kids," I just shake my head. What did we know? Absolutely nothing. I thought we might have trouble, but I didn't know what kind. Then we thought the Clomid would work, but it didn't. It worked for four other friends I have, but not for me.

Then, I stopped trying and Charlie and I had this monumental conversation, where I said I was ready to adopt. To my shock and awe, he said he was ready too. So we did all this research and chose our agency, and everything just clicked. We loved them. We love their mission and their compassion for the women. It was the place; they were the people.

Then, quickly, we were matched and just as quickly it fell apart. All within about 7 weeks.

In May it will be two years since the adoption fell apart and so I called the agency today to check in and see if they were busy. And they are getting calls and things are happening, but then she said she had gone to a meeting of social workers the other day and "adoptions are down across the board." Sigh.

Sometimes I think it won't ever happen. You know how because you've never been something, it's easy to believe it won't happen? Like, I've never been an actress, so I won't ever win an Academy Award. That makes sense. I've never been a parent, so that won't ever happen either.

But my husband, sweet, sweet husband. He always talks me through it. We talked in the car today and he said he had been thinking the other day that he was glad we were being so patient. That we weren't forcing it. He is normally the impatient one, who can't stand waiting in lines or driving behind someone slow, but in this he is just very calm. Collected. He's the rock in this adoption thing.

It's hard to believe that one day it will be my day. That I will be the one posting about my new son or daughter, and people will be congratulating me and stopping reading my blog cause all I post about is the baby. LOL. It could happen.

Today, sitting in my cubicle, with praise music on my iPod, I said a few prayers and just asked God to find that baby that needs a family and bring the situation to us. I asked for him to make us a family. The song on the iPod was "healer." The lyrics "nothing is impossible, you hold my world in your hands" really just hit home while I was prayer. A baby is not impossible. Not to my big, strong God, who holds my whole life together.

What are your adoption fears?

homemade ravioli

One of the Christmas presents I received was a book called the Encyclopedia of Cooking. It is a textbook-like cookbooks with tons of pictures and recipes and chapters on everything from sauces, to eggs, to meat, to pasta. One of the recipes that interested me most was homemade ravioli. It looked simple enough, but required a pasta roller. I said a quick Facebook plea for permission to borrow one from someone, anyone and my friend Bethany had one to loan me. Yes!

Next I invited my friend Mandy and her husband over for dinner. I knew Mandy would be totally in to helping make pasta, since she is a great cook. She was thrilled to try it, too. We made the filling first, then made the pasta dough.


Rolling the pasta dough was the tricky part. At first the dough seemed to sticky to roll and was coming apart. We dusted it with a little more flour and it was much more smooth. We rolled out all the dough several times and then started putting the filling on it.



You lay the filling down and then brush egg wash on around the filling. Then you lay another sheet on top and seal around the filling. Then we used a biscuit cutter to cut out the ravioli.


Look at how many ravioli this made! I mean, I think the recipe for the dough ended up making 35 ravioli, and each ravioli had a tablespoon of filling inside. (We used a beef filling with ricotta cheese and parsley.)



Lovely ravioli. Lovely, lovely, lovely. It was pretty tasty, too. I also made two kinds of sauces and we had salad and garlic bread, and apple dumplings for dessert.

It was a fun night and we had a blast cooking. And while I will say I was proud it turned out good and tasty, I probably won't make it again. Frozen ravioli is just as good, and takes much less time. I might make pasta noodles again, but the ravioli is just very time consuming.

I was very proud we made it though and that the experiment was successful! The pictures in the cookbook were very helpful and the pasta recipe was easy, just the assembly of it was difficult.

Is there something difficult that you like to make? Tell me all about it, please!

a christmas gift/project for me...

One thing I put on my Christmas wish list was cool frames for my frame wall. I showed Charlie the kind of frame I liked, and told him not to worry about the color because anything could be painted. I wanted size at least 5 x 7 with chunky edges.

See this box? It contained seven individually wrapped black frames of all sorts of styles and textures. (oh, and don't you love my cute polar bear jammies?)


Now I need to get them all painted and decide what kind of photos will go in each frame. That may be the hardest part of course, deciding who will go in the photos and getting them all the right size. But, now I'm closer to my goal of filling up the wall with photos. Who knows? Maybe my whole dining room will be a family gallery.

winter wonderland

We are under another blanket of snow and ice here in North Carolina, and this is one of the winters I can remember with a lot of snow. Some years we barely get anything, some years we get 18 inches in two weeks and the town shuts down completely. That was the year 2000 by the way.

Not too much going on around here. We finally took down our Christmas tree and I was sad to see it go. It was a really good tree and still wasn't losing many needles, even though we got it the first week of December. It probably would have lasted a couple more weeks, and I would have loved it, but it was time for the other stuff to come down and the trash was today, so out went the tree. Goodbye, Christmas.

All the schools have been out because of the snow, but now that I work in an office, I had to get up and go in. Charlie said, "Welcome to the real world." I said, "Shut up."

There seems to be a lull all around in the adoption world, and in all the sites I normally check in on. I was praying the other day that this would be our year, but I prayed that last year too, so who knows what will happen. I'll just keep mothering my doggies until it actually happens. We did finally get the official copy of our updated home study last week, so that is signed and sealed and valid for another 18 months. Hooray.

Hmmm....

That's about it for now. Hope you are all well. Oh, I did notice that this blog has 37 followers! That was cool. I mean, I read some blogs that have hundreds and hundreds, but I think I actually know most of you through your own blogs, so that's cool. I talk about my bloggy friends all the time to my husband, and I think he likes that you all are here to support me and listen to my rambling so he doesn't have to! LOL.

Happy Tuesday, my friends.

cookie dude

We attempted to make cookies.

This is really the only good thing that came out of that night. We got a nice picture of us.

prayer buddy reveal

I was honored to pray for Teresa at the IF Cross. The thing I love about prayer buddies is that it allows me to focus on someone else and give them my attention. It eases my pain somewhat.

During our Christmas Eve service, my friend Amanda sang a solo while two artists painted pictures on stage. It was amazing, because they only had the time of the song to complete the painting of Madonna and child. I don't even know, can't remember, the song being performed because I was so into the art being created. It was one of the most intriguing things I'd ever seen done at church. I know the song was beautiful, and Amanda's voice is amazing, so the few minutes were lovely.

The image was also lovely, of Mother and Child. There might be a time when that would make me sad, or wistful, but this time it made me hopeful. I don't know what this year will bring, but hopefully I will finish it healthy and happy. My dreams of a child may not come true in 2011, but I pray that I will still be okay with that.

My prayer for Teresa is also a prayer for myself: that we can accept where God has us and be happy in that place.