No News Yet...Maybe Today?

For all the blog stalkers out there, I just wanted to let you know that no we have not received our referral yet. Rest assured I will update this blog the moment I get a chance after we get our call :) I am still hoping that maybe we will get some news today and hopefully not next Monday or Tuesday when we will be in the middle of nowhere in Northern Minnesota (meaning possibly no phone/internet access as we will be hiking around the shore of Lake Superior). How awful would that be if we returned to civilization only to find out we missed the call and had to wait until the next day to meet our daughter?

Truthfully I thought we would have a referral long before this, and funny as it seems, now that we should be getting closer the waiting is getting easier. I'm not allowing myself to think about it all day every day, maybe that's just a coping mechanism. I do however think about all the different calling scenarios every morning and figure out how that works with our schedules. Sometimes I feel like it's never really going to happen and somehow they forgot to put us on the wait list. I know, strange fear since we've only been waiting 4 months 2 weeks and 5 days, but that is what is going around in my head these days.

Out With the Old In With the New!

We are finally saying goodbye to our huge beast of a piano to make room for our daughter. I'm sad to see it go, but the happiness of putting together a bedroom significantly outweighs it. Now I can finally start doing some painting and decorating to make it look like a real bedroom! Maybe everything will feel a bit more real then. It seems like I've been waiting forever to have my way with that room. We've been putting off getting rid of our piano until we could purchase our new one. We bought a digital piano because it is portable and we will be able to take it with us if/when we move to Africa.

Sorry for the bad photos...

Old piano, 800+ lbs: (note the edge of the crib/toddler bed in the photo)
New digital piano, 77 lbs :)

Four

Today marks 4 months on the wait list or 17.5 weeks. Hopefully we'll get our call this 4th month.

From Garden To Freezer

We love growing our own produce in our garden. There is something inherently satisfying about planting a seed, watching it grow through the summer, and finally serving it for dinner. This past week I've been busy using up our garden spoils and freezing them for the winter. I had to clean out our deep chest freezer earlier this week to make room for new things. The prize for the oldest item goes to the chicken drumsticks from 2006, I decided to throw them out.

Freezer contents from our garden this year:
-Garden vegetable soup
-Tomato soup
-Moroccan lentil soup
-Chili
-Zucchini bread x 3
-Zucchini muffins
-12 cups of grated zucchini (should make 8 loaves)
-Spaghetti sauce
-Pizza sauce (really a bad spaghetti sauce that turned out to be fantastic on pizza!)
-Pureed pumpkin
-Pumpkin seeds



We had three pumpkin plants and each one produced one pumpkin. I planted them just for the seeds because the birds and I love them. My goal was to save some money by growing our own. Since I've been in the saving money mode I decided I better not waste any of the pumpkin so I roasted and pureed it. I plan on using the puree for muffins, bars, cookies, and soup.