Diapers & stuff

So I bought our first cloth diapers today. I bought 2 soft bums, 2 gro baby, 3 smartipants and 2 bum genius 3.0. I never thought I would be excited about diapers. I have been researching cloth diapers ever since we decided to adopt (that is a long time to look into diapers). The hardest part is that everyone has something to say about each one of them good and bad, and not until we use them on our children will we be able to decide which are best for us. So far the concensus is "yay" for bum genius. I will more than likely go with them and the the soft bums, they seem like they would fit our lifestyle the best, plus I have heard great things about them from many other cloth diapering mom's. But until we have our little ones we will not know what will fit them the best. I decided to go the cloth diapering route when I found out that disposables stay in landfills for 500 years. That is crazy. I am not a "green" person by any means, but 500 years is an awful long time to sit in a landfill. Plus the cost is also a huge factor in wanting to go with cloth diapers. Since I will only be working part time, I am trying to find ways that we can save money once our little ones come home, for example I also want to make our own baby food. Not only will we save money but it will also be better for our children. If I make their food we will know what is in it instead of all the preservatives in store bought food. Same goes for the diapers. Cloth diapers don't have the ickys that are in disposables. Now I know that more than likely if our children come home with Giardia (sp?), which is a parasite that causes terrible smelling and water like poo, we will probably use disposables, but I will try and use a earth friendly version. I'm hoping that in a year and we, hopefully, have our children home, and I look back at this post I still feel the same way. Only time will tell.

On the adoption front. We are still waiting on our 171h. I am hoping it will be here very soon. I have learned not to hold my breath in this process. The worst part is that we still have a lot of waiting in front of us. Right now with our agency the wait times for infants is 5-6 months, hopefully they are still at this range by the time we get our paperwork in. My Christmas wish is to have our dossier sent off before Christmas. That is the one and only thing on my Christmas list this year. Please Santa, I have been a very good girl this year.

Fun weekend

On Friday Matt and I went to get our second HEP B shot. We then went to Springfield to get all of our paperwork state certified. While we were in Springfield we went to White Oaks Mall, not much to write about on that though. That mall used to impress me, maybe I'm too old to be excited about malls. I would have loved to go to Babys R Us while we were there but it took all the sweet talking I had to get Matt to go t0 the mall. Saturday we had Christmas with Matt's mom's side of the family then Matt and I went to St. Louis with good friends of ours. We just went to St. Louis for the night but it was a lot of fun. We went to eat on the Landing then we went to the 2 casinos there in St. Loius. Matt and I didn't do so well at the the casinos though, but it was still a good time. I unfortunately have a very bad cold and it hit with a vengenance on Sat. night so I didn't get to have as good of a time as I would have liked, plus I lost my voice so it was hard to have a conversation. We went to a couple of bars on the Landing after the casinos then back to our room to pass out. The great thing was that because of my cold I didn't drink too much and was the only one who didn't feel like death the next day, well atleast I didn't feel like hangover death. I thing we all realized that we are getting too old to be partying like we used to. I'm glad we don't do it that often. Sunday I really didn't feel that well. Matt and I just layed around at home and slept off and on. Watched the Bears lose, yet again and went to bed. I felt so bad, Matt ended up sleeping in our guest room cause I was coughing so much he couldn't sleep. He's such a trooper. Now I am just ready to these next three days over and have a four day weekend. Not to mention all the delicious food on Thursday.

HAPPY THANKGIVING EVERYONE!

Oh Happy Day!

This could possibly be the first happy day in this journey called adoption. We received our approval letter from DCFS today and it has now been Fed Ex'd to USCIS and should be arriving in Chicago on Monday morning. What this means for those of you who don't know is that now we wait, yet again, but this time we are waiting for our I171-H, which is our approval to bring orphans into the U.S. This is the last piece of paperwork we need to complete our dossier so we can become a waiting family. Who says that Friday the 13th is a bad day, to Matt and I this was a Good Good Day. And my birthday is Sunday so Happy Birthday to me, the best birthday gift I could get, at this stage of the game anyway. Hopefully next years birthday will be meeting our children for the first time. Of course if this were to happen before my birthday that would be okay too. Okay so now we need prayers that we will get our 171h soon, definately faster than we got our approval letter that is for sure.

Still no approval letter

So in my last post I was all excited that our home study had finally been read and approved by DCFS and that we should have it by the next week, but alas no approval letter. Our social worker said that if he hadn't seen it by Friday (Nov. 6th) that he would call DCFS and find out where it was, but I called our S.W. on Friday and had to leave a message with no call back and then today I find out he is out of the office today. I'm seriously past my patience stage. I am no longer wanting to be nice. I just want our approval letter and I want it now. We have been in this process for 8 months now and we haven't even gotten past the home study stage, which BTW is the first stage. It is ridiculous to say the least. Hopefully I will hear from our S.W. tomorrow, in fact I had better hear something or someone is going to hear from me and I can not promise that it will be nice. So here is to tomorrow.

Our home study has been approved!!

That's right people our home study has finally been read and approved. WooHoo!!! We should have our completed home study in our hands next week. Then we will be sending it to USCIS for their approval and when they send us our I171-H our dossier will be complete to get state certified and then to get certified in Washington D.C. then off to Ethiopia to be registered and then we are a waiting family. Wow there are a lot of steps to International Adoption! Hopefully it doesn't take that long to receive our i171-h but with the holidays coming up I'm not holding my breath on a quick receival of documents, but maybe we will finally get lucky and have paperwork come back to us at a reasonable time, we shall see.

Matt and I have also began discussing what our situation will be once the babies come home and we have decided that I am going to work just part-time at my job now. My boss is ready to have me work part-time as well so it works for everyone. We haven't gone through the logistics of it all yet, we will do that once we receive our referral and things are a bit closer, but it is still exciting to think about. I think I will also be selling Pampered Chef for extra money, this way I can bring in a little extra money but do it on my own time not somebody elses. This way too I won't have to work on the weekends unless I decide to. Hopefully it works well for us. We are going to have to make a budget to make sure we don't go broke but it is all worth it, it wouldn't hurt for us to stop spending money on stupid stuff anyways.

Well that is all for now. I will post again once we actually have our home study in our hands.

more pictures of the zoo

Unfortunatly this is all I was able to get before my batteries died in my camera. The rest of our pics are on my phone which I cannot download to the computer yet.

Shots!! and pictures

So we went and started our series of shots today. I am not going to lie it hurt, but I was told that the worst is yet to come. Apparently tomorrow we will really be sore...so fun fun. It is so worth it though. I've included pictures of today and some other random ones also. Also I was asked to write an article for our church's newsletter regarding November being National Adoption Month it was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I hope something really good will come of it, if nothing else it will allow our congregation to become aware of the plight of the orphans both domestically and internationally. Okay so on to the photos.

Bear at the Indianapolis Zoo that kept going under when I was trying to take its picture, but still cute all the same.

"Look at our owies!"

"Are we done yet?"

Update

Just thought I would post an update today.

I spoke with our social worker yesterday regarding our home study status with DCFS and this is what he said. At this time they have not read our home study yet. They are just now getting to a home study the he sent in a couple of weeks before ours. The woman at DCFS said they are running about three weeks behind at the moment. She apologized but apparently they now have her reading private adoption home studies and she is doing this all by herself. She has an assistant but the asst. is not qualified to read home studies. It is all budget cutting stuff. He did ask her if she knew when she might get to our home study and she answered that she is getting through them as fast as she can. He said that he would check in with her again later this week. So we will see what she says then. But until then we WAIT. I am working on how to be patient though. This process really helps you with that. LOL

So as soon as I hear anything else I will let you know.

Ham-Noodle Bake

-1/4 cup butter, cubed
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/8 tsp. pepper
- 2 1/2 cups milk
- 3 to 4 tsp. prepared horseradish
- 1 Tbsp. prepared mustard
- 6 cups cooked wide egg noodles
- 2 cups cubed fully cooked ham
- 1 cup cubed cheddar cheese
- 1/2 cup soft bread crumbs, toasted

Heat oven to 350
In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in flour, salt and pepper until smooth. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened and bubbly. Add horseradish and mustard; mix well. Stir in noodles, ham and cheese.
Pour into greased 2 1/2 qt. baking dish. Cover and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover; sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake 10-15 minutes longer or until bubbly and heated through.

Yield: 4-6 servings

Famous Pork Chops

- 1/2 cup crushed butter crackers
- garlic powder to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 2 eggs
- 2 pork chops
- 1/4 cup butter

1. Heat oven to 375 F
2. In a shallow bowl combine crushed crackers, garlic powder and pepper; mix well. In a separate bowl beat eggs.
3. Dip the chops in the egg batter and then in the cracker mixture. Place the chops in a casserole dish. Place chunks of butter around the pork chops. Cover and bake for 45 minutes.