Referral Time!!

I love it when referrals come out! I can't get enough of looking at the newest babies matched wtih families! I'm sure the other adoptors know how to see them all, but for my family and friends who want to see some babies.....click here.

VACATION: day 3

Today is day 3 of my 11 day vacation. Before I get started, let me do a bit of what my sister calls (cutely, I think) back-blogging.

Vacation day 1: I slept til 10! Need I say more? But it does get even better! We went to North Georgia to visit with Bonnie and Clyde and the rest of the Georgia blogging/waiting family gang. (Lisa has pictures on her website.) We got to area a little early because this is not too far from where I went to college a million years ago, and I always remember the fudge shop. If we're in the area, I gotta go. I have an obsession with their butter brickle fudge. Mmmmmm.

Vacation day 2: Woke up early. Grrrr. To meet my running partner at the park. The goal was 6 miles, which we did. I suggested 7, but she had to get home because her boy wanted to go to Sunday School. You can't really say no, when they ask to go to church, can you? The rest of the day wasn't very exciting. A little shopping, a little napping....a nice day.

So here we are at today....Vacation: day 3. Jeff is at work. I woke up knowing I would run at some point, so to get it over with, I headed to the park. I'll write about the run another time, because it was great. 10 miles. Hot dang!

And now here I am....home. I need a shower in a big way, but after that...what? It's vacation. Lunch with a friend? Nap? Good book? ..... uhhhhh nope.


Here's how I'll be spending my vacation afternoon.

Scary, isn't it? And we don't even have kids yet! Let me tell you I'm a little worried about our laundry future. I thought having these big fancy machines would make me want to do laundry. And they did....for about a month. After the newness wears off, it's still just laundry.

Eddie...my big boy

I've shown this picture before, but I thought it was necessary to post it again in order to show my kitty's.....um....girth.

My Eddie has always been a big boy, but I've been noticing he seemed especially spherical lately, so I weighed him and he has indeed gained almost a pound. (16.5lbs if you were wondering) That's a lot of kitty. The problem is that he's having trouble getting thru the kitty doors. We have one in the door to the basement, an another in the wall to our utilty room which is where we keep the cat boxes. (with 5 cats, you're gonna have multiple boxes)

We never had the flap on the kittty doors because one our less intelligent cats was afraid of it, but to keep it from being just a hole in the wall/door, we kept the trim pieces over the opening. Well, we noticed a few weeks ago one of the trim pieces kept falling off. We figured it was the big boy, but didn't think much of it, because you could just pop it back on. Then the other day, the trim piece over the opening in the basement made it all the way upstairs.

I'm pretty sure none of the cats picked it up in their little kitty mouths and carried upstairs, so I suspect Eddie actually wore up the stairs.

Poor fella. We obviously need to put him on a diet, but it's sooooo hard. We have 4 other cats who are skinny-mini's and need all the food they can get. We may have to lock him up during the day. It seems so mean, but what other choice do we have?

Good Day

What a good day. Jeff woke me up with the news that the CCAA had updated their website. Referrals are on the way and they go thru the 28th of June. (my birthday!) Now this is both good and bad. Good...because referrals on the way is always a good thing. Families are about to be made. Bad...because it is only for 2 weeks worth of LID's. Anything less than a full month of LID's means the process is still slowing. And again, good...because within the context of the last 6 months or so, the process is not slowing as rapidly as it has been. (slowing as rapidly????) Anyway, if you choose to be a real glass-half-full kind of person, you could say the pace was picking up. Today, I am a glass-half-full kinda gal.

With a December LID, I still have no idea when we will get our referral, but here are my guesses.

If the CCAA returns to full month referrals.......Dec '06
If the CCAA keeps the current 2 week pace......June '07
If the CCAA slows again to one month of LID's every three months.......Dec '07.

My gut feeling says we will have her picture in February and travel to China in April. That's just a feeling.


So after my happy morning, I got to work to discover there was practically NO MAIL. Bad for the post office....good for Georgia. Also we had a cook out today at work. You see, we have these "voice of the employee" surveys quarterly and our office usually scores badly on the employees feeling appreciated. In response, mgt has started feeding us. I feel like a little kid being won over with a cookie. I guess it worked though because it keeps happening. We have cookouts, doughnuts, Chick-fil-A. They take lots of pictures of us eating (always nice) and plaster them up around the post office to remind us how happy we are.

Then on my way home from work, I call my Mom and she asks me if I want a pot roast for dinner. She had just made one and wanted to give it to me. Heck, yeah, I want a free, already cooked dinner!

Then I get home and Jeff has a bunch of packages. Even though I work at the post office, getting packages is still fun!! He has this project car that I can't wait for him to get working on so I can drive it!! It's a '78 Super Beetle. Not luxurious, but cool! Today he got a muffler, steering wheel, and a bunch of other stuff I don't know what they are. I can't believe I never put up a picture of the project car.

AND, I only have one more day of work before my vacation begins. I'll be off until after the 4th holiday!!! I don't remember taking this much time off from work before. We'll be going to Florida to visit Jeff's family in Melbourne (anyone from there?) for a few days, but for about a week I'll be home...alone. This is great because I have been feeling monstrously (is that a word?) overwhelmed lately. Too much to do. Home projects that never end and a million more to start. This will let me put a dent in some of them.

Oh gosh, and it looks like it might rain any minute. What a blessing for our brown yard, dying plants and the crazy hot temperatures.

Yep, good day.

Baby Birdies

I've had a few requests to get the ugly flooring picture off the top of my blog. So here ya go. Sorry about the quality of this pic, but it was taken thru my dining room window. Although it might be hard to tell the scale of the birdhouse, it is tiny. Like the opening is about the same size circle you would make when putting your index finger and thumb together in an "A-OK" sign. We meant to throw it away along time ago. Jeff thought that (and a lot of other things left behind by the previous owner) were tacky. But now we're so glad we didn't because we have baby birds in there!

We found them because they're so dang noisy! We can sit in our dining room, listen to the chirping, and watch Mama bird fly back and forth feeding the babies. A few days ago we could see three little birdie mouths poking out. Now they half way climb out to take food from Mama. I tried to get a picture of the babies, but if you walk close to the house they pipe down real fast.

So is that a better picture? I did the meatloaf first so you wouldn't be left with that one.

Ta-Da!!

My first meatloaf!! I'm so proud. This cooking thing is coming along slowly. I know meatloaf isn't impressive. No one really loves meatloaf, but its nice to have in your repertoire (gonna have to spell check that one) And I love love love cold meatloaf sandwiches with Miracle Whip on white bread. Mmmmm...




Oh, I also had turnip greens with mine. Funny, the plate doesn't look very appetizing, but it was good. I loves me some greens. And you know I got to eat them all because Jeff wouldn't touch them. I also found out there's only 200 calories in the whole can. They come in big cans, you know. I'm on a calorie counting kick right now. My whole dinner? Under 600. And the dark blob? That's HP steak sauce. Another Mmmmm. Also good mixed in with the greens. Tangy!

Scary stuff

AAAAAGGGHHHH!!! When we took up the carpet in our family room, this is what we found. Linoleum!! Does anything scream '70's more than this? And who puts linoleum in the family room?!!












Our family room and kitchen are just one big room, really. (although we suspect it wasn't always that way) Here's the two linoleums together. Family room=70's. Kitchen=80's.







Here's a picture of our mid-day progress. That floor sure is green! The scary thing is the walls used to be super dark panelling. Can you imagine?







And here is how we ended the day. Not nearly as much progess as we hoped for, but there was some tricky stuff to do. I think we can work on it little by little all this week.

I know it still looks a little iffy, but just wait. I think it's gonna be great!

a few recent pictures

Last weekend Jeff and I had Memorial day at my parent's house and we brought the camera for blogging fun!

Here's the fruit spread. If there''s one thing Mom knows how to do, it's throw a holiday feast. We also had salad, beef tenderloin and a yummy fruit shortcake thingie for desert. That's Jeff hand making a grab for the grapes.


Me and Mom


Mom's weird Moose collection


My sister's and my baby picture on the wall in our matching Raggedy Ann dresses. I'm on the left.


And then the next day, we took a drive in the North Georgia mountains. This was taken on the hightway that runs thru the Chattahoochee National Forest. A beautiful drive.

Miss me?

Boy, it's been awhile, hasn't it? What a delinquent blogger I am! Let's play catch-up.....

The Adoption
Maybe I should have started with a different topic. This one is still a bit gloomy. The last set of referrals came out a little over a week ago and once again, they only covered about a week's worth of LID's. My agency got about 40 referrals (with a set of twins!! Yeah!!) But I've heard they send about 100 dossiers to China each month. So if they send 100 monthly and only got 40 last month, 30 the month before, and ZERO the month before that, you can see they're building up quite a back-log.

Looking over my blog, I see I totally forgot to mention our 5 month LID anniversary. Heck, now we're halfway to the 6 month mark. 6 months logged in....wow. When we started this process we expected our referral about now. eh, well.

Work
My route is finally going to be cut in about a month. I'll finally be shed of the C.O.W. She was by her mailbox the other day and snatched her mail from me. Bye bye, C.O.W. I'm losing money along with her, but that's fine. I've also gotten myself off the list of volunteers to work their off day. Yippy!! I'll get to spend weekends with my Honey. Or go out of town for a weekend. We're already planning a long weekend trip over the 4th of July holiday.

Cooking
We had every intention of continuing the cooking, but life got busy and we slipped a little. Don't worry, we're jumping back on the wagon after this weekend. I have my shopping list and menu all ready. (Thanks, Brian)

Exercise
We have been doing amazingly well!! We meet my running partner at the park for a long run every Sunday. Jeff walks and gives us "girl" time. And then I hoof it on the treadmill a couple times a week. It's finally getting easier. I even made it to the gym this week. My aerobics teacher came to the post office to say Hi and guilted me into going again.

side note: My aerobics teacher and I started trying to get pregnant about the same time. Since then, she has had ovarian drilling (sounds horrible) and has gone thru 3 failed IVF's. She's about to start her 4th. I can't imagine taking that road, and am so glad we chose adoption. Even with the wait, at least I know one day, eventually, there WILL be a baby. And no injections or egg harvesting required!

and finally Home Improvements
Our one month break from home improvements turned into a 3 month break. It's really easy to get used to your house in a half done state. I was perfectly okay with not doing any more for awhile, but today while I was at work, Jeff started pulling up more carpet. I'll post pictures at the end of the weekend of our progress, but let me tell you, what we found under the carpet is pretty scary!

That's about it for the Jeff and Georgia story. Please stay tuned for more regular installments. (with pictures!!) I promise.