Our first meeting with the social worker!

Quick update! Last Friday we went to see our adoption social worker to go over a few forms, and have a quick briefing and Q&A session. We were able to get a good idea of how much paperwork we'll need (a fair amount) and also what to expect on the homestudy. Apparently they just want to make sure that we have a room available in the house for our kid, as well as make sure we're not idiots ("sure kiddo, you can play with this poison-dipped dagger!")

It's not a whole lot, but it is, in a sense. If anything, the adoption is now taking shape, picking up steam, and we have some structure around it. We'll have another meeting with them at the end of the month for more forms to fill, then the homestudy will be next. Depending on whether they want us to make any changes as a result of the homestudy we should be ready to start the actual process with the government of Kyrgyzstan in as few as 8 weeks. That's just around the corner!

Anyway that's all we have for now. Please continue to pray for us as we continue along this journey.

Kyrgyz-what?

Kyrgyzstan. Other than the fact that it's a hard name to spell, not many people would have heard of this country, unlike Kazakhstan, it's better-known neighbor to the north. Most Americans who know about this country will likely know it from Manas AFB, which is where most troops wind up in temporarily when flying to and from Afghanistan. So what about this little country we're adopting from? Over the next few weeks we (mostly Tom) will put up little tidbits of information where our kid's from.

Kyrgyzstan is located south of Kazakhstan, west of China, north of Tajikistan, and east of Uzbekistan (whose air force has some pretty neat paint schemes). It's a tiny country, slightly larger than California, with a population of about 5.8 million. The country is fairly mountainous, with large tracts of flat land here and there suitable for agriculture, one of their most important economic sectors. It doesn't have much easily extracted mineral resources such as oil or natural gas, but has plenty of gold, coal, antimony, uranium, and rare earth metals. While that stuff is good money, it's hard to extract which makes it tricky to get enough at a time for much-needed funds. There is a lot of water and mountains though, which the country has been able to take advantage of in the form of hydroelectric power.

This little country has had it rough for a couple of years. Back in the old Soviet days, 98% of its exports went to countries in the Soviet Union. When communism collapsed, that mostly artificially supported economy tanked out, and with very easily exploitable resources, it fared really badly among the former Soviet republics (only doing marginally better than the countries that weren't already embroiled in civil wars at the time).

As of now, the poverty rate is about 37% (2011), with about half its population working in agriculture, which is 36% of its GDP. Wool, meat and dairy products are its major commodities. Main crops include wheat, sugar beets, potatoes, cotton, tobacco, fruits and vegetables. Since agricultural chemicals and petroleum are expensive, most of the farming is done the old-fashioned way, by hand and horses.

Economy-wise, the local economy is primarily small businesses in the form of bazaars and markets in villages and towns scattered around the country. Everyday consumer items are quite scarce, and most villages are self-sufficient. Come to think of it, an Amish family probably would do pretty decently here.

What Kyrgyzstan is extremely rich in, is its wonderful culture and beautiful country. With such a low population density (71/sq mi), the land is also vast and undeveloped. The ethnic Kyrgz are an ancient people, and being part a stopover on the Silk Road, have bits and pieces of Chinese, Mongolian, European, and Arabic culture woven into their history. Over the years Russians have joined the mix, and today you can find Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims living peacefully together.

Anyway that's it for now. Tom just threw all this stuff together over a sandwich so it's informative but probably not cohesive. All of this will tie together over the next few updates. In the meantime enjoy this picturesque scene of the Tien Shan mountains, bordering Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and China.

So we've got a little announcement (no, we're not pregnant)

So we've been keeping it on the down-low, but since we're slowly creeping along on this, we might as well make an announcement that we're going to be adopting. We don't have a lot of specifics yet, but the plan is to adopt from Kyrgyzstan (a small country south of Kazakhstan, with China to the east and Russia to the west), preferable a little girl, toddler. Age and gender aren't a guarantee, though while we're really enamored with the concept of having a little girl, in the end we'd still be delighted if we had a boy. Tom just wants to have a little daughter to push Jen and Kevin's kids around and dress up as Princess Leia at cons. 

Tom's even gone as far as designing a logo for our effort...pretty neat eh?

 

You can thank God that Kazakhstan is still closed to adoptions - Tom wanted to use Borat as a mascot and had started nicknaming our yet-adopted child "Little Borat."

So what's next? We have submitted our application to an adoption agency to indicate our intent to adopt, have spoken to them a few times, paid up a few fees, and we have just submitted our application to have an adoption homestudy conducted and we'll be meeting up with a social worker to be interviewed soon. We're both nervous and excited about this next step...once that goes through we're officially on the road to adoption, along with all the additional paperwork, fees, interviews, more fees, background checks, travel, meetings, even more paperwork, etc.

How can you help? A couple of ways. Some of you who've known us for a while might be recruited as references. We'll also need money - lots of it (sadly, adoptions are really expensive, and if they were cheaper more kids would get adopted but then again, this weeds out all but the most serious people), that we'll be trying to put aside in the form of fundraisers, garage sales, donations, etc. Finally - and most importantly - your prayers and support. Not many people can do this alone, and we hope that you can be a part of bringing our little bundle of joy home.

Anyway that's about it for now. We'll have more details later!

Change is Good... Right?

OK, so life is sure to bring about bigger and more important changes than this one, it certainly has in the past. But still, change is a process... This month's change - I am (gulp) leaving the world of paper scrapbooking and entering the world of digital scrapbooking. Actually its more of a hybrid since i still plan to add some real embelishments. Anyone who has seen my craftroom will have an idea of how significant this change is. But the reality is i just don't spend as much time crafting as i used to. And when i do enter the craftroom i use my time making cards and smaller projects. Lets face it, its been almost 18 months since our wedding and i have scapped all of 5 pages of it. Time to switch to something a little quicker. Tom uploaded his old copy of Photoshop CS3 and was been quite patient when trying to teach me how to use it. It certainly has a learning curve, but its what we had available and i promised myself that if i was going to make this switch it would not cost us money in the form of software and equipment. I have found many nice kits paper and embelishment kits online that are free. I thought i would share my first project with you. Actually, that was another reason for wanting to make the switch, so many of our family members are not able to visit our home (at least not often) and this is such a fun way to share our lives! Overall I am pleased with it. I wish I had made the flower smaller, it seems every time i look at the page that flower has grown larger! And i wish i had taken the time to figure out how to put an in edge so my photo's looked a little more "real". Other than that i am happy with my page. 

The print is very small since this is actually a 12x12 page shrunk down to photo size for blogging purposes.

Our Second Year as Home Owners...

We have owned our home for two years! When we bought the house we posted pictures of the painting process but since then we haven't posted much about our home. (or posted much at all really... sorry about that!) There are still many things I would like to do with our home - like tear out the carpet and linolium and replace it with hardwood and tile. All in good time...


I thought an update would be nice, so i will start with the "living room". It was the one room on the first floor i wasn't sure what to do with. Its turned into a sitting room of sorts and not so much a living room. I am sure that this room as well as other rooms in the house will evloved over time. For now i wanted the living room to share a story of sorts. I wanted there to be some Chinese influence - that part isn't as dominate as i would like - its difficult to find nice accents in Indianapolis that fit... :)  Its a work in progress, but i like where its going. I need some things for the walls...


This view is taken standing near the front door of our house I have always loved the large squared shelf in the center of the room, but in this house it never found its place like it did in my apartments. We moved it into the living room and decided to fill it with things from our lives. I few of my favorites - the house on top is actually a card holder from our wedding. To the left of that is a picture Don took at our wedding. He custom painted the frame to compliment the picture and gave it to us when he visited in March. If you look closely in the shelf's squares you will see memento's from our wedding, craft projects, pictures of friends and family and pieces from here or there that we enjoy.

The nested shelves to the right of large large squared shelf - This is my favorite part of the living room - i stiched the beads on the lamp myself (they match the beads on the curtains, which my mom made for us) The dried flowers are the flower's Michelle carried at our wedding.

The table and chairs are borrowed from my mom, i'm hoping i can keep them for a long time :) On the table is the tea set from our tea ceremony.

The Library/Office

Originally this room was intended to be a dinning room. Tom and I decided to convert it into a library/office space. My dad made us the beautiful build in book shelves. I was startled to realize that once all the books were out of the boxes we had nearly filled our space! My mom made the window treatment and also covered the ikea chair with matching fabric. Tom installed the overhead light, which was part of last years birthday present.

I have always loved dogs, as has Tom. In the background are dog books, including 3 James Harriot books (thank you Aunt Karen for introducing me to this author many years ago) You will see that there is a leash and and neck tie on the shelf. Both belonged to Joe, who we miss very much.

Our library would not be complete without a tribute to space exploration - some of these items originated with Tom (like the Mercury figure and The Right Stuff book), however most of these items are mine - mementoes Tom has given me in honor of my love of the Apollo program and the Shuttle program.

Thanks for exploring a few rooms of our house with me!
In other, more important news - At long last tickets have been purchased for a trip to Malaysia/Singapore. We are soooo excited! Tom will be home for Christmas this year and i suspect i will get to meet a lot of family :)

A new way to use up coleslaw mix

We haven't updated this in a while so I thought I'd add this little recipe that I'd make when Dori's in the mood for soup.

Got a huge bag of coleslaw veggie mix in your fridge but sick of coleslaw?  Well, fear no more!  Here's a healthy, hearty soup you can make out of it....

Grab:

6-7 stalks of celery

2 medium onions

6 carrots

Your leftover coleslaw veggies 

Along with...

A can of diced tomatoes

A can of V-8 juice (8oz)

3 cans of beef broth (8oz)

1 packet onion soup mix

Raid the spice rack for....

Onion powder (2 tbsp)

Garlic powder (2 tbsp)

Black pepper (1 tbsp)

Cayenne pepper (1 tsp)

Parsley (1 tbsp)

1 bay leaf

Would be nice if you had....

A smoked ham hock or leftover smoked, pulled pork (About 2-3 cups worth)

And a 4-quart pot to put it all in.

So chop up the celery, onions, carrots and coleslaw mix and just toss it into the pot like you see on the Food Network.  Toss in the ham hock or pork next.  Then throw in the spices, onion soup mix, V8 and beef broth. Finally, pour some hot water over the the whole mix until everything is covered.  Heat until boiling, stirring constantly, then cover, lower to a simmer and let it all sit for a an hour and a half.  

Serve hot with a dash of Tabasco, more salt to your preference, along with buttered rye bread.  Great for cold weather!  Put the leftovers in some food containers and refrigerate for up to three days, and after that I'd recommend that you freeze the lot.  The best part about this is that the flavors improve as long as they're in the  fridge.

Alternatively, if you don't have coleslaw cabbage, use a head of fresh cabbage instead.  Cut the core out and toss that in with the rest of the soup mixture.  The cabbage should be chopped up into 1" square pieces.

walkin' in memphis - last day

Sarah is all dressed up for an afternoon with the girls.

I can't believe my flight leaves tonight, our time went so fast! Today we are going for lunch, then a little shopping. And hopefully we will find some cupcakes!

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Walkin' in Memphis - Day 3 - Downtown

Today Janelle, Sarah and I explored downtown. We had a great time eating lunch at Huey's, taking a peak at Beale Street and walking along the Mississippi River on Mudd Island. My time here is going by really fast!! Today Sarah let me hold her for awhile, that was a fun moment. Sarah prefers her momma, so there isn't a lot of lap time, but i get all kinds of smiles whenever I talk to her, so we are for sure friends! (Buster on the other hand is more than happy to sit in my lap!) We had dinner at Corky's BBQ, which was excellent. Now we are just chillin' in the living room, getting ready to watch a movie. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! 

Who could help but love this baby?! 

Momma and Sarah, ready for lunch at Huey's

Sitting up like a big girl in the high chair

Toothpick's in the ceiling - put a toothpick in the straw, 

use the straw like a blowgun and stick the toothpick in the ceiling

3 kinds of sliders on homemade buns! 

Beale Street

A very small part of St. Jude's 

Downtown Memphis

Mississippi River from Mudd Island 

Mudd Island River Walk

Houses on Mudd Island 

Walkin' in Memphis - Day 3

Holdin' myself up!!

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Walkin' in Memphis - Day 2 - best picture of the day

Lovin' the stroller ride

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