Just another Thurs.

So here we are again, busy busy! I have not been home much. Crazy changes at work. John was home today and made homemade chicken and eggplant parm. It was awesome to come home to a yummy smelling house, especially on a dark rainy night. Of course , I shoveled my dinner and had to leave again for our meeting!

My sister n law signed us up for a baby class last night. She is due in December. A lil' boy. I learned that there are many kinds of bottles out there. Lots of pregnant bellies around too. I felt excited actually for us. That was a nice change.

My parents came over last night too. My mom is going on a cruise w/ her two sisters and grandma. She is in Miami now. Bahamas tomorrow. To say I am jealous is an understatement! She deserves it though. I hope she has fun and no accidental overboards. In particular, my grandma! Those who know the dynamic there will be laughing at that.

We have pictures here of my parents looking at a video my lil' sister sent of our chubby, yummy, sweet niece Penny Aloha last night. They were soo happy to see her giggles. :)

Enjoy the pics!

PS. 18 days of referrals given out, keep 'em coming.

SPREAD THE NEWS!!!!

There is no news!!!! There will be no news until like a year and a half from now. No Lucy is not born yet and no we do not know when we will be going to China.

Despite the rumors, we are not doing this the easy way! Is a gestation with no due date the easy way? I think not. No, we will not know anything about Lucy's background and yes we have paid a lot of money already. What else.....hmmmm.
Can you tell we had to be social this weekend? It gets a bit overwelming to be surrounded by babies sometimes. It doesn't mean we are not thrilled for those families it is just...well... those who know understand.

Ok I think that I should have started this blog with dear diary. I better go to bed, I need some sleep. I think.

Thanks for listening. or reading or whatever. Chasing our Lucy continues...

Astronomy Pic of the Day

Man, I love this site!

Astronomer Josch Hambsch produced this stunning composite of star trails around the South Celestial Pole with an effective "all night" exposure time of almost 11 hours. To do it, he combined 128 consecutive five minute long digital exposures recorded in very dark night skies above Namibia. In his final image, the background glow on the right is due in part to the faint, arcing Milky Way.

Hope you enjoy it too.

Fall is here!

So here we are. We started the paper chase in the Spring and it is Fall already! So we are moving right along.

I love this time of year. The air smells good and the trees are becoming beautiful! Our maple is the first one on the street to be red and orange and ALL over the yard of course. This is a picture of our colorful, shedding maple.

This is a beautiful time of year to do some brisk walking. We are fortunate to have a few nice parks close by. The closest one is Tinker Park. They have a couple of tree-covered paths and foot plank bridges over ponds. It was at this park that last year we drew up our plans to proceed with our Lucy plans. They have a gazeebo overlooking the large pond. It seemed like a serene enough setting to make plans to change our lives forever. We will have many walks in this park with Lucy when she is finally home.


I am reading The Lost Daughters of China right now. It has some jaw dropping facts about women in China and the life of little girls. I can only read it in bits of pieces. John is not too keen on Confucius anymore. His attitude toward women do not reflect his supposed 'higher' intelligence.

On a lighter note, the Amazing Race started this week. Where did they go? CHINA of course. I think 'China' is everywhere. Did you see how beautiful it was there? I was already picturing us running down that Great Wall.

Achooo!

Poor John is home sick today, he is getting waited on now by me of course. Homemade pizza and banana bread in the oven. This all after a day of teaching two training courses at work! I am soooo tired. I cannot wait for the weekend. I want to do nothing. but sleep and eat.

Already we have begun the "differences of opinion" with respects to Lucy's eating habits. I say if she does not like the green stuff she does not have to touch it or eat it. John thinks he will be able to make her at least try it. If she is anything like I was I will just smile and will have the video recorder in my hands waiting for the moment he has broccoli on his face. We shall wait and see!!!

Just another memory I cannot wait to make with our little peanut! (unless she doesn't like peanuts of course! )haha

Astronomy Pic of the Day

I need to spend the next 18 months somewhere like this. They say that green is calming..... Green Aurora Over Lake Superior

This picture was taken last week when Jeff Hapeman was visiting the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan. On a quiet night toward the northern horizon over Lake Superior was a long lasting diffuse green aurora.

Thought for the day

I saw this blurb on our agency's website and it hit the nail on the head.....

"My grandmother had a saying that childbirth is the most difficult pain to bear, but the easiest to forget. As with all of her life lessons, I was too young to understand what this meant, but the saying stuck with me. She was talking about the labor/delivery type of childbirth; however, her lesson could not have been more true of our adoption experience. For the adoptive parent, the pain of childbirth is the waiting. It is the slow, sometimes tortuous anticipation, the ever-present dream-not-yet-realized. How much can we plan? How much can we prepare? How many parenting books can I actually read? How many times can I cheerfully answer the question "Heard anything yet?" It is a pain deeply felt and it is our first sacrifice as parents."

So with that said the next person that says we are doing this the easy way and questions our decision to adopt, I will try to remember that I cannot punch someone in the nose just because they are ignorant.

Astronomy Pic of the Day

I don't know.. this picture caught my eye when I was checking out my daily astronomy pic from a NASA site. The explaination of this is below, as if we didn't know how to do this ourselves. Geesch.

Explanation: What type of cloud is that? It is not a naturally occurring one. Looking perhaps a bit like a gigantic owl monster, the cloud pictured above resulted from a series of flares released by an air force jet over the Atlantic Ocean in May. The jet that released the flares, a C-17 Globemaster III, is seen on the right. The flares release smoke and the resulting pattern is sometimes known as a smoke angel. The circular eyes of the above smoke angel are caused by air spiraling off the plane's wings and are known as wingtip vortices.

Tagged!

We have been tagged by Jessica (Emma and Eva) .
I am not sure what she is talking about with the whole 'wait' thing?? What wait? Here are our top ten items, in no particular order.

10 ways to stay positive during the wait!

1. Try to save some money - only $8,000 to go

2. Clear out the second bedroom/Lucy's room

3. Mow the lawn/shovel the snow

4. Beg for money

5. Read some adoptive parenting books/or watch their DVD

6. Stay in touch with other families adopting, possibly in our travel group

7. Dig for buried treasure

8. Take a couple of long weekend getaways - but not too far

9. Begin/finish decorating Lucy's room

10. Sift for gold in the Genesee River