Dining Outside

I love, love, love it when Brian decides to cook. I love it even more when he decides we need shrimp and crab for dinner. As Brian was boiling shrimp and crab with our "outdoor cooker", he read the directions closer and realized it's an "indoor cooker". Oops! Oh well....hasn't hurt anything yet. Here's a few pics of our meal. I'm not including my pic because I didn't like it. (When you're the one blogging, you can pick and choose the pics. :) )

My New Purse

I am a complete bag addict! When I see a cute purse or bag, it is truly hard for me not to purchase it. Trust me, I can rationalize the purchase.

I started crocheting almost three years ago, but when we moved to Monroe I got out of the habit. I recently decided to pick up my yarn and needles again and am so glad I did. It is so relaxing for me to sit and crochet. I now wonder why I stopped? After coming across a pattern for a very cute (I think) handbag, I decided to tackle it. I would now like to show off my very first crocheted purse:

14 Months

Today is our 14-month LID anniversary. When we started the adoption, the wait was 6 months. I am now 8 months overdue.

Last month, on our LID anniversary, I tried a little humor. Because of my joke about having the "gestation period of an elephant", some of you think we're 9 months away from referral. Sorry to report this, but you read too much into the joke. We have absolutely no idea when we'll be receiving our referral. Check out the update on the right side of the page to see where we are in line.

Happy Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day. We celebrated by taking mom to the horse races on Saturday (her choice of how to spend the day) and cooking out on Sunday. Just an "fyi" for you....Brian came home $50 richer, Mom can home $100 richer and I came home $33 poorer. My tactic of betting on horses who have cute names doesn't seem to work.

There's so many things I could type about me not celebrating Mother's Day with our daughter, but I won't. We can only hope and pray she will be here with us next year.

Phenomenal Weekend

We've had a very, very relaxing weekend. Of course, there's always something else we could be (i.e. "should be") doing, but we took the time this weekend to do nothing at all. Saturday, Brian caught up with an old friend at Starbucks. While he was gone, I didn't want to venture too far from the loveseat, so I rewatched some of the third season of Sex and the City and crocheted. (FYI...I did laundry too. I'm not that lazy! :) ) Once Brian made it home I decided I needed to move from the loveseat, so we walked around the yard and noticed the first rose of the season has bloomed. Here it is!










Here's a great pic of the entire flower bed. Brian did the entire thing himself. We can't wait until all the flowers begin to bloom!










After sleeping in Sunday morning, Brian went to the driving range and hit golf balls. When he came home, he prepared a great lunch for us: Steaks with portabello mushrooms on the side. We opened a bottle of red wine and enjoyed it with our meal. Here's Brian setting our table:










Have you ever seen our wine glasses? We have several different types, but here's Brian's favorite:










Yes, that's a Denver Broncos wineglass. Since this weekend was Cinco de Mayo, I added a fun charm to my glass to celebrate:

I guess tomorrow we're both headed back to the real world. We both have a busy week ahead of us, so it was nice to be able to spend some time without a care in the world.

Newest Read and Musings

I finished another book last night. I've really been on a roll lately! For a while I was only reading adoption related books, but decided I needed a break. I was experiencing information overload. The book I finished is Knitting Under the Influence. It was toal chick-lit and very entertaining. It follows a group of 3 late 20-something friends who live in L.A. They get together once a week to form a "knitting circle", but the book centers around their lives. I started this on the plane to Vegas and had someone ask me if it was a "how-to book" on knitting. Along with yarn, it has a picture of a huge cosmopolitan on the cover. It doesn't look like a "how to" book to me.

Some musings on this past week:

• Brian has worked 70-something hours this past week. I'm assuming we're not going out on the town tonight.
• I have become addicted to Great Value's (yes, the Wal-Mart brand) Sugar Free Cherry Limeade drink mix. It's the individual packets you mix into your water bottle. Because of this, everyday I'm drinking all the water I need and my lips are remaining red. No lipstick for me!
• My hair is now long enough for a ponytail. It's a small ponytail, but a ponytail nonethless.
• This week's Lost episode was one of the best we've seen lately. (At least we thought so.)
• This was the best week of American Idol EVER! By the way I was shrieking at the TV, you would have thought it was 20 years ago. Bon Jovi was the guest this week. :)
• I tried hard to eat healthy this week. However, I decided to stop trying this morning when a co-worker walked in with donuts. I'll start trying again tomorrow.

Have a great Friday night everyone!

6 Days

Look at the countdown on the right....referrals came out today for a whopping 6 dates! When we started this process, it was common for an entire month at a time to be referred at a time. Last month, 2 dates were covered. This month, 6 dates were covered. Slow down!!! I hope we don't get whiplash. We do try to stay optimistic, but unless you've been here (or are here), you have no idea how difficult this wait is.

Here's some favorite lines we usually hear when we dare to not put on a happy face for someone:

• "It'll all be worth it." (We're aware that it will be.)
• "It'll all work out." (If it doesn't get the padded wagon ready for us.)
• "Your child hasn't been born yet." (No joke.)
• "You better enjoy it because once she gets here, your life as you know it ends and it'll be all about her." (If you say this to someone without children, are you aware that person would give their right and left arm for a child???)
• "You just wait!" (Umm...isn't that what we're doing?)

We're both very aware these comments are well-meaning; however, we've been trying to have a family for over two years now and have run out of patience. Enough venting for tonight. I leave you with our new motto......