I know it’s (only) 8:38PM. I know that my body thinks it is (already) 7:38PM. But I am exhausted and headed to bed early! Maybe my cats will let me sleep all night so that I can wake up refreshed early tomorrow morning.
It’s going to be a productive Monday!
I’ve been trying to break out of my cooking rut this week. We tried two new meals.
This first dish is a vegetarian eel that we bought from the Asian market. Yes, vegetarian eel. It tasted rather fishy and my husband loved it. I thought it was so so, which is not surprising because I didn’t like fish even when I ate meat. We’ll probably eat it again, though, because hubs liked it so much.
Vegetarian Eel
The second new recipe is Cold Spicy Ramen Noodles with Tofu and Kimchi. Yum! I wasn’t sure what to think of kimchi with ramen but we really, really liked it. It helps that we love kimchi and eat it on a regular basis! I will definitely be playing around with this recipe to make it perfect for our tastes. Neither of us liked the carrots but we loved the green onions and the kimchi and the tofu. Definitely a keeper!
Ramen with Kimchi
Next week I am hoping to try Spicy Orange Tofu and Peppers. I think it looks delicious!
Tea and cookies!
I’m so proud of this one!
I hope to baste it tomorrow and get started on the quilting. I’d like to have it completed by Sabbath so that I can take it to church and pass it along to the new baby!
I’m so excited to be up and at ’em again today! I had to be careful not to overdue as I’m still not at 100%. But I am feeling MUCH better. Woohoo!!
Because I spent most of last week focusing on finishing the baby quilt (which didn’t get finished when I got sick), I let most of my housework slide. Then I got sick and didn’t have the energy to do any of it. Now my house is a mess! So… today I caught up on a few things. I washed all of our laundry, including putting it away which is the hardest part for me! I caught up on the dishes and started scrubbing the kitchen. I also redid our financial form for the adoption and took it to be notarized. After doing all of that and cooking three meals, I was wiped out. But at least our house is looking a tiny bit better.
Right before five, hubby received a voicemail that the bug people are coming to spray tomorrow. Spray in my messy house! Eek! First thing tomorrow, I’ll be tidying up the rest of the house and sweeping the floors, which is desperately needed. If I don’t stay on top of the floors (all faux wood), they end up covered in little kitty fluffs. Our cats shed like crazy!
I did manage to stay on top of my Chinese flashcards while sick but haven’t learned anything new in almost a week. I’m hoping that tomorrow I can get back into my class.
So much to do and not enough energy to do it!
Still sick here. I’m at that point where I have absolutely no energy. I’m doing the bare minimum – dishes, very simple meals, cleaning out the cat boxes. The rest of the time I just flit from website to blog post to book to television. Yup. I wanted to take a nap earlier but had to wash the sheets. Bad timing!
These days I am reading A Thomas Jefferson Education, a book about inspiring children to learn and become leaders through mentorship (the parent mentoring the child) and reading classics. I have tons of thoughts about this book but want to finish reading it before discussing it. My biggest question is… have other parents used this education method with an older adopted child who comes home with little to no English?
I’m also in the middle of A Novel Bookstore. This book took awhile to get started. I was about to give up on it but the main characters finally started talking about the history of The Good Novel, a bookstore that will only stock quality literature. Now I’m intrigued!
I haven’t been able to work on my baby quilt. I need to recover my energy so that I can buy a new spool of thread.
Our adoption grant arrived last night so our adoption is now officially fully funded. The funds are available whenever we need to write the next check!
Along the same vein, I’ve been thinking about names. Are we going to give our girl an English name? As her first name or her middle name? Do we keep her Taiwanese name? Who named her? What name should we pick? I wish that we could get to know her so that we could see what names “fit.”
I’m excited that Sabbath is almost here again. I won’t be going to church tomorrow but I will be spending time in God’s word. I also hope to write at least two letters to our sponsorship kiddos. We received two letters this week so I need to send out a reply.
My brain is actually fairly active today, even though I have no energy. Hopefully Jeff’s work call finishes up in time for me to finish my Chinese studies for the day. I’m skipping my video lesson, as I don’t think I can learn anything new. But I do plan to review all of my flashcards.
Have a great weekend!
I’ve had several projects that I have wanted to post about this week. Instead of posting, though, I’ve been concentrating on making significant progress on said projects.
We did receive a terrific piece of mail today: our new home study! Because of the additional adoption funds we’ve received, we had to revise the home study to reflect that and the new positive net worth. I was anticipating receiving the home study on Monday or so next week but we received it today! Jeff was praying that we would receive it today so that we could overnight it to our Taiwan coordinator. The guardian in Taiwan wants to see the new home study before mailing us the adoption contracts. Hopefully everything will get processed quickly!
The downside of today is that I’m now sick with a cold. It came on yesterday afternoon and today I feel under the weather. It’s just a cold and I’m trying to remain positive. I just hate being sick and losing my productivity flow! I’m trying to treat myself well so that I can recover quickly and get back to my projects.
I’m always glad when Sabbath arrives. I love spending a quiet day with God and with my husband, going to church and not having to worry about anything. It’s God’s weekly gift to us!
Have a fantastic weekend!
I keep meaning to post but get distracted by other things. Before I realize it, the day is gone and I missed another post!
This week has been all about emailing our social worker, dossier specialist, and Taiwan coordinator, making sure we’re all on the same page and that the right forms are getting filled out. Last Friday, we filled out our new financial forms to reflect the adoption grant. We emailed the notarized form to our social worker, who is working on updating our home study and getting new copies mailed out to us. Once we receive the new home study, we’ll be forwarding one copy to the Taiwan coordinator, who will be forwarding it to the social worker in Taiwan. They have to re-evaluate us in light of the new financial situation before we can get approval and contracts from them.
I’m tired just thinking about it.
I’ve been following a couple families who are currently adopting from Taiwan or finalized their adoptions in 2013. The average wait between dossier submission and travel is 7-10 months. We aren’t even ready to submit our dossier. I’m reminding myself that God has everything under control and that it will happen on His timing, not ours! In the meantime, I will keep knitting, quilting, learning Chinese, and taking care of my husband and our household. There is plenty to do in order to stay busy!
My thoughts are all over the place so I’ll have to post again when I can put together something coherent. But for now…
God is so good!! We received our miracle!! My husband’s boss just gave us a $10,000 adoption grant and we are now fully funded. Our adoption is moving forward!!
I am so thrilled and overcome with thanks to God and crying tears of joy. God said we’d make it across the lake and we did!