NATIONAL ADOPTION DAY!

Yes, today is National Adoption Day.  My prayer is for the 143 million orphans in the world, of which 4.3 million are in Ethiopia that's 12% of the children in Ethiopia

720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone

1 in 6 children die before their 5th birthday

44% of the population in Ethiopia is under 15 years old

60% of children in Ethiopia suffer from the effects of malnutrition

1/2 of the children in Ethiopia will never attend school

Ethiopia's median age is 17.8 years

1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)

per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa

in the 90's, the population (3%) grew more than food production (2.2%)

Ethiopia doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000

in 1993, after 30 years of war Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia without a seaport

1n 2009, we bring our son home from Ethiopia

I hope you are all getting excited for us.  Things are moving.  Kellar's birth certificate arrived today.  Our social worker called to schedule our homestudy- Monday November 17 at 8:30 am for 4 hours.  Pray for us during this visit.

Also today, our agency informed all Ethiopia families that the referral time has increased from 3-5 months to 4-6 months (whole months).  Not to bad.  Now this is after our paperwork is in Ethiopia and translated.

I'm on a new food kick!

Tonight for dinner we had pumpkin sage sauce over cheese ravioli.

Basically it is alfredo sauce (10oz.) with 1/2 cup pumpkin (I added extra) and a tablespoon sage along with 1 cup water from the pasta.  It went over well.

Application complete

Yeah!!!

Yesterday I was able to mail the remainder of our application.  This included my doctor's form, Kellar's employment letter, proof of health insurance from company, and 12 pictures of our home and family. 

Hopefully we hear very soon about our homestudy visit.  Once this is complete and in the Gladney office they will review our application and decide to make us officially in the Ethiopia program.  I am taking this one day at a time.  

Pomegranate experience:

The kids discovered a display of pomegranates in our Walmart and wanted to try one.  At that time I was in a hurry and said maybe next time.  This weekend we were in our new Fresh Market and the kids told Kellar "mommy wants to buy one" so he goes over to the display while I am in the long line to check out and he freaks out not knowing which to pick.  Sunday I was back in our Walmart and the kids and I picked one out.  We opened it yesterday at dinner and enjoyed this new fruit for us all.  Kellar was still apprehensive, but he too bit into the juicy, red arils.  Kellar compared it to a cross between cranberry and corn.  So next time you are in your local grocery, why not pick out a pomegranate and enjoy.

Two in One Day

Wow, who knew blogging can be such fun.

I love chocolate chip cookies.  Why does Walmart not carry their brand of chocolate chips any longer?  

Back in August, I got together with the college girls and made cookies.  Here is the chocolate chip cookie recipe we used (everyone said they were the best the ever tasted)

1 cup butter 2  1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups chocolate chips-I use milk chocolate

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375

In large bowl, cream together butter and sugars until smooth.  Beat in eggs on at a time. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt then stir into sugar mixture.  Mix in chips.  You know the rest (drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet)

Bake for 8-10 minutes.  Eat while warm.  Yummy!

It's November

What a week in our nations history!  Many of you may have voted for our President-elect and many of you did not.  Now history would have also been made if McCain and Palin won.  I do have to admit for a family who is about to bring home our chocolate chip, it is amazing that our nation has an African American president- elect and what that will mean to our son.  

On Wednesday morning Kellar and I were out the door by 6:30 am to head to Durham.  We arrived at the USCIS office for our 8:30 fingerprinting appointment.  After going through security we checked in, filled out more paperwork, and waited along with a couple who are adopting, and several others who were obviously not from the United States.  I was called first.  The fingerprinting is done on a glass plate connected to a computer.  They used windex to wipe my fingers.  They do a flat screen with 4 fingers then the thumb.  Then they roll each finger,  I had to redo several fingers as my print did not pass.  On the other hand, Kellar passed with high scores for each finger.  Then we filled out a survey and were done.

November is National Adoption Month

Things you can pray for our family:

1.  quick paperwork processing

2.  upcoming home study visit

3.  homeschooling 

4.  unity in all decisions

5.  Kellar's final weeks of teaching for the semester

6.  our son in Ethiopia and his birth family

We cut our spending

Kellar had this wonderful idea to help out our expenses.  For the entire month of October we would not buy any extra items (snack food, candy, clothes, haircuts, toys...).  In August we spent a total of $684.15 and in September we spent $556.59 on groceries and out to eat adventures.  August averages to be $171.03 a person and September's average is $139.15.  In October I am proud to say I cut that spending to $502.72 (averages $125.68 a person).  Now this was not always easy.  I had a few moments that going out would have been easier than fixing my family dinner.  We did continue our Friday nights eat out tradition.  We went to places where kids eat free on Friday (Moe's and Bar-B-Cutie), when we went to Texas Steakhouse we had kids eat free coupons.  The children were on board with us.  We are continuing this in November.