If you wanna squeeze him....

Then get in line!

The pledge

This is what I woke up to on Saturday morning at 6am (on the monitor by my bed).

Made me want to sit up and salute our country.  And then I laid right back down:)

Christmas in a zip lock bag

Our adoption agency notified us to prepare a zip lock bag to be taken to CC.  This is not the first zip lock bag I've agonized over.  We were able to send one last spring which included a photo album of his crazy family.  I don't know how much he sees it, but hopefully we will get it back, and one day when he's older, I'll tell him the story of the photo album and the zip lock bag.

This will be all we are able to send for Christmas.  (For his birthday, we were able to mail a package of our chooosing.) I was telling my sister how hard it was to decide what went in the bag for Christmas.  Her words were..."Oh if every kid were limited to a zip lock bag for Christmas..."  meaning it would be a GOOD thing because of the excess that occurs at Christmas.  


I emailed our family and friends that we did receive notice that Korea has quit granting emigration permissions for this calendar year.  They will resume in January, and we expect to be in one of the first two months granted.  We expect to travel about 2-3 months after we are notified which would mean between April and June we will FINALLY meet our son.  It's still so surreal after all this time.


Tomorrow is National Orphan Sunday.

Our church is celebrating with five families who are dedicating their newly adopted children to the Lord tomorrow.  That is EXCITING!!

Mamma saves Halloween

Silly pic!

The kids all picked out their costumes this year.  Allie's was not so "well built."  She had a carnival the day before, and here is what her shirt looked like.....

It ripped from the armpit all the way to the wrist!  She was pretty upset that Jesse was going to have the "Dukes of Hazard" look...sleeveless.  I tried patching the sleeves up with a white sheet, but that was no good.  I ended up cutting the sleeves off of a white long sleeve t-shirt and sewing them in as Jesse's sleeves.  Then I sewed the cuffs on the wrists.  When she woke up, she exclaimed, "MAMMA YOU SAVED HALLOWEEN!"  My head swelled like a pumpkin on the front porch...my 8 year old thought I was superhero...for just a minute:)  

...her not so shiny sleeves:)

Thankfully, November is here!  Good bye October...I will not miss you until next fall...you "December in disguise."

On the stage

Allie is so different then me.  I HATE to walk into a room full of people much less be on stage in front of a bunch of people.  Her school has a show every October, and for the fourth year in a row, she "can't wait to sign up!"  I love it!  

She and I went on a yogurt date afterward since it's almost November, and we haven't been out yet.  Love that one on one time:)

Here's a blurry clip of her little piano number.

Blast off!

My little rocket saw me at his preschool Halloween parade...

...and he tackled me.  Didn't snap the picture of the tackle, but I'm sure people were laughing.

That's one sweet space ship right there.

Holy Cow

Every now and then I run across a show stopper recipe, and this one got a "holy cow" from my crew...not to mention it's beef:)

The recipe called for french bread, but I just made sandwiches out of the shredded beef, and dipped them in the broth.

Bunny tipped me off to this a long time ago.  It is at SAM's and it is the easiest and best white cheese dip that you can buy outside of a restaurant.  I poured a little bit of this heated cheese heaven over the sandwhiches, so now your thinking "well duh, what's not to love?"  BUT...the flavoring of this meat was DELICIOUS apart from the cheese.

The sandwhiches were gone too fast for me to get a picture.    And well I forgot.  

Hope you try it. You are missin' OUT if you don't.  It shreds very easily because it's so tender. Hubs doesn't like it shredded b/c he can't dip as easily, so this was my attempt to keep it in chunks (it's better shredded my friends).