Stuff liked in March

1. An Idiot Abroad
I've developed the habit of searching the DVR guide each week using keywords, "china" or "adoption" to find television shows on either subject to record. Many people laugh when I tell them that, including my husband when he found out I was doing it, but I have discovered a lot of great shows about modern chinese culture and international adoption from doing this. This weekly TV planning routine lead to the discovery of this television show. The first episode was about China and my search picked it up.

The show is on Science Channel, no idea why, kind of like Ice Road Truckers being on History channel. Ricky Gervais produces it and basically sends his friend, Karl, on trips to the seven wonders of the world to experience the culture in depth. Karl is someone who has never really traveled outside of England and has a fairly narrow view of the world. The show is very funny and inevitably you will see other people you know in Karl. I'd watch it for just the scenes of Ricky Gervais laughing hysterically if nothing else.

2. The Moth
I'm a sucker for good oral storytelling. Probably because that was what I would have loved to have done if I had went my original career path of journalism. While This American Life is still my favorite, I've recently subscribed to this podcast and have really enjoyed it.

They hold events across the country and

I started crafting....ahhhhh!

I always think wreaths for doors sold in the stores are so expensive for fake flowers. It is also hard to find anything more modern and different. I had seen a post on another blog about making yarn wreaths. So I decided on my week off I would attempt to make one. It must be all of those years spent watching my mom craft wearing off on me! I must say it turned out pretty darn good!

I bought a foam wreath form, although I would recommend a straw wreath but keeping the plastic wrap on it before wrapping. The foam occasionally made a small mess. Simply wrapped yarn around the form, which did take awhile. I used some sticks from outside

Asian Food Night

I attempted to make some Chinese food last night. I have never made much Asian food in the past even though I cook quite a bit. I have received a few Asian cookbooks over the past couple of months and now that work has calmed down a bit I thought I would try a few recipes. I started out with some pretty basic things. I made potstickers. The recipe ended up making about 40 of them but once I figured out how to assemble them it actually went fairly quickly. I ended up freezing about half of them for later.

They had great flavor and we used plain soy sauce for dipping. To cook the potstickers you brown them in a bit of oil first and then pour chicken broth in the pan and almost steam them until all of the liquid is absorbed. Stand back when

Everybody makes mistakes

Hello, my name is Kristen and I am addicted to painting. I hadn't had my fix in awhile so last weekend I decided on Friday I need to repaint the living room and dining room, oh yeah and bathroom. I have officially painted every wall in the house at least once since moving in, some rooms 3 times. I like to pride myself on doing a fairly good job choosing colors but occasionally mistakes happen. There was the "disco dining room" incident a few years ago where I thought the paint treatment where you mix glitter in with the paint to give a shimmery, elegant look to the room was a good idea. Let me tell you, it never is. It ends up looking like a 5 year old did an art project on your walls.

Well this time I made another color mistake. Since we are getting a new kitchen in late April that will change the feel of the current kitchen, I thought the dining and living rooms all needed to have the same feel since they flow in to each other. Being that I am obsessed with gray I chose out a shade and proceeded to paint the entire living room. When I finally paused to look at it, it was a mysterious shade or purple. Maybe it had something to do with the yellow underneath it?

Waited for the morning and still saw purple! Ended up repainting everything to a lovely cream shade. Looks a lot better than

Buckle your safety belts...

That's all I have to say about the past couple of days on the "adoption rollercoaster." You fill in the words he is mumbling to himself. I would but there would be a lot of asterisks used. More to come later when I get more information hopefully tomorrow. The Vandermemes have sped up. I'm not sure why, but it's kind of scary. They may be taking on a life of their own.

Paperwork Phase I done!

We received approval of our application to adopt a child internationally within days of our fingerprints! It was a good last few days. We also attended the Holt International Gala on Saturday which was great. Another peak on the rollercoaster. We went today to Lincoln and sent off the last piece of paperwork we need for our dossier to go to China!

Us at Nebraska State Capitol

 

I'm at the Capitol!

There wasn't anyone around the outside of the Capitol today so we had to do self portrait. We left a few photos out which were very "senior picture-ish."Now we can just sit back and wait while our agency has all of the documents finish their "rounds" in Washington DC in the next couple of weeks. Then DTC (Dossier to China)! Adoption has its own set of acronyms and lingo too. Which means when DTC we have only a week or so before we are officially eligible for a referral and match!

I got my hands back!

I can now use my hands with reckless abandonment once again! We were fingerprinted this morning at Dept. Homeland Security for our I-800 application. See how excited we were about it.

We once again were going to take these cute action photos outside the building but then Adam mentioned someone recently got in trouble taking pictures of federal buildings, so we opted not to. True story. I think we need to start working some personality into our photos. Suggestions welcome. Our child will look back and think we were nerdy instead of the terribly hip 30 somethings we are. Ester, our camera hog, still made it in this picture. She's a diva.




We did manage this photo of Adam that looks a bit like the photos of Bigfoot in the wild. That is if Bigfoot wore khaki pants and programmed software during the day. We have a new digital SLR camera we are obviously still trying to learn to use. It's on our list "to-do before we go to china" so hopefully our photos will be improving!

Fingerprinting went as well as it can in a non-criminal situation. We had avoided the use of hot objects, yardwork, knives, and papers, for the past few days trying not to damage our pristine fingers. A little dramatic.....yes. I found a little cut on my finger as we were sitting and waiting. I think I was told by Adam to "stop messing with it" about five times while we sat there. He must be practicing scolding for our children. My fingerprints rolled okay on the machine but as she was doing them I asked if the machine was telling her whether they would be rejected......and she said no! They will send me a letter within 30 days if the system rejects them. Oh good, that is comforting to know. She did say she has been doing it for ten years and looking at them they would be just fine. She must have seen the panic flashing

20 Weeks

We've been on our adoption road for 20 weeks now, well in the grand scheme of things over 2 years. I have mixed feelings today. We should be finding out the sex of our child, preparing the room, or thinking seriously about baby names at this point. That is if we were doing this the old fashioned way. Instead the little voice in me that says "you know this might not work out, don't get too invested" is loud today.  The anxiety and frustration regarding the process has been getting to us lately. We have been able to do absolutely nothing for over 6 weeks now and the only things we can do in the near future is walk in and have our fingerprints taken. This part of the process has been slower than we anticipated. It likely will be at least another 6 weeks after our fingerprints that we can even think about having a dossier ready to go over to China. I think everyone has moments in this process where the anxiety can be paralyzing. I write these type of posts for them and for myself. Reading other people's similar experiences has helped me a lot through this, mainly by understanding I'm not a crazy person.

I've been thinking about all of the things that can either cause major delays or make us start all over again or completely shut the door. Things like one of us losing our job, documents

Baby where'd you get those curtains from

I have been redecorating our bedroom since I found this great fabric online. I ordered about 11 yards of it and shipped it off to my expert seamstress (my mom!) who created beautiful curtains for our room. I love graphic patterns and am obsessed with gray right now which fit perfectly into the scheme of our room. I have been searching for a chair to use in our room to sit to put your shoes on, etc. Something simple, small, and inexpensive and I found it!

We found it at a local antique store, not sure what it the name of it is. We call it the 50th and Leavenworth antique store. It was only $40 and was in good shape. Didn't require any recovering and it has really cool nail trim details which I'm not sure you can see in these photos but I love nail trim on furniture. Ester really loves it.

I have next week off for a "staycation" and am pretty excited about all of the home projects, spring cleaning, and cooking I have on my list. I did mean that sincerely, I actually am. We got a head start and cleaned out our closets once and for all. 

Six large trash bags and a trip to Goodwill later our closets are much more open. Sounds like I need to do some shopping....

Stuff liked in February

Another installment for February!
1. Giuliana and Bill Show
I know Adam is cringing at the thought that I actually purchased this reality series off of itunes to watch but he does that with a lot of television I watch. I knew there was an infertility storyline to their show this season and was curious. I was pleasantly surprised!

While they definitely live in a different world than we do, their struggles and openness with the emotional roller coaster infertility causes is very real, honest, and brave. In a lot of story lines on television that deal with infertility, it almost always works out in the end. The way it is portrayed typically does not show the real emotions that go along with it. Grey's Anatomy currently has a small storyline going about infertility and although I typically don't watch the show, I've been checking it out just to see how it is portrayed. Trust me, it's not as cute as Dr.McDreamy

What did you just say??

So this will be my first post regarding racial/ cultural issues, probably one of many over the next few years. A disclaimer, I do not aim to offend or antagonize anyone in any way, unless of course you are racist, and am just here to share my experiences and feelings as well as gain insight from other adoptive parents who have experienced similar issues.

I was leaving my job about a week ago and we have one of those rotating doors, I'm not exactly sure what you call them.....oh yeah revolving doors. Anyway I was waiting at the door to step into it to leave and a lady in front of me was trying to direct someone where to park their car and then come up back to the door for an appointment. At least that is what I gathered from the few snippets of the conversation I caught. What I do distinctly remember hearing was, "She doesn't know what she's doing. It's some stupid Chinese lady." 

I heard her shouting this back to someone inside as she was entering the revolving door in the "compartment" ahead of me. She got outside ahead of me and started walking in the opposite direction I was going. I stood there for a minute when I got outside and then just started walking to my car. 

I sort of did a double take in my head thinking, did she really just say that when I was standing here. Doesn't she know I'm going to have a Chinese child! As I was walking to my car I was so upset with myself for not having done anything about it. I could have chased after her and said........well that was the problem, I really hadn't thought about what to say. It probably would have ended up being obscenities angrily shouted at her given the "gut" reaction I had. Which would not have been the appropriate thing to do.