Happy Earth Day

Here's to Earth Day!

This was on my 30 Rock calendar today. And, yes I do feel that way about styrofoam.

Cutest

I'm hoping my sister-in-law doesn't mind me posting these, but they are just so darn cute. It's my youngest brother and his family. He and his wife just celebrated 10 years of marriage on the 15th!
I think my uncle took both pictures, but my sister-in-law could have taken the one of just my niece. Is she not the cutest!! We have some amazing photographer's in our family!

Good News

Before heading off on our anniversary weekend we stopped by the post office and mailed our Dossier to the adoption agency!! We are that much closer to finding & getting our child(ren)!!!
Thanks for all the prayers! Continue praying that all the paperwork would come together quickly and that the Ethiopian Government approves us soon!

Our anniversary

Happy Eleven Years (April 17th, I'm a couple days late). Here's a few photos of our weekend staying in downtown Tacoma.

funnies

This is thanks to Stacy (co-worker) who brought this in to work today. Thought it was super funny! I love Dilbert!

homestudy

We had our homestudy today! I think it went well or at least at the end she didn't say, "there's no way you'll be able to raise a child!" We have one more decision to make, but then our homestudy will be complete.

Next week we need to get a pile of papers notarized and then we'll be REALLY close to getting our Dossier finished and mailed back to Adoption Advocates! We are waiting to get our notarized letter from the Tacoma Police stating we don't have criminal backgrounds! Think that'll come on Monday or Tuesday.

Once the Dossier is complete it is sent off to the Ethiopian government for approval. Once we get approval the agency can officially start looking for a child for us! That is when the real waiting begins.

Easter Eggs

We spent part of the evening dying Easter Eggs with some friends. I haven't done this since I was a kid, actually I don't think any of us had done it since we were kids. It was like riding a bike! Here's a few pictures, you'll be able to guess the ones Waymond did (self portrait). We tried hollowing out the eggs, but that was WAY to hard. We broke a few and decided boiled eggs were the way to go. We stole some of Martha Stewart's ideas and used stickers to cover parts of the eggs and we also used my mom's trick of coloring parts of the eggs with a white crayon.

What we've been up to

We've really not been doing anything super fun lately. Mainly working and filling out paperwork for our up coming adoption. The result will be amazing, but the paperwork can be daunting!
Waymond did fixed the back of our garage, but I'm guessing he didn't think it was too fun!! Here are a few pictures of the process.

















You can see that our neighbor's dog wanted to come over to help!

















He fixed our water erosion at the corner of our garage.



















This is a bonus picture of the tree in our front yard. I took the picture last weekend and the tree has already lost all of it blooms. We've had a bit of wind this week!

Super tasty curry in crock-pot

Here is a super tasty recipe for all our Curry lovers. It comes from allrecipes.com and it's so tasty. Even the left overs the next day were tasty. If you have a crock-pot you have to give this one a go! Slow Cooker Butter Chicken.
We of course made a few substitutions that I will share. First we used chicken breasts because we had them, I used three (fairly large ones), we also didn't have the tandoori masala so we put a bit more of the curry powder and the garam masala. We also added a sprinkle or two of ground cardamon along with adding the pods. Also I will add, that I wouldn't use Light Coconut Milk, but you could give it a go, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be quite as lush! I would also like to try adding another half an onion and mushrooms if your eaters will allow! Waymond isn't a big fan of mushrooms, but I think it would be great in this dish.
Next time I will double this recipe. The two of us plus a friend had it for dinner and then we both had it for lunch the next day and it was finished. I think both of us would have had it for another lunch if we had enough.

Strawberry Jam

I'm looking for an amazing strawberry jam recipe for summer canning. I'd like to get a tried and true recipe from someone instead of randomly picking one from the internet. Anyone have an old family favorite? I looked online today and found a few with high reviews but if someone is willing to share their secret family recipe with me I'll take the secret to the grave!

Cake Balls - its a real thing!

A couple of weeks ago I baked some cupcakes for a birthday for a co-worker. I used a cake recipe that is super tasty, however I guess it is just too moist (sorry Jeny) for cupcakes because they didn't rise at all. In fact some of the cupcakes sunk in a bit. A friend was over the evening I was baking them and she was giving me suggestions on what to do with them. I just hate serving something that looks so bad! They tasted good so I hated to just throw them away. So, I packed them up once they'd cooled and went to bed. The next day I remembered the website that a friend forwarded me with the cake balls on it (www.bakerella.com) and knew what I was going to do with my sunken cupcakes! When I got home from work I took all the papers off the cupcakes, made the icing and mixed them together, formed the balls and popped them into the refrigerator. I then went to our small group's dinner. When I got home I melted every piece of chocolate in our house (almost literally) and dipped the balls in. And, viola cake balls! I only used half of the icing recipe so I tinted the other half pink and topped them with a bit of pink frosting in honor of the birthday girl at work. Oh my these were super super tasty! Too bad Waymond was out of town when I made these and he didn't get to eat one until they were a bit old. I will be making these again and will never have to throw away cake ever again - Thank you bakerella!

So tasty

If you need a little extravagant treat, you really need to get you one of these:










Waymond got some in a gift basket and I snagged one. I've been eating on it for a couple days now and it is amazing! I break it out in the afternoon while I'm working away at my desk. It's dark chocolate, caramel popcorn and almonds! I wouldn't recommend eating the entire bar in one setting or looking at the nutritional info on the back! But so so so good!!

I'll post my latest baking adventure this week. Cake balls, check them out at http://www.bakerella.com/category/pops-bites/cake-balls/.

New addition

Added another blog to the blogs we visit section on the right. It's the blog for the Adoption Agency we are working with! We are starting down the road! Our application is in and the next round of paperwork is almost done! We'll keep everyone posted on the progress. We are not exactly sure how long the process is going to be, but we do know it will be more paperwork! We are ridiculously excited about this whole thing!

Have you tried...

We were at the Grocery Outlet this last week getting some cereal and I found some Coconut M&Ms. And they are TASTY!! I emailed the Mars Corp and told them they need to make Coconut Almond M&Ms. mmmmm!

A friend let us try some of her bacon chocolate, and believe it or not it was pretty tasty. I'm not exactly sure it's something I would eat all the time, but an occasional piece wouldn't be bad.

Newest addition

Here's the newest addition to our bathroom upstairs. They are ninja toothbrush cleaners. They have those lights that kill bacteria. Found them cheap at woot.com! They are super cute!