End of the Week

It's been a very good week, considering I've been solo-parenting. I've spent several hours this week reading and talking to different adoption agencies. This potential international adoption is so much more complicated than it was when we went to Liberia! Ethiopia is a Hague country and there is a lot more involved. I also have been talking to several agencies and am surprised how much the program, and costs, can vary between agencies. The frustrating thing to me is how much more Ethiopian adoptions have increased due to the requirement of making two trips. On top of the extra $10,000 in travel expenses, it requires us to leave our children twice in a six week span of time; once for court and then again to bring the new little guys home.

Of course, I'm doing my research in complete faith that our house closing is going to go through the end of January and that we will then be able to refinance our rental loan and then that we will pay off our Liberian loan around tax time. In some ways, it's all crazy to even consider, but we feel like we are supposed to be ready!

In my continuing in the kitchen series, I bought new binders for my "scrapbooked recipes" that my sister and I enjoyed doing the few years back. My binder had gotten stuffed and wouldn't open or close smoothly, so I divided it into two - one cooking and one baking. I have rediscovered lots of exciting things in there I'm ready to try.

I'll close with some two year old humor. Since Tori and Julia constantly get their fingernails painted, Julia calls them tandernails, Elijah always wants in on the action. Every now and then, he gets a marker and colors them all and is pleased with the look. Yesterday, he started coloring on the computer desk. I said, "Elijah, what are you allowed to color on?" expecting him to say, "paper." Instead, he very seriously answered, "my tandernails."