Seventeen Months

Months on the wait list:

On our seventeen month waiting anniversary, we ate a delicious Ethiopian meal in a restaurant in Oklahoma City. 

If you live in the area or drive by the area, please go eat at this amazing restaurant. It was extremely yummy and they are fixing to change their menu to a buffet style menu.
(We pinky promised we would return.)

We started with the appetizer sampler.

Ethiopians usually serve the food in a big plate in the middle of the table for everyone to share but because we each ordered the vegetarian sampler, we each got our own plate.

This pose was our beautiful Ethiopian waitress's idea :).

Oh Ethiopian food, how I love thee.

(More to come as to why we were in Oklahoma.)

Happy seventeen months waiting!!!

2013 Monthly Celebrations

It has been two years since we started the adoption process...two years! On top of our regular monthly celebrations, we have decided to do an extra fun activity each month this year. I asked a few mommies what they would do if they were in our shoes. You know you are fixing to have a child but you don't know when but you know it's soon so what would you do with your spouse if you had at least one more year to be alone without kiddos (*breathe). We are hoping, praying, wishing, and really praying that God will surprise us with a referral this year but there is a good chance that we will have to wait yet another. Therefore, thanks to those few mommies, we came up with this fun to do list:

Call in sick and go to the zoo

Candlelit dinner at home

PJ Day

Run a 5K

Stay at a bed and breakfast

Romantic beach getaway

Late night rated R movie

Cooking class

Attend a random festival

Camping

Couple's retreat

Weekend road trip

(BTW, the most popular answer was to enjoy sleeping throughout the night.)

As you can see, there are 12 fun events, one for each month in 2013. I think this will help us focus on the upcoming events versus sit and stare at the calendar.

I mean really, how blessed are we that we get to do this?
(Answer: extremely blessed)

One last thing, my grandparents celebrate their 62 year wedding anniversary today :).

Holidays 2012

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

The holiday season this past year came and went in a flash. Time flies when you are having fun! We have been incredibly busy laughing and spending time with family.  

Here is a quick update on how we spent the holidays. 

This year, we were the hosts for our families' Thanksgiving dinner. We had a fried turkey, oven roasted turkey, a ham, pasta, green bean casserole, potatoes cooked in many different ways, and several appetizers and desserts.

We put up our Christmas tree soon after.

We spent Christmas Eve with Rob's family (somehow we forgot to take pictures - wua!) and went to Kingsville to spend Christmas Day with my family.

Our niece was baptized on Sunday.

After the baptism dinner, it was decided that we would be hosting the New Year's Eve party the very next day. Both of us worked yesterday but luckily my sister was in town to help. My brother in law spent the day smoking a brisket, my sister went to the grocery store for us, I cleaned the house as soon as I got home at 5 PM, and Rob bought some fireworks on his way home from work. That's what I call great team work! We thought it would be nice and comfy for everyone to make it a New Year's Eve Pajama party :).

Sixteen Months

Months on the wait list:

On our sixteen month waiting anniversary, we decided to head downtown right after work. Because the weather in San Antonio finally dropped below 70 degrees, we were excited to go for a walk on the river walk without breaking a sweat. It was actually pretty chilly so we thought it would be perfect to drink hot chocolate while we admired the Christmas lights. You would think that hot chocolate is easy to find, right? Wrong! We walked for an hour trying to find a place that sold hot chocolate. We checked the Chocolate Factory, Haagen-dazs shop, searched through many restaurant's menus, and could not even find a Starbucks...a Starbucks! As we were heading back to the car we noticed a small hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop with the most beautiful sign on the door.

"Warm up with rich & creamy Hot Chocolate!"

    Could this really be happening?

Yes, yes, yes!!!

We were so excited that we had our hot chocolate with marshmallows AND whipped cream, which ended up being way too sweet. (We still drank it though.)

We drank it by the river and watched the different river walk boats filled with families, people caroling, and Santa :).

We even made a couple of friends.

We ended the night with a delicious soup that was waiting for us in my Crockpot. 

Happy tummy = happy couple.

Happy sixteen months waiting!!!

Movember

November is the "month of the mustache", hence the name Movember...brilliant! During this month, men grow their mustaches to raise awareness and funds for men's health, specifically prostate and testicular cancer. Rob found out about this charity mid-month last year and refused to grow out the mustache late. Since then he couldn't wait for November 1, 2012 to arrive. He put together a group of 10 of his co-workers to grow out their mustaches for a good cause. On the first day of November, they all shaved and soon after, the mustache growing frenzy began. Today, thankfully, is the last day. I am very proud of my hubby. I will admit however, that I am not the biggest fan of the mustache :{.

Only 6 out of the 10 guys were present for the final picture.

6 Fun Facts About This Picture

1. Rob is the guy wearing the white shirt.

2. The fourth guy from the left, you know, the one with the paper mustache taped to his face, found out that he cannot grow a mustache. But he sure did grow a beard. 

(Please zoom in and check it out. According to Rob the paper mustache was falling and that explains why he looks like he is about to sneeze.)

3. The fifth guy from the left came up with the idea to pose.

4. The first guy on the right cut out the first guy on the left's knee by trying to edit the picture.

5. The first guy decided he likes the mustache and will keep on sporting it.

6. Although they look upset and borderline scary, there was a lot of giggling during the photo shoot.

Home Study Update

We had our home study update interview today. We spread out all of our chores through out the week to avoid an all nighter and an I-think-I-will-pass-out feeling like last time.

 Santa came early this year and got me a Crockpot on Sunday. Perfect timing, right? I could cook tons of food and just eat that for dinner all week long. I mean, this would save us time and I could clean every day after work without wearing myself out. One of the main reasons why I always wanted a Crockpot was to just throw raw food in it, continue with life and then hours later...tada! dinner is ready. So by Monday I had all of the necessary ingredients to make a delicious chicken in pineapple juice and brown sugar. A sour, burnt chicken smell woke us up on Tuesday morning. Seriously guys, my house STILL smells like burnt chicken. We could even smell it on our clothes at work!  

After some much needed practice, I am sure I will love it.

No stress right? Today, we both woke up at 6 a.m. and started cleaning our already clean house. Rob went a little above and beyond. He organized the garage as soon as he woke up. As I was making our bed a faint smell of vinegar hit my nose. Sniff, sniff. I walked over to where I heard some hard scrubbing and there was Rob scrubbing the hard water stain (a tiny one) in the guest bathroom with vinegar.

Is this not the cleanest toilet you have ever seen?

 So our house smelled like burnt chicken and vinegar. I took a shower and of course got shampoo in my eyes. Seriously, ouch! I think the last time that happened to me was when I was eight years old. I looked like I had some sort of pink eye. I get out of the shower and could not find my husband. I looked and looked and sure enough find him outside in his pajamas, wearing his fleece jacket with the windex bottle and paper towels cleaning the windows. He jumps in the shower and I decide to put some music videos on to lighten the mood:

Me (yelling): "Babe! What channel is Fuse on?!"

Rob: "What toothbrush do I use?!" (BTW for the last ten years we have always bought a blue and a pink toothbrush)

Me: "What?! No, what channel is Fuse on?!"

Rob: "Why do you want to watch the news?!"

By this point I gave up and looked it up. By 11 a.m. we were ready to go. We kept asking each other "Are you nervous? Don't be nervous, I am not nervous." Of course we were nervous! Before the social worker arrived, we started acting extremely silly. For some reason we started jumping up and down like soccer players before a big game. We then started walking like robots all over the house. Until finally we decided to sit on the rug and watch music videos so we wouldn't be sweaty and out of breath when she arrived. To be more exact, the "Top 100 Bangin' Bodies" videos. We then decided to download the TimerCam app and take a picture of ourselves.

We realized 5 seconds does not give you enough time to pose and look nice.

But 10 sort of does.

Finally, the interview began at 12:33 p.m. and ended at 1:21 p.m. It was not bad at all...again. We knew that too, I don't know why we stress ourselves out. On the plus side, my house is already clean for our Thanksgiving dinner and we are in the process of being approved to adopt siblings or an older child :) :). 

We love you son (or son and daughter)!

Fifteen Months

Months on the wait list:

 Current longest waiting family has been waiting for (months): 

29

We are about number 67 on the list and 56 on the single child list.

We hit the 15-month mark on Sunday. I am not going to lie but this month was not an easy one for me. I did not feel like going out or talking to anyone but my husband. Let me tell y’all, he is amazing. He has been laying with me on the couch, sometimes all day, watching Netflix and just letting me have my boo hoo moments. Yes, moments not moment (there were a few). The thing is that I really miss our son. I don’t know if he has been born yet or what kind of hardships his family might be facing. I don’t know when we will meet him. I don't know how he is doing. I just feel so incomplete without him. What I do know however, is that he is in God’s hands and I trust that He will assure him that we love him very much and we will be together soon. I know He is also watching over his beautiful family.

Now that I am done venting, let me y'all how we celebrated the big 1-5. We woke up and we cooked what each one of us was craving for breakfast. Rob had scrambled eggs with leftover fajita from the night before and I had pancakes.

This waiting mom does NOT wash dishes on Sundays.

 I have to show off my cute coffee mug

Thanks Danni!

We then started working on the puzzle that we bought the day before at Half Price Books.

After that we layed on the couch yet again and around seven o’clock, Rob basically shook me and said “c’mon, we are going out. Take a quick shower”. I obeyed and we decided to go to Wine 101, a small wine bar not too far from our house. It was perfect! It was extremely romantic and delicious. Have I mentioned that I love cheese? Really? I haven’t? Well, I loooove cheese. We had the cheese tour with some wine. 

Plus olives, artichokes, grapes, and french bread.

We sat outside by a small fountain surrounded by oak trees and perfect weather.

I really don't know what I would do without this man in my life. I love him so so much.

 Happy fifteen months waiting!!!