My Favorite Things!

Farewell Party Cooking!

Our Exchange Program has the kids make something from their home country for each of the host families to sample at the farewell party. The kids go shopping to buy all of their ingredients, which is a great lesson in the English language for them, and then we start to cook or bake.

Last years baking challenge required the leaves of a lemon tree.....let me just say they weren't the easiest to find. Thank goodness my sister in law has a lemon tree! (I am now the proud owner of a lemon tree.)

This year was not without it's challenges!

Kate went to China town in Philadelphia to purchase her ingredients. When she came home I couldn't wait to see what exotic things she had purchased......... Out of her bag came 2 Cucumbers, (I laughed) 2 brown eggs and some scallions, (I laughed some more) and finally some crunchy white powder stuff that I still don't know what it is. She wanted to know why I laughed so I opened the refrigerator and pulled out Cucumbers, Scallions and Eggs! She laughed too!!! So much for exotic, however she did have some packets of things that she brought with her and when she mixed everything up with the additional ingredients I supplied we had some very good pork and chicken dishes!

Kate's cooking was absolutely delicious, very spicy but very good. She put Cayenne Pepper on everything that I cooked so that it had a little spice for her! These are pictures of a late night snack that she made for her and I. She was so happy to find adequate Chinese noodles in my pantry. (Thanks to a gift from my neighbor!)

She also cooked for her farewell party with the group. This time unfortunately her food choices were more hot oil and wok style cooking. Again, they were delicious but they were also memorable!

The smoke detector went off so many times I had to stand underneath it with a broom to keep pushing the button. The kitchen was so filled with smoke that I lost my voice! We had all the windows open, the fans blowing and a lovely Chinese girl in the kitchen saying "So Sorry"! My Wok pan may never be the same but the food was absolutely delicious!!! I have decided that before any real Chinese cooking occurs in my kitchen again.....I must install better fans!

Baking with Arnaud!

What a wonderful surprise!!! He was fantastic in the kitchen. I never would have thought that a 17 year old boy would be so adept in the kitchen. My egg whites were not whipped to his satisfaction so I had to go back and whip them some more. The recipe was all in French so I couldn't read a thing and he really took control and knew what he was doing. We laughed, we ran out for things we didn't know we would need and we baked delicious French cakes!

The first cake was a chocolate cake that was made (all from scratch) in the microwave! We melted baking squares, mixed ingredients, ran to the store when I realized we needed a bundt pan that could go in the microwave and then microwaved a cake in 5 minutes!!!!! Yumm!

The second cake was a lemon yogurt cake in a spring form pan. It was so very moist and delicious with just a hint of lemon flavor.

I am definitely making these cakes again!

I love to cook, I love to bake and mostly I love to share these things with other people. Cooking and baking with these kids as part of an end to the program is such a bitter sweet. We have so much fun in the kitchen together, and I just really enjoy these moments. But yet we also know that it will soon be followed by a lot of tears as we say goodbye.

This time was no exception!

I love these kids and I love this program! My life is truly richer for having done this!

August 11th, 2009

One year from today!

We need to have our adoption completed and be home with our babies by August 11th, 2009!

Our I-171h expires one year from today!

Pre-Hague Vs. Post-Hague

There is much discussion, heated debate and well unfortunately sometimes just out and out mean fighting. I don't have any answers, I don't have any information. All I do know is that if I can stay Pre-Hague I will be happier because less will change. When things change there are problems, I don't want problems. I didn't want "the wait" but having no control over that I thought I would just sit quietly and patiently, and wait my turn. I didn't want turmoil, thank you Hague for turmoil!!!! So, I have contacted my elected officials. I have told them that I am in favor of being grand-fathered in to Pre-Hague status. I have kept everything current and I will continue to do so.

However, my fingers and toes are crossed that we can complete the adoption by 8/11/2009 and have all this Pre and Post Hague discussion have been academic, at least on our part!

I want to go back to decorating her room, picking out her bedding and sewing her quilt! I want to be able to stop all this stressing about Immigration rules and dossiers! I have done what I can, my agency has helped where they can, I am now going to make peace with where we are at and go back to enjoying life and waiting for our daughter(s).

Good luck to all of us, and congrats to the families that are just now receiving referrals!

Fly The Great Nor' Easter!

We had a lot of fun with Kate and Arnaud while they were here and I have much to share but this was an event that only Barry and Arnaud participated in. Kate and I decided that our time was much better spent getting this whole event on film.

So here you have Barry and Arnaud on the Great Nor' Easter in Wildwood NJ, and Kate and I very happily taking photo's and videos of the event!

2008 Foreign Exchange Program

This year we happily hosted two students from the Foreign Exchange Program!

We had a student from France, Arnaud, and a student from the Peoples Republic of China, Kate.

Thank you to both Arnaud and Kate for a lovely visit we really enjoyed every moment that we spent with the two of you and we miss you terribly!

The French Group!

Arnaud is in the center at the back of the group.

The Chinese Group.
I didn't have a good shot of the whole group so here are some individual shots of some of the group.

I will have stories to share and more photos and hopefully I will have the time to share them soon!

New Computers

New computers bring cool new toys to play with. My new version of Microsoft Office (I think it is Word 2007)has registered my blog information and will automatically post to my blog from a template in Word. My new version of Microsoft Outlook even picks up my RSS Feeds on the blogs I watch and automatically sends the posts (with pictures) to me as an email. They are making it way too easy for me to keep track of everything!!! I love this, (or at least I will if this really posts J).