As I mentioned , I spent the last week on the road. I started out with a visit to my sister in DC. She just moved there and I am incredibly happy for her because she is so excited. In spite of the fact that I would never want to live in DC, she has been in love with the city ever since she spent a summer there during high school. She’s young and free and brave enough to pack up and actually do something about it. This is a picture from the window of her apartment and if you squint just right you can see the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building from her window. (Refer to my pointers for assistance - I promise they’re much more obvious in person!)

The only thing we had on the itinerary when I arrived was to try some Ethiopian food. DC has the largest Ethiopian population in the world outside of Ethiopia, so there are lots of choices. We decided on Etete (from the famed Samantha Brown “Ithiopia” episode). In spite of the way Laurel is holding her injera (as if it is a dirty diaper or something) even she - the former famously picky eater turned vegetarian - enjoyed her experience. I don’t know that I can say this is the best Ethiopian food in DC, as I’m neither an expert on Ethiopian food nor on DC dining, but they certainly had a lot of good press hanging on the walls and I thought it was quite tasty.

We had a really great time and I’m so glad I got to see her new home. I’m very proud of her. She’s super smart and I know what she does makes a big difference in the lives of the hundreds of teenagers she pours so much of herself into each and every school day. We’ve come a long way since the days of a not-so-nice big sister/pesky little sister relationship to a place where we are great friends!

After my long weekend in DC, I headed down to the University of Virginia - the business purpose of the trip that provided me a free visit with my sister. I am so glad that my company has provided me with some really fantastic learning opportunities over the years. I must say that last week was one of the best. I spent three days in class at the Darden School of Business at UVA learning very practical stuff on a beautiful campus under the instruction of some wicked smart professors in the midst of a very impressive collection of classmates. It was a fantastic week.

As I mentioned, the UVA campus (or grounds as they like to call it) is beautiful. In fact, the entire town of Charlottesville is beautiful. Not only is it framed by the Blue Ridge mountains, but it has that whole Jeffersonian thing going. Everything on the campus has “the look” - red brick, dark shutters, white columns, etc. (Jefferson did design the main campus, after all). I had a few hours between the end of my class and when my flight left so I made a mad dash to Monticello. I only wish I had more time to wander around - it was a pretty frantic trip up and back down the mountain. As I was looking through my pictures, I was struck by just how similar the Jefferson estate and the campus are in their aesthetic:

Monticello

Darden Grounds

Monticello

UVA Main Grounds

My fortune…

Fortune Cookie
Originally uploaded by Sutanto

From today’s Chinese take-out:

“A small lucky package is on its way to you soon”.

Much more interesting than anything Confucius has ever told me.

One!

Sorry for my long absence - I have much bloggy business to attend to! I have been traveling for the last week and had a wonderful time visiting my sister and learning lots of good stuff at a management class for work. I have pictures to share and will do so as soon as I have the pictures and my blog both available at the same time. Also, Emily was kind enough to bestow a blog award upon me that I must pass on and I am quite late in doing that. I’ll get around to all of that very soon!

1  Originally uploaded by Leo Reynolds

BUT first, there is adoption-related blogging to attend to. I just realized that we have officially passed the first monthly marker in our wait for a referral and I feel a need to note the passing our wait time in some way. I guess to me it seems kind of strange to celebrate monthly markers when we don’t really know where the end is? Know what I mean? There has been little movement (actually no movement) in our agency’s wait list during the time we have been on it, but we have been reassured that all is well and we remain very confident in our agency. Anyway, I’m simply writing to say - one down - who knows how many to go.

A Midsummer Night

I’m not sure if August is technically mid-summer - perhaps it’s actually late summer. Regardless of what point of the summer we are officially in, we’re having some unbelievable weather for August in the Midwest. The temperatures have been in the 80’s - which is about, oh, 20 degrees lower than usual. Tonight - in between Olympic events, of course - we loaded Dolly up and headed for one of the most popular summer traditions in our town - Pineapple Whip. I must admit I’m not a huge fan of the actual Pineapple Whip because it’s a bit of an enigma of a frozen treat - not quite ice cream, not quite sherbet - but I do love the Pineapple Whip cart. It’s this great retro looking trailer with a grass-skirted girl on top who actually hula dances. The Pineapple Whip girl is typically the first sign of summer here in our town. I’m always so excited to see her appear and sad to see her go - she makes me smile.  And then there’s this girl - she makes me smile all year long.

A Little Housekeeping

So, I’ve found something to satisfy my need for progress and my desire to check things off a list during our wait for a referral. I started putting together a plan to address how I’m going to combine our guest room and our office (which if I’m really being honest is nothing more than a junk room) into one room to make room for a nursery. Here’s a glimpse of what this “junk” room looks like right now - not something I’m proud of and a room that most visitors to my house would never lay eyes on. Why I’m sharing it with the internet, I really don’t know - perhaps to illustrate the magnitude of the task at hand.

Well, somehow, before I knew it my “make room for baby” task had turned into a rather comprehensive plan to update our house. I love our house, but parts of it still scream 1991. So, I drew up a list of everything I wanted to do - which includes minor remodeling to both of our bathrooms, new light fixtures in several rooms, new hardware on the cabinets, and redecorating the office/guest room - showed it to Matt, and he promptly curled up into the fetal position. I think he’s coming around, however, because I got him to do this over the weekend (and just for the record - that fan is coming down, not going up):

AND he just informed he managed to score granite tops for our bathroom vanities from a granite guy that rents some space from him. I’m so excited - that wasn’t even in my plan! And cheap granite - who wouldn’t love that?! He’s also been researching the possibility of cork floors in the bathroom. I had no idea you could cover your floor with cork, but apparently you can and it’s a very eco-friendly material. Anyone have any experience with this?

So, there you have it - one of my deepest, darkest housekeeping secrets and my new plan to maintain my sanity during this holding pattern period of our life.

Is it just me?

I’ve always been a bit envious of Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel. Her job consists of traveling to the most exciting places in the world, staying in the most fabulous hotels, and eating at all the fancy restaurants. This week she was in D.C. and visited an Ethiopian restaurant. I was particularly intereseted in this segment because I’m going to be in D.C. visiting my sister in just over a week and Laurel and I are going to get our first taste of real Ethiopian food. So exciting!! However every time Samantha mentioned the name of the country, it was “Ithiopia”, not Ethiopia. (See video here). Huh? Is that how you really say it? Have I been wrong all this time? Given that we will have an Ethiopian - um, Ithiopian? - child in just a few months perhaps I should figure out if I am the ignorant one here or if this is the equivalent of the annoying and uppity way Martha Stewart says “herbs”. So, what do you guys think?

Two Great Books

I’ve finished a couple of great books in the last week - both of which I would most definitely recommend.

The first is one of those books that probably every family adopting from Ethiopia has read. And if they haven’t, I think they probably should. This book provides a very high-level look at Ethiopian history, but mostly focuses on the current AIDS and orphan crisis in this country. This is big stuff and something I don’t know that we really hear enough about outside the occasional Bono-organized charity event. So even if you have nothing to do with Ethiopia or adoption, I think it’s a good read and will give you some great food for thought - I know it did me. To be perfectly honest, there were many times that I wanted to put this book down and pick up some chick-lit just to get my mind off how heavy some of the subject matter is. I actually cried more than once - I never cry when I read. Since I just realized I’ve said a half dozen things that might scare you away from this book, I should say that there are also there are lots of positive things in this book too and it is more than anything a very moving story about a woman who took action to fight this crisis when others wanted to pretend that it wasn’t happening.

The second is a book given to me by my dad. This one is a much easier read than the first, but every bit as touching. It is the story of a wealthy Texan couple that takes on a work with the homeless in Fort Worth. It is co-written by a snooty-patooty Texas art dealer (who I really didn’t like much at the start of the story) and the homeless former crimial that became one of his closest friends. What starts out as your typical “service project” - serving soup one day a week to the homeless - turns into a life-altering experience in which they befriend those members of their community that most people that move in their social circle would cross the street to avoid. And it’s not just a superficial, done out of obligation type of friendship, it’s a real friendship. And it is so moving. Not only because it is a story of how love can change the life of someone who considers themselves unlovable, but also because it is the story of how stepping outside of your comfort zone to love and care for other people as Jesus did is life-changing for everyone involved. Both of these books leave you with lots to think about!

I think there’s something wrong with me…

Warning - I think what I’m about to write may make me sound really sick and twisted. I think I miss the paperwork phase of this adoption process. Crazy, I know. I have a few Type A personality tendencies, so I really am at my best when I’m working towards a goal, have my eye on the prize, and am under a good amount of pressure. I really love feeling like I’m making progress. As maddening as all of that paperwork was, I always felt like I was accomplishing something. There was a definite plan of action and a definite endpoint. So now this whole waiting thing - I’m not very good at it. It has nothing to do with patience, however, but has everything to do with control. With the home study and dossier, for the most part I was in control. While waiting for referral I basically have no control. Sounds like a great opportunity for growth, eh? I’m counting on God to teach me big lessons about surrendering control, taking time to be still, and resting in his promises that will stick with me for the rest of my life. And of course, I’m also working on a plan of what all I need to accomplish in the meantime.

Don’t try this at home…

Unless you’ve allowed three hours to cook dinner. We had our first taste of Ethiopian food this evening. Unfortunately, our quaint midwestern city does not have an Ethiopian restaurant, so we were on our own. A couple of months ago, my sister gave us The Soul of a New Cuisine by Marcus Samuelson (a fancy-schmancy NYC chef and Ethiopian adoptee). This book includes recipes from all types of African cuisine and it is absolutely gorgeous. Even if you don’t cook, it would make a beautiful coffee table book.

On the menu tonight - Injera, Lentil Stew, and Doro Wett (or Wat (Chicken Stew). The results were absolutely delicious (if I do say so myself) but the process was rather labor-intensive. Before we even started cooking, we had to make the spice mixture (Berbere) used in both dishes as well as a spiced butter used in the Doro Wett. Matt even tried his hand at Injera, which I’ve read is practically an art form. Injera is a flatbread made from Teff flour, and you might call it the Ethiopian equivilant of the Mexican tortilla. It is a staple in the Ethiopian diet. The recipe in our cookbook is probably quite simplified - real Injera is made with a starter, similar to sourdough bread - but I think the texture was pretty close and the Injera was definitely yummy. Being that we have never actually had traditional Ethiopian food, we have no idea if what we made was anywhere close to “real” Ethiopian food, but we certainly enjoyed it. Here’s our first Ethiopian dinner in pictures:

The whole house still smells great, but now the fun is over and the dishwashing begins….hopefully we finish before dawn!!

Farm Fresh

This is the first year for our local Community Supported Agriculture program. The basic concept of a CSA is that you buy a share in a local farm and then receive a portion of the harvest on a weekly basis. We were so excited when we first heard about this farm and put our name on the list immediately. Because of a small oversight on our part (we never actually paid for our membership) it turns out we weren’t really on the list after all and the farm was completely sold out for the year. I was so disappointed but am hoping that either the farm will expand next year or someone will drop out and we can join. Anyways, some friends of ours are members of the CSA. They were out of town this week and were kind enough to share their bounty with us (thanks Jon & Kim!!). We picked up this basket full of good stuff - herbs, potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, apples, peppers - on Wednesday and have been enjoying it ever since. I’m more convinced than ever that the CSA concept is fantastic and that I want to be on board.

Unfortunately our own garden has been a bit disappointing. This is our harvest for this week and I’m sad to say that there doesn’t appear to be much else on the way. In spite of the scrawniness, everything that’s come out of our garden has been delicious. There are likely a number of factors that led to poor performance of our plants - some gardener error and some completely out of our control. Better luck next year, I suppose.