So Much To Be Thankful For

We celebrate thanksgiving twice. Once the Sunday before with our extended family and once with just my parents, grandfather, and siblings families. We begin by meeting at the cemetery to pay our respects to my Nonna, Nonno, and aunt who have passed away. We make a circle around the graves and say what we are thankful for. It is usually very emotional. This year Luca, my nephew, and my cousin's little girls decided to play in the grave blankets while we did our circle. They were pulling out the red berry sticks and "making a garden" by sticking them in the ground. Luca actually tried riding one of the grave blankets like a horse.... always the comedian. They were adorable. We know my grandparents would have loved it. Next, we all went to my parent's house for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. On Thanksgiving day we woke up, put one of our Christmas trees up and went to my parents house for dinner. We break from tradition this day and have a family favorite for dinner... flank steak. I have never eaten flank streak prepared the way we do in any restaurant. It is a very unusual recipe and one of my favorites! This year my brother brought his Guitar Hero game. It was a blast. Totally addicting!!!! Luca treated us to some fancy footwork as we played. I hope Santa brings one to our house this year! We ended the night with a round of charades... yes, charades. We always play boys vs girls and usually there is some kind of fight that erupts at some point because the BOYS CHEAT. Flank steak and charades... we have our own way of doing Thanksgiving and I wouldn't have it any other way. I am the luckiest girl in the world and so thankful to have so many blessings in my life.

Charge!!!!!!

One of the greatest days of the year is only hours away... BLACK FRIDAY. Yes, I am one of those insane people who gets up at an insane hour to scour the mall for insane deals. I will let you know how it goes!

I do not venture into Best Buy, Target, or any of the large chain stores because I fear for my personal safety. Those shoppers take Black Friday to a whole nutha level.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

New Season of Project Runway

One of my favorite shows is back on after a VERY long break!!!!! It was so much fun to see Tim, Heidi, Michael, and the new gang of fab designers. I love the talent and creativity the contestants have as well as the DRAMA that always seems to unfold. I found this great spoof online....

7 Months

It has been seven months since our paperwork was logged in at China Center of Adoption Affairs. Time is a very strange thing. In some respects the past seven months have flown by.... well, in every respect except one. I think about time so differently now. I keep track of it constantly. How many months will we be logged in when I have my next haircut, dentist appointment, holiday, birthday, report card marking etc... those thoughts go through my head all the time.

Keeping Focused

It is really hard to keep positive, excited, and hopeful sometimes. Thankfully there are videos like these that remind me of what is on the other side of this horrible wait.

Referrals Are In

China referred 8 days this month. That is the most amount of days they have referred since we logged in in April... and not by much. So very very sad. There are now 494 days in front of us in line waiting for a referral. At this rate it will be another 5 years before we see our daughter's face. Ron and I realized that there is a chance we will have one child starting college and one starting Kindergarten the same year. My heart is breaking.

Halloween 2007