Just Another Flamingo On The Lawn

TUSAL and IHSW

2012-01-23T18:51:00.003-05:00

So today will be the collision of two SAL's- TUSAL and IHSW. Click the links to find out about either if you haven't heard of them. This is going to be a quick post because I've got to get going on my grocery list for tomorrow morning. I'm going to be making a huge pot of spaghetti and homemade meatballs on Thursday for my brother's birthday dinner. That and I'd like to get a little stitching in tonight too:)

So here we go...

Sorry about the blurry pic, camera was not behaving tonight. I emptied my ort cup on January 1 so these are all 2012 orts. Hopefully you can see the pinks of Titania slowly being covered up by the whites and beiges of my newest start, Sleeping Baby.

Yes, I know I said I was going to try to finish some things and here I go starting them already but this is one of those things that really can't wait. I started this on Friday for International Hermit and Stitch Weekend and got pretty far for me. This is a kit from Vervaco, Sleeping Baby and it will be for my cousin's baby. Hopefully they'll delay his baptism long enough for me to finish it:) I wasn't so sure about the fabric at first but I'm really liking it so far.

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend

2012-01-20T19:01:00.003-05:00

So I bent to the peer pressure and joined another SAL. This one is hosted by Joysze the 3rd full weekend of every month and the goal is to put as many stitches in as possible. I would probably be stitching this anyway since we're supposed to get 5-7 inches of snow tonight and it's my weekend off anyway so why not, right? Signups and rules are here, now to go figure out what I'm stitching on tonight after Josh goes to bed. My plan is to have a stitching/Lost marathon tonight while Erich paints. Potential projects are Titania and the birth announcement kit that finally arrived today. Who will win? Not sure yet, tune in Monday-ish to find out.

Titania and some new stash

2012-01-19T10:41:00.002-05:00

Thanks for all the WIPocalypse comments and birthday wishes over the last few posts. In answer to the question about my stitching rotation, I don't have a set rotation. If anything it is more of a screaming rotation- whatever looks most appealing usually wins until I get bored with it or until obligation stitching comes up. Right now Titania has been interesting to stitch but I will put her down soon to start Mason's birth announcement. Still waiting on the kit to arrive but I got some replacement fabric for the Aida in the kit when I made a trip to the LNS yesterday to spend my Christmas/birthday money. Here's the haul...

In addition to the birth announcement fabric I got fabric for TW's Fantasy Triptych. That gives me one more fully kitted project so I will add it to my WIPocalypse list as a potential new start. The rest of my haul includes Christmas Favorites by The Prairie Schooler, Ornaments Ala Round by Glendon Place, Winter Box by The Victoria Sampler, a few Sue Hillis pirate sayings, and all 3 of the Magi by Mill Hill.

Oh, and before I forget to post it...

Thought you might like to see the latest progress on Titania. She's getting so close, mostly just her wings and the beading left now.

Not much else going on around here except a lot of winter weather and of course the ongoing potty training battle which I think has just about been won. The beginning of last week was rough but I think Josh has pretty much caught on and is happy to wear his big boy pants. What will we do with all that extra diaper money? :)

The non-stitchy news

2012-01-12T22:04:00.002-05:00

Didn't want to throw all this into the WIPocalypse post as it really doesn't have that much to do with it but we've had all kinds of other things going over the last several days.

First of all, thanks for all the comments on my WIPocalypse stitching and welcome to all the new followers. It's always nice to know that someone out there is reading and I promise I will get over to all of your blogs soon.

We have had a new addition to the family. My cousin (Luke's Mom) had a baby boy on Saturday night, Mason Oliver. Mom and baby and big brother Luke are all doing fine so far. We went to the hospital to see them on Sunday. Josh was quite interested in the baby and did a very good job of being gentle. I asked him if he wanted a baby like that at his house and he said "Sure!" Let's hope he's that enthusiastic when his own baby brother comes home.

You may remember the jungle birth announcement I stitched for Luke a few years ago. I wanted to do something for Mason too but have had the hardest time deciding until now. I finally ordered a Vervaco kit which will hopefully arrive soon. I know this will throw my WIPocalypse plans off for awhile but I knew I was going to do it and I would like to have this done by baptism time if possible. A lot will depend on how fast it arrives and how fast I can make it to the LNS because there is no way I'm stitching on the Aida in the kit.

Anyway, Sunday was also my birthday. We wondered for awhile if Mason might be sharing my birthday which is also my grandparents' (his great grandparents') anniversary but he arrived just in time to be a Jan 7 birthday instead. Anyway, in addition to getting to hold that cutie on my birthday I also got some lovely things from my family. A few gift cards, some Starbucks cocoa mix, a panini sandwich grill, and dinner out with my family. My choice was Hacienda for the awesome chocolate frosted birthday cake. I did have to endure singing and a sombrero to get it but it was worth it, well worth it. I think my teenage brother thought the sombrero and singing were payback for when I did it to him (twice!) but honestly, not that embarassing. It was much more fun to keep the sombrero on afterward and torture him as it was completely uncool. Oh well, I was an uncool adult to start with, might as well be really uncool and embarassing. Josh, on the other hand, thought the sombrero was the coolest thing ever.

And finally, and I'm sure completely coincidentally but I still consider it an excellent birthday gift, Downton Abbey started showing on PBS Sunday night. If you haven't seen it- World War I era British costume drama, very dramatic, very well done. Now I know that it has already aired in other parts of the world but us poor Americans have been waiting very impatiently for the second series until now. I completely missed this show when the original series aired the first time and actually caught the uncut UK version on Netflix later after hearing about it on NPR but this time I'm watching it as it airs on US television. So far so good, the first two hours went by too quickly and I've already found myself wishing I could have waited a few weeks for the whole thing to come out on iTunes so I could just watch it all in one or two long viewings and not be left to wonder what happens next for a week at a time.

Josh has had a big week too. He finally made the leap from pull-ups to real big boy underwear. He's done really well, only a few accidents. He's very proud of his new undies and does not want anything to do with diapers so hopefully this will continue to be a relatively smooth transition. I'm just happy not to have to change diapers even if it is only temporary until the next kiddo comes along.

I think that's about it for excitement around here for now unless you count the snow warning we're under. They're predicting possibly a foot by tomorrow. Yuck. Kinda makes me wish I had one of those nonessential jobs that get snow days but pharmacies don't often get those. Oh well, better get to bed- I'm sure I'll have to be up extra early in the morning.

January WIPocalypse post

2012-01-09T20:02:00.003-05:00

First of all, I wanted to say thank you for all the compliments on my projects. I have loved working on all of them but I am ready to finally finish some of them off (Storyteller is almost old enough to go off to college itself now) so I can start some new things.

After I pulled out all my WIPs the other day to take new pictures of them, I decided I wasn't in the mood for over one stitching after all so I will actually have two projects to show progress on for this WIPocalypse SAL post. Still haven't heard about the WIPocalypse? It's a fun SAL Measi is hosting this year. The short story is we're stitching like the end of the world is near but you can find all the details here and signups are still open for a few more days.

So 9 days into January and here are my before/after pics of QS Pegasus and Castle Bubble...

And Titania...

Pretty good for a week's work, at least for me. Hopefully there will be a better showing next round when we've all had more time. I have more to share but will put it in another post tomorrow.

Pre-WIPocalypse pics

2012-01-05T22:19:00.007-05:00

As the first full moon of 2012 draws near, I thought it might be a good idea to get my "Before" pictures posted for the WIPocalypse so I can focus on progress during the actual SAL post. I double checked the WIPs vs the pics in Webshots and updated those that needed it so these were all accurate as of January 1, 2012 and are still so except for the QS Pegasus and Castle Bubble pic which is the first and only WIP I've chosen to work on since the first of the year.

First up, Nativity by TW. I started this one in college and had one problem after another-didn't like the fabric, over one on said fabric was a pain, border was a pain, didn't like the coverage of the gold specialty thread. Looking at it now, it's so close to being done and the gold thread I wasn't fond of before really isn't that bad. I think I'm just going to finish it off with the recommended thread and be done with it already, it really is a beautiful piece.

Polar Lights Sampler by Chatelaine- This one I received as a RAK a few years ago and have worked on it many times, just never finished. I really like the colors and fabric I chose, just haven't had the urge to finish it off.

The Witch's Pantry by Lisa Cowell-Looks like I started this one back in 2006, not sure why it never got finished. I think it was one of the first pieces I really used hand-dyed threads on and wasn't particularly happy with some of the results but it is a cute piece and I do want it finished so in the pile it goes. Oh, and the fabric really is black, it was just sitting on a lighter colored surface for the pic.

Titania by Mirabilia-Another one that's a few years old and pretty far along, I believe this one of my first attempts at using hand-dyed fabric. I really like the Silkweaver I chose for it but I kind of wish I'd placed it a bit better on the fabric so more of the color change would show up in the background. Oh well, she does pop on the blue/grey fabric so I'm still pretty happy with her.

QS Pegasus and Castle Bubble by HAED/Josephine Wall- One of the first HAED projects I attempted and one of my tryout pieces for fabric count. The one is on 25ct and I wasn't fond of the coverage at first or the confetti and it just got set aside for other more interesting projects. I've been working on it since the beginning of the year now though so I'm anxious to show my progress come the 9th.

Dragon Moon by HAED/Lisa Victoria- Started it, got interested in other things. I plan to work on it this year but I know it's probably not reasonable to expect to finish.

Skeleton Crew by Crossed Eyed Cricket-Another one so close to being finished! Probably would have this finished if I hadn't gotten hung up on the color of the moon. The recommended color looks so green to me but I think I'm going to try it out with the rest of the piece and see how the finished piece looks. Guess I can always frog it if I have to.

Fish City by Stoney Creek- Started right after I finished Noah's Sub, guess I was in the mood for another big project and was feeling pretty ambitious too as I wanted to change some of the colors and fishes in this one to make it a little more colorful. I still do and want to make progress but probably not finish this year.

Garden of Wishes by HAED/Molly Harrison- Again, want to make progress but not necessarily finish in 2012.

Watergarden by Chatelaine-There's a spot on a wall begging for this, it's definitely one I want to finish in 2012.

Celtic Cross by TW- I don't usually include smalls in my WIP list but seeing as this is a TW, it's no ordinary small and it needs to get finished too. It would be nice to actually have an ornament on my tree that I stitched myself.

The Storyteller by TW- The oldest WIP on my list was started in high school, at least 15 years ago. It got put aside because I got bored with the border and got busy with school and life. I would love to finish and frame it.

And I think that's it for now. Everything else on the list hasn't been started yet so no pics there. I'm hoping to get about 6 HD's out of this list in 2012 but anything knocked off the list is progress. We'll see how cooperative life is this year.

2012 Goals

2012-01-04T13:33:00.001-05:00

So I talked a little about my SAL plans for 2012 but didn't really look at actual goals. I found my list from last year, here's how I did...

2011's goals

-Stitch and frame L&L's Celtic Autumn for my grandmother
-Kill at least 2 WIP's in my pile- finished Flamingo and Hydrangea Pillow
-Start HAED Dragon Master and complete at least 1 full page
-Complete another full page of Dragon Moon
-Use a new finishing technique on ornaments
-Frame Santa's Magic

1 out of 6 isn't the greatest but I did have 16 finishes last year including Celtic Autumn (just haven't gotten around to framing it yet) so that's got to count for something, right?

Goals for this year will not be ambitious, I remember the year we brought Josh home and expect that we'll be in for a wild ride this time around as well. Sorry I haven't shared much detail this time around, there just hasn't been that much to share. We're currently waiting for region assignment and a referral which could happen anytime between now and the fall according to current estimates. I promise I'll let you know whatever I can share as soon as I know though.

But back to goals I think I can accomplish in 2012...

-Make all TUSAL posts

-Make all WIPocalypse posts

-Finish at least 2 current WIPs

-Try a new finishing technique for ornaments

-Finish off the JBW I stitched in 2011 so they can be given as gifts

-Try to stick to 2 finishes for every new start

For the most part, I'm going to try to kill off some old WIPs and not make too many new starts to take their place. We'll see how it goes.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T17:14:00.001-05:00

Hope everyone that celebrated had a great time. We were pretty boring this year, brought dinner home and closed out the year watching DVD's/Netflix and stitching/painting. I got a few last stitches in on Watergarden and Erich worked on a model tank he found recently.

Lots going on in 2012 for us with our pending adoption so not sure how that will affect everyone's hobbies yet but I'm going to try to get in as much as I can before life starts to get exciting around here again. I'm planning on participating in the both the TUSAL and WIPocalypse 2012 so that should keep the posts coming this year in any case. I have added a WIPocalypse list page to my blog to help me keep track of my progress. I'm going to attempt to kill off some of my older WIPs this year so we'll see how much self control I have once I have birthday money to spend on stash. No promises, but I'll try to be kind of good.

Before I start my 2012 stitching, let's take one last look at Watergarden as I left it on New Year's Eve night...

I'm happy with my progress on this one but I'd like to finish it in 2012 as well. There's an empty spot on the wall in our master bath that is calling for a picture.

Oh, and I got one last picture of my ort cup before I emptied it out for the new year.

I know my cup is a little hard to see inside of so I took out my orts for a pic too. I love how I can see the layers of projects- Hydrangea Pillow, Celtic Autumn, JBW stockings and Watergarden. I'm sure there are more in there but those are the main ones. I think this is the most orts I've ever collected in a single year, here's hoping for an even better 2012! Poor cup looks kind of empty and lonely now but I'm going to try to start filling it up again tonight.

Last TUSAL for 2011

2011-12-28T11:52:00.004-05:00

I know I'm really late on this one but Christmas and work have kept me pretty busy the past few days. I did get to use my parents' gift to our family for this post though- a new digital camera. Our old one has been misbehaving quite a bit the last few months, mostly the lens doesn't want to extend when it is turned on so it errors and won't take pictures. It's been taking a dozen or more tries turning it on to get it to work lately. I'm sure the poor thing is just worn out. We've had it over 5 years and it has had quite a workout with Josh and our 3 trips to Russia plus all the other trips we've taken and all the stitchy pics too. We were planning on replacing it sometime before the next trip to Russia but now we don't have to thanks to my parents. Only had a chance to play with it a little so far but I can tell already it is much nicer than the old one!

Anyway, I do have one last TUSAL pic for the year...

As you can see, the orts on top are mostly green with a few gold ones underneath. They're all from Watergarden which is coming along nicely. I'm done with the gate and fence on the left side and have moved on to filling in the pond in the upper left corner. I'll get a picture up in a few days when I do my first WIPocalypse post. I'll probably do one more pic of my ort jar too before I empty it out on Sunday.

In case you're not familiar with these SALs, the Totally Useless Stitchalong is hosted by Daffycat and is just a fun way to show everyone what you've been stitching by showing off your ort collection every new moon. The WIPocalypse Stitchalong is hosted by Measi and is starting 1/1/12. It started with the question if the world were really ending next December, what would you be sorry you hadn't stitched? As far as I know both SALs are open to everyone so check them out if you haven't already.

2011-12-27T11:22:00.004-05:00

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! It was a busy couple of days but I think everyone had a great time. We started the weekend with Josh's Christmas program at daycare.

The kids were absolutely adorable and we were very proud of Josh- he made it past us without crying to sit with Mommy and Daddy when they walked in, he sat pretty well through the singing, and he sang some of the songs too:) Pretty good for a first time performer!

Christmas Eve and Day were kind of a blur but we did manage to snap a few pics during Christmas morning presents...

The first is probably my favorite, I love that big "Cheese!" smile we get out of Josh when he's in the mood. He was very happy with his presents and is still discovering new things he forgot he received in the frenzy of gift opening. As you can see, Santa brought a tool bench this year so I'm sure my little handyman will be fixing many things for me in the coming year.

Santa was pretty good to me too this year and brought some things I had asked for like gift cards and chocolates and one big surprise in the form of some lovely diamond stud earrings. Definitely unexpected but appreciated and they haven't left my ears yet:)

Christmas is probably my favorite holiday out of the year, not so much because of the presents but it is the one holiday that we don't run around like crazy people to multiple different family events. Especially since we've had Josh, our policy has been to stay home on Christmas Day so that we can have some time to enjoy the holiday and Josh can have fun with his new presents. It means we host the holiday dinner but the work is worth the end result even if I did overcook just a bit this year. Oh well, guess that means I don't have to cook this week and I can catch up on all the other stuff I've been neglecting like stitching and playing with Josh and his new toys:)

Oh, and I haven't forgotten the last TUSAL post of the year, just haven't had time to get the picture taken yet. I will try to get that up tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T12:33:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to stop by before things get crazy and wish everyone getting ready to celebrate a very Merry Christmas. Be back next week with pictures of our celebration

2011-12-15T09:52:00.004-05:00

I know it's been awhile, meant to get back here sooner but the preparations for Christmas at my house are in full swing so it's just been a little busy. I've been shopping, wrapping, decorating and baking and can happily say that some baking is all I have left to do until it is time to start cleaning and cooking for Christmas Day. Thankfully I have a few days off next week so that should all go smoothly.

In the interest of keeping my sanity this holiday season I decided not to push myself to finish all my ornaments, I think it just would have been too much with everything else going on. I did manage to finish the stitching of 8 JBW stockings which will likely be finished off and given as gifts next year. Here are the last of them...

That's Christmas Trees, Reindeer and Scandinavian Stocking by JBW Designs. I ended up going with Buckeye Scarlet from GAST for Christmas Trees and Scandinavian Stocking after I ran out of Ribbon Red and I am happy with the results.

I've also gone back to working on Watergarden which I am still loving and hoping to finish in 2012.

Not much else excitement around here except of course the anticipation of Santa's arrival. Josh is really excited about Christmas this year. It has been so much fun to see the magic of Christmas through his eyes. I love that his daycare does holiday things too. He's been practicing hard for his Christmas program next week and just today he brought home the cutest ornament...

It looks like they put the kids' handprints on the bottom of the ornament and then decorated the fingers as snowmen. We made sure to hang in front and center on the tree.

The WIPocalypse is coming

2011-11-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy few days with our late Thanksgiving celebration (pie was excellent, recipe coming soon!), work and an annoying hand injury that showed up yesterday and is keeping me from stitching at the moment. Instead I've been spending my free time Christmas shopping, thinking about stitching and playing Ninja Fishing on my phone and not necessarily in that order. I am embarassed to admit exactly how much Ninja Fishing I've been doing so I won't. Despite my new addiction, I have managed to cross a few more names off my Christmas shopping list and Josh and I whipped up a huge batch of vegetable soup this afternoon. I'd share the recipe but there really isn't one unless you count this- it's usually whatever beef roast is on sale, V8, some beef broth, handful of dry rice, handful of barley, and whatever vegetables I can find in my fridge/freezer.

That pot made for dinner tonight plus 5 freezer containers, enough to share with Grandpa and Dad (who both love any kind of soup), and a large bowl for us to eat out of for the next few days. I love that stock pot, it was one of the best wedding presents we got. I use it to make big pots of soups, spaghetti sauce, and chili to freeze for quick dinners since cooking time is quite often short in our house.

Even though I haven't been stitching I've been thinking about it, particularly of the work I've got to do to get some WIPs out of my basket. I did decide to join Measi's WIPocalypse SAL for 2012. I've been trying to clear my basket for a few years and have had some success in finishing off old WIPs but new ones always seem to take their place so I've been stuck with a WIP basket of about a dozen for a few years running. I know that seems small in comparison to some but it really is more than I want to keep around especially with one young child (and pretty soon two) running around.

So in the interest of shortening up my WIP list I'm going to attempt to finish two projects before I allow myself a new start. Two exceptions to that rule will be Christmas ornaments to be given as 2012 gifts and an undecided Donna Giampa JCS pillow that I'd like to take on our trip 2 to Russia to finalize this second adoption if that comes in 2012. In addition to the 2 finishes before a new start rule, I'd also like to try to keep my new starts limited to projects I've already got kitted up and ready to go since we probably should be saving money both for adoption travel and for the unpaid leave from work after our new child comes home. I know that's a little more restrictive than Measi's official rules and I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't quite stick to it but I'd like to try and put a dent in my list.

I've come up with a tentative list of WIPs for next year which may change by next month depending on what I find digging around in my stash...

~Nativity by TW

~Polar Lights Sampler by Chatelaine

~The Witch's Pantry by Lisa Cowell

~Titania by Mirabilia

~QS Pegasus and Castle Bubble by HAED/Josephine Wall

~Dragon Moon by HAED/Lisa Victoria

~Skeleton Crew by Crossed Eyed Cricket

~Fish City by Stoney Creek

~Garden of Wishes by HAED/Molly Harrison

~Watergarden by Chatelaine

~Celtic Cross by TW

~The Storyteller by TW

~Dragon Master by HAED/Myles Pinkney (not started)

~Church Window by Michael Powell (not started)

~Christmas Village Toy Shop by Mill Hill (not started)

~Pretty Pumpkins by Glendon Place (not started)

~Frosty Woodland Pillow by Donna Giampa (not started)

~Holly and Berries by Kandace Thomas (not started)

The ones at the bottom that I have not yet started are the projects I intend to start as I finish other WIPs off. They are completely kitted and ready to go. At the end of the year I'm hoping to have a shorter list and if I do well enough I'd like to reward myself with starting Chatelaine's White Nights in St. Petersburg, another reason to try to save some money if you've seen the materials list I had forgotten about the design until I was over on the Chatelaine bulletin board recently looking at Watergarden pics and found it again. We haven't been to St. Petersburg in particular yet but the design seems a perfect fit for the big blank spot on my living room wall.

November TUSAL

2011-11-26T14:34:00.005-05:00

A little late but I lost my list of dates and didn't see everyone posting TUSAL until late last night so better late than never...

As you can see I've got a bunch of red orts this round with Watergarden orts peeking out from underneath. I'm almost done with my series of JBW red stockings now, 5 completely done, 1 about half done, and 2 more to stitch. I'm almost out of Ribbon Red though, so I'll have to find a substitute after I finish this one. Surely I have some red thread somewhere in my collection:) Here are the two new finishes since last post, Hearts and Chalet With Snowflakes...

I decided to stitch the hearts instead of the background in the Hearts design because I didn't think I'd like the coverage of the red over such a large area. Just Reindeer left to finish now and then I'll pick two of the stockings to do over to get the amount I need for gifts this year.

Oh, and have you seen the WIPocalypse SAL Measi is hosting next year? Sounds like a good way to kill off some WIPs which is definitely something I need to do and it will be an encouragement to blog too.

I should probably get back to cleaning my kitchen now. I've been busy today getting ready for tomorrow, which is my family's Thanksgiving dinner. My parents and my Dad's side of the family decided to postpone our dinner so everyone could attend and not be rushed to go to other places so today I did the prep work to make stuffing tomorrow and I baked this...

It's an upside down apple pie with a pecan topping. If it tastes half as good as it looks and smells I'll share the recipe. I found it in my recipes-to-try folder when I was looking for something else a couple weeks ago and it just begged to be baked. It looks complicated but was pretty easy. Waxed paper lined the pie plate and the pecans were on the bottom originally with a pretty normal looking apple pie recipe on top. It got flipped after baking and the pecan topping is slowly dripping down the sides of the pie as it cools. Can't wait to cut it tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T05:00:00.003-05:00

A very Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today! I will be celebrating by working unfortunately but only until 3pm so I should still get to our family's get together before the food gets too cold. We should get a few hours of family time together before Erich has to go to bed as he is one of the poor folks who has to work at 4am tomorrow. Gotta love retail! But seriously, we have a lot ot be thankful for this year- family, health, jobs and a new little one on the way eventually. Life is pretty good right now.

Christmas Ornaments

2011-11-23T17:19:00.004-05:00

In an effort to get back to Watergarden before the end of the year, I've been stitching on Christmas ornaments for the past week. I've chosen the JBW Red Stockings thanks to Dani's pics from last year and am doing them on 28 ct evenweave over 2 with Crescent Colours Red Ribbon. So far I've finished Leaves and Vines...

Christmas Trees...

And finally (for now at least) Scandinavian Stocking...

So that's 3 down and I think about 5 more to go. The stitching's the easy part, the finishing has me a little nervous because of the rounded edges of stockings but I'm going to try to find a nice template to help out with that since I'll be finishing by hand. Finishing square or rectangular ornaments is so much easier but every year for the past few I've tried to challenge myself in the finishing department so we'll see what happens.

Not much else going on in our house for the moment. Josh is officially 3 years old now and just had his pictures done today. I wish I could share because the photographer did get some cute shots but I'm sure copyright forbids that so you'll have to take my word for it. Other than that we're getting ready for the holiday weekend which unfortunately includes work for both Erich and I, the downside of working retail.

Watergarden and a birthday party

2011-11-17T10:40:00.002-05:00

There was cake...

There were presents...

It was a party!

Everyone had a great time especially the kids after we got all the new toys out. The favorite seemed to be the microphone stand that my aunt bought Josh. It not only amplifies but also has a cool strobe light on the front and has buttons for applause and music. Thank you very much and we will thank you again at Christmas with an appropriately obnoxious gift for your grandson:) But seriously, the kids thought it was great and we were treated to a free concert that included such hits as the ABC song and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Now if we can only convince Josh that it is not necessary to put the mic in his mouth while he sings we'll have a rock star in the making.

But wait, there's more! Josh's actual birthday isn't until tomorrow and he still hasn't gotten any presents from us or his grandparents so we're going to have pizza night (one of Josh's favorites) tomorrow night and more presents. Oh, and cupcakes too. We're treating daycare to cupcakes tomorrow and I have some leftover so we'll blow out candles on a cupcake tomorrow night since we had cake over the weekend. Should be a good time with lots of assembling for the parents.

But wait, there's still more! I've actually had time to stitch over the last few weeks even though I haven't gotten any pictures up. It's been all Watergarden all the time over here and I've made some good progress.

The colors are just a bit washed out from the flash but pretty close. I'm pretty excited to actually have the center portion done and have been slowly working on the left side. It seems to be stitching up pretty fast but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pack it up for a few weeks so I can finish my Christmas ornaments for the year. I don't really want to but if I don't put it away now no one will be getting an ornament this year!

Oh, and one last thing- if you haven't yet, you can still sign up for the 2012 TUSAL over on Daffycat's blog. It was so much fun this year that I've already signed up though I need to make a better effort to actually get my pics up on the new moon. Maybe I'll have to add it to the sidebar to remind me.

Halloween

2011-11-10T18:48:00.003-05:00

I know it's a little late but I do have some pictures from Halloween. Josh had a great time this year helping us carve pumpkins and going trick or treating in our neighborhood. I didn't think I'd ever get him out of the Buzz Lightyear costume, good thing it was a little big on him as we had to layer clothing. It was a little chilly for trick or treat this year but he still lasted an hour and a half before he was ready to give up and go eat candy.

Sorry about the quality on the pumpkin pictures, they are probably best viewed as thumbnails. The only ones I managed to get were on my cell phone so they're not great but better than nothing.

It's been a busy week around here as we're getting ready to have Joshua's birthday party this weekend. I can't believe he's almost 3, the time has gone so fast! We're going to have a Toy Story party complete with Buzz and Woody on his cake. I don't think he's realized that yet but I think he and his cousins will really like it. We will be sure to take pictures.

Speaking of pictures, if it wasn't dark when I got a chance I would have taken pictures of the snow we got today. Yes, I said it- snow. I know it's that time of year but the weather has been nice enough that it's been possible to forget that we're in fall and going toward winter. Oh well, at least I got the last of the outside work done this morning before it started.

A late TUSAL and some updates

2011-10-29T05:52:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been so long, we had a wonderful vacation and then life just went nuts. We all got sick with one virus or another, Erich had to go out of town for work, we had fingerprint appts for the adoption, Halloween is coming and on and on. I think we're returning to something resembling calm now for the moment at least. I'm currently on a little vacation from work which has been very nice. The new Winnie the Pooh movie came out this week so we had a little screening party complete with pizza. We drove out to Michigan City yesteray for Erich's fingerprint appt and spent a little time shopping. Santa bought a few presents and I even stopped at House of Stitches for a few treats.

Sorry for the sideways pic, Webshots apparently has decided not to play nice today, hopefully you can see the picture too but if not my big purchases were Spirit of Evergreen by Brook's Books and Biscornuments by Victoria Sampler. I was in a bit of a Christmas mood yesterday. I'm a sucker for biscornus and I've been looking at the Brook's Books designs recently, the Halloween one in JCS this year really hooked me. Now I just need some time to stitch!

Speaking of stitching, I have found some time over the last month. I spent my vacation stitching time on the Apothecary design from the Mill Hill Christmas Village series.

I'm hoping to stitch a bunch of these and display them during Christmas on our staircase. It seems a bit safer than putting out the actual Christmas village that I have, at least while there are little boys and a dog running around.

I've also made some progress on Watergarden which I am absolutely loving.

I wish you could see the sparkle in the fabric but it just doesn't get picked up in the pictures.

One more thing to share- I am terribly late on TUSAL but I do have a picture to post. There aren't as many orts as I'd like but I'm getting close to covering up all the pink from Flamingo.

That's about it for now. The boys are off to visit the new RC car store that opened up nearby and then we're going to carve pumpkins tonight and get ready for Halloween. We're starting a little early by going to see Josh's great grandparents tomorrow, then a big Halloween party at daycare Monday and trick or treating in the evening. Should be a good time!

September TUSAL

2011-09-27T22:56:00.005-04:00

Lots going on since last post. We've been busy doing last minute adoption paperwork and I'm happy to report that we got an email from our agency today stating that our dossier has been sent to Russia. Yay! It's nice to get to this point again, paperchasing is mostly over for the moment. Now we wait and sometime between now and next summer we'll get "the call" and be off halfway round the world again to meet our new child. It seems like everything is going faster this time but I think it's just that Josh is home with us now so there's less time to sit around and think about how long everything is taking.

We've also been busy getting ready for a family vacation. The three of us are taking off after work tomorrow and getting out of town for a long weekend. Not going too far, just a couple hours away. We're hoping to take Josh to a new zoo and to see a cool train exhibit we've heard about as well as get in some time for shopping and just relaxing.

Almost forgot that today is TUSAL day. I've been busy working away on the center of Chatelaine's Watergarden since I finished Flamingo but you can still see some of those pink orts peeking out from under all the blues...

And here's the Watergarden progress so far...

I'm planning to take it on vacation with us and hopefully get some good stitching time in while Josh naps. Or maybe I'll nap too, we'll see. Have a great rest of the week!

A Flamingo HD

2011-09-15T11:05:00.003-04:00

A HD at last and for a few reasons. First off, Flamingo is finally finished.

Sorry the photo is a little blurry, I really need to get this on the scanner but it's so much easier and quicker to snap a pic and pop the SD card into my laptop.

The backstitching seemed to take forever but the effect was well worth the effort. I'm very happy with the result, now I just have to decide what to do with it. The details- Flamingo by RK Portfolio. Stitched on 32ct Crossed Wing linen (can't tell you the color, I don't think they make it anymore and I never actually wrote it down but it is a hand-dyed pink and green mix). Started 8/19/07 and finished 9/14/11. It only took 4 years, that's not too bad, right?

The other bit of happiness from yesterday was that we finally got the last batch of dossier documents from our adoption agency so we shipped the whole pile down to Indy to get apostilled and with any luck it will be back to us next week so that we may ship it off to Russia. It seems strange to be at this point in an adoption again. The road to get here has been less bumpy this time (knock on wood!!) but maybe it's just that we know to expect the bumps and are a bit more relaxed when they happen. Could also be that we're busy being parents and don't have quite as much time to worry about every little paperwork hangup. Either way it seems to have come to this point rather quickly for me. I'm really excited to almost be at the point where we can start to think that any time now someone might call and say we're going to be parents again.

As a treat to myself last night for such a good day, I finally started Chatelaine's Watergarden. By the time we actually got Josh in bed and I got myself all organized there wasn't much time for stitching...

Not much to show and I'll get a better pic when there is but I'm stitching my first mandala on white opalescent 28ct lugana. I'm a hoop stitcher so I'm planning on doing the beading last as I usually do. We'll see how that goes, I know the Chatelaines can be heavy on the sparklies. I'm feeling a little under the weather today so planning to lay low and stitch.

More Flamingo

2011-09-07T21:02:00.000-04:00

So Josh's speedy recovery was not so speedy after all. After last post his fever continued for a few more days so we were treated to a second doctor's visit as well as some super fun bloodwork and other medical tests. Still don't know exactly what it was but Josh finally started really feeling better over the weekend. He was really starting to worry me, it's so good to see him back to himself again.

Since I had some extra time home last week I was able to sneak in some extra stitching time and am coming close to finishing the cross stitched portion of Flamingo.

This is really stitching up faster than I thought it would. The remaining feathers are really just two big blocks of color so they should go pretty quickly as well and then I'll be left with all the backstitching. I usually like to do that as I stitch but it seemed easier to leave it until last with this design. I'm definitely looking forward to another finish. I think it might even be worth a new start. I've got my eye on Chatelaine's Watergarden. I've had it kitted up for awhile now, just haven't gotten around to starting it. We'll see when I finally get around to a happy dance.But wait, my craft isn't the only one I have to show off today. Josh is becoming quite the artist. He's developed quite an interest in painting and coloring lately. We spent awhile this afternoon making leaf prints (and a few hand prints too) with some sponges I found at a craft store awhile back. He had a lot of fun and now we will have some new refrigerator art and some to give to his grandparents too.

That's about it for now. Still waiting on finalization of our homestudy so we can ship all our documents off. It seems like they're taking forever to finish up but I know the holiday weekend is probably slowing everything down. I'm sure we'll hear something soon.

2011-08-30T14:21:00.003-04:00

Thanks for the comments on Flamingo. It's been in the WIP bin for quite awhile now, started it on vacation a few years ago and just never got back to it. I'd really like to finish it off for my wall someday though.

I think Josh is feeling better but I'm glad I took off work today as he still had a litle bit of a fever this morning so daycare would have just sent him back home anyway. We've been taking it pretty easy, took a quick trip to the store to pick up a few things for dinner tonight and Josh saw some watercolor paints that were on sale so we bought them to play with later. I remember having the same kind when I was little, the ones in the plastic white tray that are solid and dry until you drip a little water onto them with the brush. I hope he likes them.

Our other big accomplishment for the day was to wash the sliding glass door and put up some fall gel clings.

Can you tell which ones Josh helped with? He has a thing about lining things up right now-cars, stickers, window clings. Must be a toddler thing, his cousin Luke has started doing it too.

Josh came out so dark in the first picture I took another one of him being silly on the floor. Wouldn't know he's sick if you didn't already know, Motrin is a wonderful thing. He definitely looks much better than yesterday and he's asking to eat so that's a good sign.

He discovered pockets a few weeks ago and thinks they are the greatest thing ever!

Off to enjoy a little unexpected free time and get some more feathers stitched while Josh finishes his nap. When he wakes up I'm sure he'll remind me that I promised we could paint this afternoon. We should have some new refrigerator art by tonight:)

TUSAL and a Flamingo update

2011-08-29T20:58:00.003-04:00

So I made my decision and Flamingo won. I was looking through Webshots and realized I've never posted a picture so I took one before I started...

And another one a few minutes ago...

It's been nice to switch from fall colors to bright pinks but I admit that the bright pink of the neck seemed never-ending for awhile. I like the different shades of pink in the feathers much better which leads me to this round of the TUSAL. I present my pink orts for your viewing pleasure...

In other news, we got the draft of our homestudy from the agency so we're one step closer to being able to send everything off. We're currently in the process of getting all the last minute revisions done so hopefully we can get that done this week and maybe get the final copies in the mail by next week or so. We'll see.

Not much else going on around here except that Josh got sent home sick from daycare today. Poor little guy. He went to the doctor this afternoon and they think it is just a virus so with some fluids and rest we hope he'll be back to his normal bouncy self soon. Just to be on the safe side I took tomorrow off to give him a bit more time to recover and rest.

Celtic Autumn HD

2011-08-20T18:17:00.003-04:00

I was hoping to finish this to present to my grandmother on her birthday but a day late isn't so bad. She was very happy with it when she saw the almost finished product so hopefully it will be even better finished. We had a very nice birthday cookout last night with the family and Josh got to play with his cousins and have a good time.

But on to the stitching...

The details- Celtic Autumn by Lavender and Lace. Started 1/1/11 and finished 8/20/11. Stitched on 32 count Mushroom Lugana with a color conversion provided by another stitcher, Kathy/Guymark. I followed her conversion for the threads but converted the Mill Hills to Mill Hill petites myself since the regular sized beads were too big for taste. As soon as I get a couple more paychecks we'll be heading off to the framer to get this framed.

So now I have a decision to make, new project or try to kill off another WIP? The two things calling to me most right now are the Mill Hill Christmas Village series and my WIP of Flamingo by RK Portfolio. Not sure which will win right now, the bright colors of Flamingo would be nice but I'm all about a quick finish too so we'll see what strikes me when Josh goes to bed tonight.

In other news we're getting pretty close to being able to submit our dossier to Russia. The main thing we're waiting on now is the finished homestudy along with a few other documents that can't be completed until the homestudy is dated. It's been all paperwork up to this point but I'm starting to get excited about getting to the end of this first part of the process. I can't wait to get that call again telling us that we have a referral for another child.

2011-08-10T15:23:00.004-04:00

What a busy start to August! I traded some hours with another pharmacist at work so I ended up working both of the last weekends. In return I'll have the next two off starting with this one so I'm definitely looking forward to that. Outside of work we've been busy gathering the last of our homestudy paperwork (finally got sent off yesterday, yay!) and starting on the dossier paperwork. Seems like we just did this not so long ago for Josh but at least this time we know what to expect.

I've also gotten a little time for stitching in. Celtic Autumn is almost done, just the beading left now but it'll have to wait a day or so until I can get to a shop to compare some colors. Since I used 32 count fabric, the regular Mill Hill beads don't fit as well so I'm going to sub petites as I did in Celtic Noel but not all the colors have a direct substitution so I want to go look at them in person before I decide for sure. I promise plenty of pictures as soon as the beading is done!

For now, how about the rest of the vacation pics?

We spent part of Saturday morning in downtown Kenosha so we visited the Kenosha Civil War Museum which Erich had never been to in all his trips there growing up so we all got to see something new. I don't know what I was expecting but it was actually very interesting. It was kind of a walk through the timeline of the war with quite a lot of interactive exhibits. One of the neatest but also creepiest at first were the mannequins dressed in period clothing that were scattered about the museum. Each would start a pretty one-sided conversation with you if you stood near them. It was a little strange at first but then became rather interesting as we found some of the same characters again and again throughout the exhibits and they would give updates on how they were faring over time.

We also got to visit Lake Michigan which was a first for Joshua. He seemed to like it. He definitely liked watching the boats going out into the lake and made friends with a few seagulls who were big fans of popcorn.

We talked about it all weekend but it took until the last night for us to finally make it down to the hotel pool which was also a hit with Josh.

He really seemed to like his little wetsuit. It did work a lot better than the old life jackets that I remember.

Last stop on our way out of town Sunday was Mars' Cheese Castle, a favorite of Erich's family for a long time. They've always had an awesome cheese and sausage selection as well as some really tasty baked goods but up until recently it was kind of a pain to go because of the combination of their small shop and popularity. They had been crammed into this building...

...but thanks to a highway expansion project they were forced to move a little farther back from the road and have built themselves an actual castle.

The funny thing is that even though the new building is much bigger it still seems a little crowded at times. Definitely worth the trip though, it just wouldn't be a trip to WI without some cheddar bread and cheese curds.

So that was vacation. I think we all had fun and my parents enjoyed getting to see where part of Erich's family is from. I don't know when we'll get the chance to take another one but Erich and I are hoping to get a long weekend off together to take Josh down to Indy sometime before the end of the year. We'll see what happens.

TUSAL and some stitching

2011-07-30T22:16:00.004-04:00

Let's take a short break from vacation posting for some TUSAL orts as it is that time once again.

Most of the orts in this round's offering belong to the ornaments I stitched on vacation. I finished two more of the Shepherd's Bush series that JCS published in the ornie issues from 2000-2007.

Three more to go and then I'm faced with the task of actually finishing them off which I am not looking forward to since I'm not the world's best finisher and I would love to finish them as pictured in the magazine but I'm sure I'll work something out or possibly bribe someone with better sewing skills than mine:)

I did end up taking a break from Celtic Autumn before vacation and did a round on Polar Lights Sampler by Chatelaine which I haven't stitched on in forever. I got a good chunk of the lower right border and one of flowers done in that corner as well. Someday it'll be a HD. For now it was a nice break from all the fall colors.

And now I'm back to Celtic Autumn.

I'm slowly working my way through the border and am still hoping to make it to a finish by Grandma's birthday. I've got until August 19 so we'll see what happens.

Vacation went way too fast...

2011-07-28T22:20:00.001-04:00

...and now we're back to normal life. I meant to do a bit more blogging during vacation but we got busy and tired and my Mom discovered Bejeweled 3 on my computer and that was the last time I saw my laptop during vacation. The rest of the trip went well, way too fast but it was nice. Sorry I haven't gotten the rest of the pictures up sooner but it's been a little hectic this week with getting back to work and then today was our visit from the social worker to get our new home study going. One more step closer to a sibling for Josh! But for now, back to vacation...

We spent some time at the Legoland Discovery Center on Thursday. It was one of the neatest places I've been on vacation in awhile. They had a whole Chicago skyline made out of Lego bricks along with bunches of other stuff to look at and play with. We will definitely be returning when Josh is older and can participate in more of the activities.

Josh got to make a Lego car and race it against other cars. His actually did pretty well.

Josh was really excited to be turned loose in the big Duplo play area. His goal seemed to be building a tower with every block in the place.

There are way more Legoland pictures than I realized so I think I'll cut it off here for today and post the rest of the trip tomorrow. Hope you enjoy, it was a lot of fun to visit and I know Josh would like to go play there again.

Vacation at last

2011-07-20T18:29:00.004-04:00

First of all, standard apology- sorry for the lack of posting, life's been a little hectic with the air conditioning repair and getting ready for vacation and all. We have successfully made it to vacation however and it has been very nice so far. Yesterday was mostly a driving day but we did manage to have a little fun too. Erich, Josh, and I picked up my parents and brother early in the morning and we drove to Chicago to visit the Shedd Aquarium before settling in at our hotel just over the border in Kenosha, WI. The pictures aren't great because of the low lighting in the aquarium but the memories are awesome. Josh had a great time looking at all the fish, especially the jellyfish and beluga whales. He even got to pet a real turtle.

It was a long day but Josh did really well even though he skipped his nap. We pretty much made it through dinner at the Brat Stop (one of Erich's favorite places to eat around here) without incident but by then he was ready for bed. He definitely slept well last night and is ready to go again this morning though.

Updates and a TUSAL

2011-07-07T14:06:00.007-04:00

Sorry about the lateness of TUSAL but the holiday weekend kind of got the best of me. I had to work and we had some family get togethers and Erich's grandmother has been in the hospital since Monday and the air conditioner broke yesterday and somehow it's already Thursday again. We're hoping the doctors can figure out what's going on with Erich's grandmother soon. She's had multiple medical problems for a long time but this one's a new one and they're not quite sure what's happening yet. On a much more minor note, the air conditioner has been pronounced as being on it's last leg and will be replaced soon. It figures, we were just about down to no debt again and I got a bonus from work last week. Thank goodness tomorrow's Friday and hopefully the weekend will be a quiet one.

Despite all the craziness of this week I did manage to get enough time together to make a batch of blueberry jam yesterday.

And I have been stitching too. Celtic Autumn's been in my hoop and I have the orts to show it as well as a picture.

I'm still on track to be finished by the middle of next month though I'm feeling the itch to stitch on something else, nothing in particular just something else. I'm thinking of giving in for a few days and then push on through until the end. Happy stitching and here's hoping there's no more excitement in our house for awhile:)

2011-06-23T21:44:00.001-04:00

So long time no post, I know. It's that whole life thing, it kind of got in the way again. Too much summer fun, work and assorted other stuff. Oh, and stitching too. I have actually been getting some of that done. I'm down to just the borders (and all the beading) in Celtic Autumn.

I'm pretty happy with my progress. I think I can still get it done by Grandma's birthday. She knows about it, just hasn't seen it yet. It would be nice to take her to pick the frame around her birthday though and treat her to a little birthday stash too since she also stitches.

Besides the stitching we've been getting ready for vacation in a few weeks. I think we've finally got all our reservations made and plans finalized, now we just have to wait a few more long weeks. I'm really excited, it's been so long since we've had a real vacation and this will be our first real family vacation too. We've been on a couple quick overnight trips but nothing like this. It should be a lot of fun.

That's about it for now. I'll try and make it back a little sooner next time.

June TUSAL and stitchy update

2011-06-01T19:22:00.003-04:00

Is it really June already? This year is going by so fast! Time for the next installment of my TUSAL...

As you can see, I've almost covered up the oranges and greens of Celtic Autumn with a blue/green mix. That's all from Garden of Wishes, which is coming along nicely. It's a little slow going with all the confetti but I'm happy with the result.

Yes, that's a full-sized highlighter for perspective. I look at it and the stitched area seems so small but it's actually over 3,000 stitches by my rough estimate last night. I think it's time to take a break from the tiny, over 1 stitching from HAED and get back to Celtic Autumn this month. I really want to get this done for Grandma's birthday so I'd better get going, only 2 1/2 months to go.

Oh, and before I forget- we did have a very nice anniversary. Our cookout did get rained out but the kids had a chance to play outside for awhile first and most of the grilling was done before the rain started.

Happy Anniversary!

2011-05-29T08:46:00.002-04:00

Seven years ago today I married my best friend. If the rain holds off we'll be spending as a family at a cookout to welcome back one of my cousins who has been away with a volunteer group for the past year. If it rains we'll still celebrate, just without the outside part. Lots of happy things this time of year for our family:)

What a difference a year makes

2011-05-28T07:04:00.001-04:00

As I sit writing this Friday night to post on Saturday morning I'm thinking about where my family was this time last year. Erich and I were in a hotel room in Russia, jet-lagged from recent travel halfway round the world and nervously awaiting our upcoming court session the next day to finalize Josh's adoption. Josh was asleep in an orphanage twenty minutes away with the only kids and caregivers he'd ever known, completely unaware of what was about to happen.

And this year, I sit in my family room which used to be neat and clean but is now covered in toys and the assorted debris left in the wake of my toddler. Cars is on the TV and Josh is leaning over the arm of my chair to look at the laptop screen. "Hey Momma, I see, I see! Wah-wah!" he says and points himself out in the pictures below. Now that he has the tubes he can actually say "Josh" but he still refers to himself as "Wah-wah" if asked his name. He's grown so much both in size and his abilities, it's hard to believe he's the same kid. Just look at him then...

And now...

Sometimes I forget how much he's grown until I look at those photos from last May. My baby is turning into such a big boy- he speaks in sentences, eats such a wide variety of food now (remember back when it was rice cereal and animal crackers only?), is half potty trained, loves anything with wheels and Mickey Mouse. I can't imagine what we did without him. What a difference a year makes.

2011-05-25T09:36:00.006-04:00

So I've had my new toy for a week now and I'm really enjoying it. It has been so much easier to browse the blogs and boards. Now I just have to find that balance between surfing and stitching everyone talks about and I'll be all set:) I have gotten a little stitching done in between chasing Josh and surfing the net...

I know, it still doesn't look like much but I can kind of see the leaf emerging especially since I've not stitched all the confetti in the leaf's outline yet. And again, not the best picture since it's from the digital camera but it's soooo much easier and faster to pop the SD card into the laptop and upload than it is to start the dinosaur desktop, wait for it to load windows and finish all the other assorted tasks it insists on performing at start up, scan, then wait for it to upload. I'm hoping to get some more time in when Josh takes his nap today. We'll see.

We've been thinking about Russia a lot lately. We were there this time last year, getting ready for the court session that would make Josh ours. If I have the timeline right, I think this was the day we landed in his region after a detour to another airport because of heavy fog. I don't think I've ever felt as tired and full of energy at the same time as I did the day we finally arrived back in his birth city to begin the process of bringing him home. I'm sure we were running on pure adrenaline fumes by the time we finally got to the hotel and were able to sleep. We've been working on a photo album of our trip pictures to begin showing Josh and telling him the story of how he came to be ours especially since we're very seriously considering starting the adoption process again at the end of the summer. He's seen some of the pictures on our camera and some loose ones we have lying around but not the whole book so it'll be fun to look at. I look back at our pictures and think very fondly of our time in Russia even though it was stressful and didn't always go as planned at times. I really can't wait to get back there. It was a different culture and lifestyle but we lived there nearly a month and it will always be a part of us now.

For now, off to enjoy a stormy day at home and hopefully get some stitching done this afternoon.

A big HD and a new start

2011-05-19T19:30:00.007-04:00

First of all, thank you for all the compliments on the Hydrangea Pillow. I just love these designs and hope to add several more to my project list in the future. To answer Jo's question from last post's comments, this one was in the April 2009 issue of JCS.

And welcome to the new followers, I noticed some new pictures in the follower section. Hope you like it here and come back often.

So today was the complete opposite of what I had originally planned to do but I still got some things done that I've been wanting to so I guess it wasn't a total loss. The original plan was to take Josh to daycare so I could get some yard work done in the front yard without having to worry about him in our unfenced front yard. There aren't many cars traveling our street during a weekday but I just don't feel comfortable out there with Josh when I can't give him my full attention. Of course by the time I got him to daycare it was already threatening rain so outside work was put on hold and I went shopping for awhile instead. I was itching to get out to get some accessories for this...

It wasn't even supposed to be built until next week sometime but apparently the folks at HP are running ahead of schedule because it arrived yesterday in a very cool black box. It's an HP Envy 14 and I was expecting it to have a black metal shell but it's actually more of a grey-brown, sort of like DMC 3032 but a little darker. It also has a leafy/flowery pattern stamped into the shell which you can kind of see in the full version of the top picture and I really like. Outside all the patience I've had to exercise in getting it set up properly it's been great so far.

But back to today- Plan B was to go shopping for a bag to carry the laptop in (which I did) and then come home and finish the set up and some other housework before time to go get Josh. The part about coming home and finishing set up, not so easy since the power was out when I got home. Never a good thing since we lose water when the power goes. So I threw the frozen stuff I bought while out shopping in the freezer quickly and decided to take myself out to somewhere with free Wifi for lunch. About the time Panera's server kicked me off (apparently they're set for a 30 minute session limit during the lunch hour) the answering machine started picking up my calls home so I headed back and began the evening long task of getting the internet back up and running, most of which was done by Erich because I'm not nearly patient enough to mess with the router and DSL and all that fun stuff when it doesn't work properly. I think we've finally got all of our devices back up and running for now though. And on the bright side our stove, which was acting like it might have gotten hit by a power surge during the last storm when the power went out, is now working perfectly again. The electronics that control the clock, timer, and oven temp had been acting up and not keeping proper time and temp but now miraculously work just fine. We made pizza tonight to test the oven (worked perfectly) and the clock has been keeping perfect time since this afternoon. Go figure.

So the day was productive, just not in the things I was expecting. Hopefully this will be the start of much more regular posting now that the new laptop is all set up and I'm hoping to get around to reading more of your blogs too. I've missed that since you all have some amazing stitching that usually makes me want to add to my stash.

Oh, and one more thing. I have actually had time to stitch a little this week. Last Saturday I started Garden of Wishes by Molly Harrison/HAED. It doesn't look like much yet but this is about 1,000 stitches or so of work in the bottom left corner. Sorry it's a little blurry. I took it with the digital camera while the power was out instead of scanning it.

I think that's it for now. Be back soon.

Finally a 2011 HD!

2011-05-14T10:45:00.006-04:00

So I've finally gotten around to posting some actual stitching pics. It probably helps that it's a lovely rainy day and we got in the car this morning only to discover that it won't start. Oh and I really don't feel like doing housework so I call for a stitchy day since I haven't really picked up a needle all week. It's just been too busy with work and outside work and getting ready for the social worker's visit. That went very well by the way and now we're good until next year. I still can't believe that Josh will be home a year already in a couple weeks. It just doesn't seem possible that so much time has passed already. Next thing we know he'll be in school, it really isn't that far off.

On to the stitching. First up is my finished Hydrangea Pillow. It's one of the many gorgeous Donna Giampa pillows that have been in JCS. I stitched it on 28 count even weave and will eventually finish it as a pillow.

Next is L&L's Celtic Autumn which is coming along very nicely but I think I am going to take a short break from it now, the swirlies are starting to get to me. I'm still hoping to finish this one by August to give to my grandmother as a companion to the Celtic Noel I already finished for her.

Hopefully regular posting will resume soon. Our home computer has gotten to the ripe old age of almost 7 and is getting quite cranky so that has been a deterrent since it takes so long to get anything done. I'm actually writing this post on Erich's iPad. We will eventually replace the desktop but in the meantime I think the shiny, new laptop I just ordered last week will be a huge improvement. That was my Mother's Day gift this year since I wasn't so interested in getting an iPad of my own. Don't get me wrong, I love playing around with Erich's but I really want more of a computer than the iPad can provide and it will be nice to have a laptop to take back to Russia if we are able to do the second adoption we would like to do. We'll have to wait just a little longer on that one but with any luck it is coming soon.

May TUSAL

2011-05-05T14:50:00.002-04:00

So it's been about a month without a blog again. Sorry about that, I really don't know where April went. I meant to get around to blogging several times but honestly we were all sick (yes, again) and then there was work and then it was Easter and then I don't know where all the time went but it's May now and here we are.

There have been major developments in our household though. For starters, Joshua's tubes are working beautifully and his speech continues to develop. He now speaks in short sentences and is learning new words really quickly. Colors finally clicked in his little head and he walks around naming the color of everything now:) And that's not all- he's decided to be a big boy now and started to use the potty too as long as it is not a public restroom. No, he's not germaphobic or anything like that. We had a little incident with an auto-flush toilet that flushed while he was still sitting there. Not a happy thing at all, very scary, hopefully we'll get over that sometime before college.

Next big thing is that we're taking our first real family vacation. We had to take some time off in July anyway when Josh's daycare closes for vacation so we're going to take a trip to the Chicago area for an extra long weekend with my parents and brother. No solid plans yet but top of the boys' list is Legoland in Schaumburg.

And finally, the fun stitchy stuff. Here's the May installment of my TUSAL...

As you can see, I have a rainbow of color this time around. It comes from a mixture of the end of my giveaway prizes which are now in the mail on their way to their new owners, the end of Hydrangea Pillow, and some Celtic Autumn. I still have to get Hydrangea Pillow and Celtic Autumn to the scanner which will hopefully happen sometime this weekend. My stitching plans since finishing Hydrangea Pillow have mostly been to work on and maybe even finish Celtic Autumn since I'd like to give it to my grandmother in August as a birthday gift. I think I can make it with room to spare. I'm on the last section of the skirt and am filling in all the color after doing the gold pattern. If I remember correctly from Celtic Noel the border goes relatively quickly so we'll see what happens.

Off to try to get a few more stitches in before Joshua wakes up from his nap. Those seem to be getting shorter and shorter these days.

April TUSAL

2011-04-03T14:01:00.003-04:00

It's ort report time again and I have a blue/green mixture to share this month.

This month's orts come from (surprise!) Hydrangea Pillow and my giveaway prizes which are about 3/4 of the way done now that I've gotten my floss order. My goal is to have them out by Easter more or less, always dependant on stitching time and a certain toddler's behavior. My original plan was to include a scan of Hydrangea Pillow too but my scanner has other ideas today so that will have to wait until it is in a better mood. Life's been busy as always around here. Joshua had tubes put into his ears last Thursday which has resulted in dramatic improvements in his speech. It used to be that he'd repeat things eventually but now he's trying to repeat everything we say which is great most of the time. Not that our language is toddler inappropriate but sometimes things come out in interesting times:) And he sings too. So far we've got the Hot Dog Song for those familiar with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse which is of course the best show ever according to Josh and sometimes a little Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star too. I'm so glad we've done this for him now rather than wait and see what happens. The difference is amazing and it's only been a couple of days. Off to enjoy a few hours of quiet time while Josh is entertaining his grandparents this afternoon. Happy stitching!

Hydrangeas in the rain

2011-03-22T20:18:00.003-04:00

Sorry to ignore you for so long but it's just been plain busy around here. Between work and the lovely Spring weather we were enjoying (note the past tense, it's been replaced by cold and rain for the next few days anyway) the time just flew and here we are almost done with March. The highlights...

-My cold made its way around the entire family and is finally gone
-Joshua had his appt with the ENT and will be getting tubes in his ears next Thursday
-Spring is here (the next few days excluded) and Joshua loves outside!
-The adoption agency emailed a reminder that Joshua's 1 year post placement report will be due soon. Where did that time go?!
-Working on the giveaway prizes but I've hit a snag in the form of a floss shortage so I'm waiting on a shipment for now

Oh, and I've been stitching away on the Hydrangea Pillow and have made quite a bit of progress for me...

Had to take a picture with the digital camera this time since my progress is in two separate corners and my scanner's not quite that wide. I just love the colors in this. They make me think happy and warm thoughts even though it's not very warm here right now. Probably doesn't hurt that I have memories of our Russian adventure tied to this piece. I don't know how I missed these pillows for so long but I just can't seem to get enough of them right now. I'd really like to do the newest seasonal series for my Mom as my next set of new projects. And of course there are about a dozen I'd like to stitch but have no idea what I'd do with too.

That's about it for now. Off to stitch awhile longer and get ready for the great cleaning that's going to take place in my house tomorrow. This is my one day off until Joshua's surgery so I'm going to take him to daycare and really let the house have it tomorrow since both Erich and I have been working crazy hours and will continue to do so for awhile to cover for sick coworkers and make some extra money too. Never hurts to have a little extra put away for those things that come up like a car repair or maybe some adoption expenses or a broken sink. You just never know what might happen.

March TUSAL and a Hydrangea update

2011-03-04T20:22:00.002-05:00

Another week , another post. Joshua's cold is gone now but he seems to have passed it on to me. Thanks, kiddo. Oh well, if he didn't do it I'm sure one of my many sick customers at work would have soon anyway. At least it's my weekend off and I can suffer in peace at home. And alone tomorrow too as my mother has taken pity on me and offered to care for Joshua while Erich is at work. She sounds really upset about having to do it too, really had to twist her arm. Something tells me this offer wasn't completely out of concern for my health and wellbeing but I'll take the day of rest either way.

It's 3/4 and that means TUSAL time again...

Most, but not quite all, of my orts this round are from the Hydrangea Pillow which is coming along quite nicely.

I really love the pinks in this but I'm ready to move on to the next bunch and get some new colors out of my thread box too.

2011-02-23T16:05:00.003-05:00

So much for an early Spring, we got hit with the snow again and some ice too for added fun. I didn't really think we were having the Spring thaw in February but it would have been nice to see grass for a little while longer.

Work has started on my prizes. It's a little slow going but I'm getting there and should have one halfway finished soon. I've been working on the hydrangeas too, lots of pink in my current bunch of flowers...

No exciting plans for my days off this week. Joshua isn't feeling too well. He seems to have picked up a cold somewhere and is pretty congested so lots of juice and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for us today. Probably the same tomorrow too except that we're also going to be making a big pot of spaghetti and meatballs to share with Erich's parents who are coming over for dinner.

More flowers

2011-02-16T09:51:00.002-05:00

Thanks again for everyone who entered the giveaway one way or another. I've gotten addresses from both my winners and will begin prizes as soon as I can decide on what I want to make. Too many ideas, definitely not enough time around here for all of them:)

So we've started thawing out this week which has been absolutely wonderful. I'm definitely happy to be out of single digit temperatures and actually took Joshua out to daycare without my coat on. They say we're going to hit the mid-50's tomorrow which will be heavenly compared to the recent winter weather. Snow is starting to melt and I can actually see grass in one spot of the yard but I know I shouldn't get used to it, it's a long time until real Spring starts and I'm sure it'll get covered up again in a week or two.

I'm settling for my own little celebration of the Spring to come and have continued working on Hydrangea Pillow. I actually finished the bottom two pages and it barely fits on my scanner now but here it is...

I love the bright colors in this one! They make the gray days of Indiana winter a little brighter. Off to work on mountains of paperwork and try and finish off our taxes. I tried last week but got derailed when I discovered that our credit card number had been borrowed by somebody in Denmark who had charged a bunch of stuff on it. The bank was good about it, had already frozen it, and promptly cancelled the card and has already sent on a new one. Thank you bank! Hopefully no more fun surprises await me today.

GIveaway Part 2

2011-02-11T20:12:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy week around here. Work and daycare all around but last night Erich and I took a night off, rounded up some babysitters and took ourselves out to a nice dinner and then to see Lewis Black since he was performing pretty close to home. We got home pretty late but it was worth it, nice to get out by ourselves which doesn't happen too often anymore. Kind of an early Valentine's Day present to ourselves since we've both wanted to see Lewis Black live for quite awhile.

Speaking of Valentine's Day, I caught my own little living Valentine on the stairs tonight...

Apparently stickers are way more fun if you wear them rather than share them but some did make it into the treat bags we're making for daycare.

Joshua also helped me pick a winner for Part 2 of my little February Giveaway though he wouldn't stand still for another picture with the winner's name so you'll have to trust me on that one. Congrats to lucky Jo who will be receiving the other prize as soon as I figure out what it is and I get her address. Thanks to everyone who entered and I'll try to do it again sometime before the end of the year. To the winners, please be patient with me. I'd like to stitch part of the prize and am having a hard time deciding exactly what I want to do but I hope it will be worth the wait. For now it's time to play in my stash a bit and then probably off to bed early as it's my weekend to work.

TUSAL and a giveaway update

2011-02-04T20:41:00.002-05:00

The lighting's not great but I did get pictures for my February TUSAL update. Thanks again to Daffycat for taking over this fun, but totally useless SAL:)

Being one of those that doesn't empty til the end of the year, I didn't start from scratch this time but my cup is starting to fill up quite nicely. There are a bunch of blues and greens on the bottom of this month's addition with plenty of pink and purple on top, all from the Hydrangea Pillow. I think I'll stay with it awhile longer, I'd really like to finish it this year. By the way, it's one of the many Donna Vermillion Giampa pillows that have been published in Just Cross Stitch magazine. I've admired them for quite awhile but just recently actually started stitching them. I did the Pumpkin Patch pillow last year as a gift for a family friend that painted Joshua's room for us. This one though I originally picked because it reminded me of my great grandmother's house and the hydrangeas she had growing in her front yard. At first I thought I might give it away when it was done but the other day I realized that the day I started it was the same day we had our court hearing in Russia to finalize Joshua's adoption. This round is the first time I have touched it since I stitched on it in Russia and I guess I had forgotten that I started it on that particular day so I think I will keep it as my own special treasure instead.

And a giveaway update- we have winner #1, Lindsay whom I just realized I know from the BB world. Congrats and welcome Lindsay! If you would yuku message me your address (Rxlady) or shoot me an email at sarajorgensen @ yahoo . com (minus the spaces of course) I'll start putting your prize together.

And welcome to all the other new followers and those just finding me too. For winner #2, let's do something everyone can participate in. Leave a comment on this post and I'll put all the names in a hat and let Joshua draw them out next Friday night. Both prize packages will contain some stash and possibly something hand-made so they might not go out quite right away but hopefully you'll find them worth the wait. Thanks for playing and happy stitching!

Snow, some hydrangeas, and a giveaway

2011-02-02T11:45:00.002-05:00

So we're smack in the middle of the path of the giant snowstorm that is currently plowing through the middle of the US. It started snowing and blowing yesterday afternoon, making driving home fun last night but also causing a state of emergency to be called all around us which makes me think it must look worse than my yard out there so no school or work for much of anyone around here. It just so happens that we were both off today anyway but we're definitely not going anywhere. We'll be doing some shoveling, maybe a little cookie baking later. Definitely some stitching:)

As you can see, we've gotten a decent amount of snow, not the most I've ever seen but the drifting is causing some major problems. We go from almost bare ground to 2 ft or higher drifts in our yard. Thankfully I also have tomorrow off so if they're wrong and things don't get better we'll just stay home again tomorrow too.

On a brighter note though I finally got the Hydrangea Pillow over to the scanner. I'm really excited to be done with the blue/green bunch in the middle of the bottom and have moved on to some really bright pink ones in the corner.

Oh, and one more thing, it's been forever since we've done a giveaway around here. I'll make you a deal- looks like I'm at 27 followers which I think is awesome, let's get it up to a nice round 30 and I'll think up a prize for #30 and some other lucky winner.

Have fun and keep warm out there!

We're back!

2011-01-30T20:18:00.002-05:00

We're all finally home and settled under one roof again. I was hoping to get a chance to check in last week but things got a little hectic. All in all, our trips were good. We made it to the clinic appointments eventually- had a little trouble with traffic and bad directions but the staff was great about getting us in late and getting us through all Joshua's testing. He did very well overall, right on target for development though still small for his age. The only thing to be concerned about was some fluid the audiologist found in his ears so we're going to have him re-evaluated at home in a few weeks to see if it's chronic or not. He has no history of ear infections which really surprised them so we'll see what the next evaluation shows.

The second trip, my solo trip, went well too. I sucessfully completed the training and am now a certified compounding pharmacist. It was a fun couple of days and I definitely learned a lot which has already been put to the test at work. I did make it to SB&B and picked up a few things...

And a closeup of the scissors and fob...

I also finally got a copy of The Proper Stitch which I've been wanting for a very long time. Spent a good part of my first evening away from home drooling over it too! I got in some good stitching time too, funny how much spare time you have when there's no one else around to make dinner for and clean up after. I did miss my boys though and was very happy to see them all Friday night.

Oh, pictures of the stitching before I forget! I finally put down Celtic Autumn for a bit but here she is as of right now.

I took Hydrangea Pillow with me on my trip this week and got a chunk of green done on it so I'll have to get a scan of it soon too but I'm a little too lazy to get it out of the hoop at the moment as I'm going to get back to stitching after I'm done here. I'll have to spend some time catching up on my blog reading this week too, hope you all have had a good couple weeks while I was away.

2011-01-17T21:09:00.002-05:00

Going to be in and out for the next couple weeks so I thought I'd stop and say a quick hi while I have a chance. We're all leaving tomorrow for a 3 day trip to Cincinnati for Josh's followup visit to the international adoption clinic there. We chose to have him evaluated when we came home over the summer since we had so little background info on him and we're going back for the followup now. I can't wait for them to see how much he's grown and learned in the past six months! Not looking forward to the drive but the clinic is worth it. It's run by a doctor who happens to be an adoptive mom herself and she's definitely full of good info and advice.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to say hi over the weekend and show off the stitching I've got done on the trip before I head off by myself for another 3 day trip next week for some work training. I'm hoping to fit a trip into Stitching Bits and Bobs on that one since I'll be driving right by it and now I've got a little b-day money burning a hole in my pocket:) Take care and keep warm!

More Celtic Autumn

2011-01-11T20:18:00.003-05:00

Thanks for all the Happy Birthday wishes! The snow definitely hit hard in our area, so much so that the two neighboring cities we frequent had snow emergencies over the weekend and my parents and grandparents were pretty much buried for a day or two. Our house didn't get hit that badly as we were just on the right side of the lake effect band but you never know what'll happen with the lake. The three of us did end up going out for dinner on our own in our own city as the roads were decent and we met my parents for dinner Sunday night when the snow had eased up and the roads were starting to be plowed so I guess that was a bonus dinner out. And I definitely love the necklace, already worn it a few times. The little guy has taste, that's for sure! Loves chocolate, books, and picks out good jewelry, what more could you want from your toddler:)

We finally got around to taking down the Christmas tree tonight. Almost anyway. It's still down there with just the lights on looking pretty sad but Erich will have it out by tomorrow night. I'm ready to be done with Christmas but it always looks so empty in the house after all the decorations are down. I think tomorrow we'll stop somewhere in our wanderings to the various doctor's appointments we have set up and look for some Valentine's Day decorations. Not quite the same but better than bare windows and walls.

Oh, and I've been working on Celtic Autumn. I thought I'd bring it back for a new scan since I've got a little of all 3 color groups stitched on her dress now.

I really like this combo better than the original colors. It just looks more like Autumn to me. Only thing I'm a little worried about is the white/ecru section on the back part of the dress. I'm afraid it might blend in too much with the fabric but there is gold outlining most of it plus the border runs pretty much right into that section so we'll see how it looks later. Happy stitching and thanks again to all the commenters and new visitors! Welcome!

TUSAL and Celtic Autumn

2011-01-08T09:22:00.002-05:00

I've been watching TUSAL posts since last year sometime and finally decided it's time I join in the fun so this is the container I'll be using...

It's a glow-in-the-dark cup I got way back when I lived in the dorms at Purdue. It used to hold pencils and things but has been my ort jar for the past few years. Since I'm a slow stitcher compared to some it takes me quite awhile to fill it up as you'll see.

I empty my jar out at the first of the year so there's not much to show right now but here are the current contents...

The only project I've worked on so far this year is Celtic Autumn so lots of gold and orange to show today. And yes, I brought a Celtic Autumn pic for you too. She's coming along pretty well so far, just need some more time to work on her.

Oh, and the details- she's being stitched on 32ct Mushroom Lugana and I'm using a color conversion to change her dress to more Autumn-like colors, at least to my mind. I got the conversion several years ago, I believe from Kathy. I'll have to double check that because I definitely want to give proper credit for the work.

In other news, it's snowing here. Lots. Not as bad here as some of the nearby areas but enough to make me want to stay home today at least for now. Too bad too as it's my birthday today and we were hoping to go out and celebrate tonight. We might still make it out though, all depends on the lake effect snow bands. Gotta love winter in northern Indiana! Either way we'll do something nice eventually. I've already gotten some lovely presents from my boys- a new season of Six Feet Under to watch, Avec Eric by Eric Ripert, and a beautiful necklace from my son...

In all it's been a good day so far and even if we don't get to go anywhere later I would certainly be happy to spend the rest of the day stitching and watching DVD's. Off to go get some lunch and a nap for Josh and then put some more time in on Celtic Autumn.

2011-01-05T20:16:00.003-05:00

Stopping by to say a quick hi and hoping that everyone is having a good 2011 so far. Thank you very much for all the compliments on QS Believe! I did get some stitches into Celtic Autumn but I'm afraid it's mostly a jumble of swirly gold stitches so far, not much to see so I'll hold off on a picture until the weekend when I can get more done. Been a busy week here, I started my new job so we're trying to keep a semi-normal schedule while I'm doing training for the next couple weeks and then settle into a new schedule where there will only be 4 work days per week for me. I can't wait! Take care and I'll be back in a couple days with a stitchy update.

One more HD for 2010!

2010-12-31T20:16:00.002-05:00

Finished just a few minutes ago, I present QS Believe...

I started this one 3 years ago today and am glad to finally be done with it. I did QS Dragonfly a few years ago and have been meaning to finish this one off as a companion piece but never got around to it. This one is from Heaven and Earth Designs, artwork by Jessica Galbreth. I stitched it 1 over 1 on 28 ct evenweave and it measures in at around 5x7 so that's a lot of tiny stitches!

And now that it's done and Joshua is in bed I think I'll play some cards with Erich (rummy probably) and get ready to greet the new year. Happy New Year everyone and thanks so much for the encouragement to finish this one!

2011 Goals

2010-12-31T10:01:00.003-05:00

As 2010 winds down I've been thinking a lot about what I'd like to accomplish in 2011. I think my life goals are pretty simple- I'd like to settle down in my new job and get back on track with weight loss. 2010 was just not the year for that with all the stress and adjustments our little family has been through, not that I'd change a second of it:)

As far as stitching goals go, let's look at 2010:

~Start L&L's Celtic Autumn
~Start Watergarden
~Start Nora Corbett's Poppy
~Finish something for every start I make- 3 non-ornament finishes and 1 new start
~Finish ornaments with at least one new technique- Santa's Buddies, I really liked the fringed ornament Terry sent me so I tried something similar on this one

All those new starts I had planned kind of went out the window. I still want to do Watergarden and Poppy but they're going to take a back burner for Celtic Autumn. I'd like to get that done first and then we'll get to the others unless something else catches my attention first!

Officially, here are the 2011 goals:

-Stitch and frame L&L's Celtic Autumn for my grandmother
-Kill at least 2 WIP's in my pile
-Start HAED Dragon Master and complete at least 1 full page
-Complete another full page of Dragon Moon
-Use a new finishing technique on ornaments
-Frame Santa's Magic

I think I can manage these. We'll see.

I did make it over to House of Stitches the other day with Joshua. He was pretty well behaved though I didn't get to stay quite as long as I would have liked which is probably a good thing considering how much money I spent anyway. In my defense though, 75% of it was Christmas money! Here's the list...

-fabric for Dragon Master and the new Donna Giampa pillow, Frosty Wonderland
-Gingerbread Stitching House by The Victoria Sampler
-Holly Bows 2010 ornament by Just Nan
-Red Stocking Collection I and II by JBW Designs
-Kits for Blackberries on Gingham and Holiday Holly biscornu pincushions by The Sweetheart Tree
-Piccalilli by Ink Circles

They were having a sale on Christmas items so I couldn't pass these up. I've been drooling over that gingerbread house for awhile and Dani's pictures of the JBW stockings sold me on those. I had so much fun doing the Sweetheart Tree biscornu earlier in the year I'd really like to make at least one for myself so maybe one of these will find it's way into my craft room and not leave:)

As for my current stitching, QS Believe is coming along. I'm all done with confetti and about halfway through the remaining background. I might still make it to the end today. We don't have any big New Year's plans. Joshua's got a bit of a cold and we're actually in the middle of a thunderstorm so we might just stay home all day. If I'm lucky he'll take a long afternoon nap since I don't think he slept well last night. I might be back with one more 2010 HD, if not then a very early 2011 HD!

Confetti, confetti, confetti

2010-12-29T08:52:00.002-05:00

That's all I've been stitching the last couple days and I'm finally almost done with it.

It's been really slow going with all the confetti but hopefully I'll pick up the pace today after I finish off those last few bits of wing. The rest of the purple background looks like mostly big blobs of the same color so that should go faster. We'll see.

As a treat (for me anyway) Joshua and I are taking a trip to House of Stitches this morning and probably lunch out at his favorite restaurant with the big golden arches.

2 posts in 2 days!

2010-12-27T19:21:00.002-05:00

I know, it's a miracle. I figure I better take advantage of the extra time while I'm on vacation and get back here with scan of my latest progress. So here it is, QS Believe after a couple hours of stitching this afternoon and a bit over the weekend...

There's quite a bit of confetti in the wings but I'm going to challenge myself and try to kill off this WIP before the end of the year. Wish me luck and probably some caffeine too:)

2010-12-26T17:36:00.002-05:00

So Christmas is over and suddenly I find myself with free time again. My work with my previous employer is done, new job doesn't start until the new year. Christmas is done so all the work associated with it is done too. Hmm, what to do now? I vote for play with Josh and stitch all week. Maybe a trip out to House of Stitches too. After all, I do have some Christmas money now and I need fabric, a big piece. I've been drooling over a new HAED, Dragon Master from Myles Pinkney and it'd be nice to start it around the new year especially if I can catch a good DMC sale soon. For now I'm working on another HAED, QS Believe which has been lying around for quite awhile. It's so close to being finished, less than a page to go so I think I'll see how far I can get for the rest of December.

Oh, and I brought lots of pictures today too. First up is Joshua's first attempt at decorating Christmas cookies.

We weren't sure he'd be interested but he really liked throwing sprinkles at the cookies!

I did manage to make my goal of finishing enough ornaments to give out as gifts this year. Some have been shown here before as finished stitching but this is all of them together as finished gifts...

All of them are from JCS issues except the Joy ornament which came from a Better Homes & Gardens Christmas book. I'll have to gather all the info and get my sidebar updated for finishes.

And finally, yes we had a wonderful first Christmas together as a family of 3 this year. We did make it to church and two family events on Christmas Eve and were able to spend Christmas Day at home enjoying company and new toys. Erich and I were up early Christmas morning and took some time to enjoy our nice, clean, and quiet living room before Joshua woke up.

It must just be wired into kids' brains that Christmas is something to be excited about because he woke up happy and excited as if he knew there were presents waiting for him and it didn't take too long to get them all open.

And of course Josh's favorite part was helping Dad get all his toys put together. I see a tool bench coming from Santa next year.

We ended up having all the parents and grandparents over for Christmas dinner which was nice and Joshua got to show off all of his new toys. Today's been nice as it's been just the three of us and a lazy day at that. Off to get some dinner together by which I mean heat up some leftovers and then get back to playing and stitching. I'll try and get a new QS Believe pic up soon to update you. Hope everyone that celebrated had a Merry Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2010-12-06T11:50:00.003-05:00

...in my front yard. Seriously, no snow all of November and now over the last two days we've been hit hard by lake effect snow. So much for easing into winter weather.

Oh, and that flu I mentioned last time- it was kind enough to take me out for Saturday and Sunday. How considerate of it to hit me on the weekend when I was supposed to be off work anyway. Thankfully Joshua never did get it. His cousin Luke did the week before Thanksgiving and it did not sound fun at all.

But on a slightly happier note, I'm counting down the days til Christmas break like a kid this year:) And no, I'm a pharmacist not a teacher so this has nothing to do with school but it is job-related. For awhile now I've been not so happy with my current job. It was great before Joshua came home when it didn't matter how many evenings I worked or how far away I had to drive but it's just not as much fun with a 2 year old around. I miss him when I work evenings which is 2-3 times every week right now. And between trying to balance his care and everything else I'm involved in there just isn't time for anything anymore so I've been on the lookout for something new since my current company can't offer anything better right now. And I found it- 32 hrs a week with full benefits plus only 1 evening per week, location is 10 minutes from home and it's the same schedule every week so I can actually plan things in advance. Bonus is that it just happens to work out that I can finish up at my current company just in time to have the last two weeks of the year off before starting my with my new company in January. Merry Christmas to me!

I know I promised stitchy pics last time and I brought a couple along. Until this week I had been focusing on Dragon Moon which is slowly growing...

The tail section took awhile because of all the confetti but I'm hoping to finish another page next time I pick this up which will be after all my Christmas ornaments that are presents are finished off. Almost all the stitching is finished, just need to sit down and ornamentify them.

Oh, and I did TWCOE again this year. I really wanted to have a TW ornament to exchange but just too much to do this year so I finished off a non-TW ornament and sent it and totally forgot to take a picture before I did. I have a picture of what I received from Terry though.

She was kind enough to send an extra one for Joshua too. Thanks Terry! They're perfect and I can't wait to hang them on the tree we'll hopefully be setting up on Wednesday.

Birthday pictures

2010-11-26T20:51:00.003-05:00

I've been away a few days longer than I meant to but it's been a rough couple of weeks. Busy at work, Joshua's birthday, Thanksgiving, the flu (so far for Erich only, keeping my fingers crossed the rest of us are safe), and a bit of job-related goodness I don't want to go into detail on just yet. Anyway, those are the excuses and here are some pictures.

The birthday ones aren't terribly late but I do have a few Halloween ones that are. I've been meaning to show off my lion for awhile, just haven't had the time to upload. Here's him after trick or treating at our house on Saturday. Trick or treating was his most favorite thing ever once he figured out that people were putting candy in his bag:)

And with his cousin Luke at Great Grandma's house on Sunday...

Josh's birthday party went very well. Presents were fun to open.

But not near as fun as taking toys out of the box and playing with them. Both Josh and Luke figured out pretty quick that I was only interested in ripping off the paper but Aunt Peggy would take toys out so they could play with them.

Since this was Josh's first birthday with us, we played the fun and hopefully not prophetic "What Will I Be?" game.

That is not its official name and Erich thinks we're nuts. Apparently this is only something that Polish people do as most of his family didn't know what was going on and mine was sitting there cheering Josh on. Anyway, the short explanation is that you take the lucky birthday kid (usually at the 1st birthday) and hold his hands while someone else places a shot glass, silver dollar, spool of thread, and a rosary in front of him and then let him go at it. What he picks up first is supposed to be indicative of what he'll be in life- drunk, rich, a tailor, or a priest. Joshua took his time and touched everything in the order it was placed but his first real pick up was the shot glass. I think the rosary and silver dollar were next and not so much on the spool of thread. So according to that game I'll have a drunken, rich priest for a son someday. I guess time will tell.

Cake was next and we weren't sure how much Joshua would get into it as he really doesn't like cake all that much. When it came time to blow out candles he was much more interested in the candies on top.

But when we gave him his own giant chocolate cupcake and let him and Luke (who turned 1 in September and is an expert cake eater now) play together much cake was eaten and chocolate frosting smeared. And yes, shirts were taken off as a precaution as well as trash bags laid out under the high chair though the boys weren't really interested in throwing their cake overboard so much as smearing it on their tummies.

And if the party wasn't enough fun and sugar, we opened more presents on Joshua's actual birthday and had more cake with Erich's family as Joshua shares a birthday with Erich's grandmother.

So now we're all up to date on baby pictures again. I'll try to get some stitchy things up next time around. For now I'm off to do some Christmas finishing and drool over some HAED charts I bought at the Thanksgiving sale.

2010-11-14T15:19:00.002-05:00

Just stopping by to say hi and that Joshua's post placement visit and birthday party went very well this weekend. We're trying to take today to relax and recover as it's been a very busy week to get ready for everything. As soon as I get time to sort through all the pictures and get some downloaded from other people's cameras I'll get some real party pics up but for now I can tell you there were plenty of presents and lots of cake:)

Sorry about the red eye, couldn't see it in the thumbnail until it was already uploaded to Webshots. Better ones coming soon!

Did you know...

2010-11-09T18:45:00.001-05:00

...that November is National Adoption Month? I meant to say something earlier in the month but time has gotten away from me with Joshua's six month post placement report coming due soon (I can't believe it's time for that already, our social worker will be here Friday!) and his birthday party coming up on Saturday. Anyway, one of the resources we used for news during our adoption is doing an adoption story a day on their blog for this month and I wanted to share that with you.

Be The Answer

Some of the stories have happy endings and some don't but they remind me what could have been for my son if we hadn't brought him home and why I'd like to adopt again someday.

2010-11-01T15:10:00.003-04:00

I apologize for the lack of Halloween pictures today, I do have them but I left my camera behind at my sister in law's house last night so we'll have to go retrieve that sometime soon and then I promise I'll post some pictures of my little lion.

Despite the weekend getting off to a not so great start, we had a good Halloween. Friday started off with Joshua being sent home from daycare for suspected pink eye which was confirmed by the doctor so we got him the antibiotic drops and had a few Halloween treats at home since he missed the party at daycare. Saturday was trick or treat in our city so we got out the wagon and got Joshua into his costume which he apparently mistook for pajamas and cried for a good 15 minutes until he realized that we were going out and not to bed. It took him a couple houses to figure out what was going on but as soon as he realized that candy was going in his bag he was really into it. He lasted nearly an hour, much longer than I thought he would but he was riding a lot of the time and our neighborhood has pretty good decorations and lots of kids were out so there was plenty to look at. Sunday was trick or treat in the city that all our family lives in so we took Josh out to visit with all the grandparents Sunday afternoon/evening and he got to go out again a little bit which he really enjoyed. I sure hope he doesn't think we're going out again today:)

Outside of Halloween, not too much excitement around here this week. Next week though is another story with our first post placement visit for the adoption coming up and Joshua's birthday party.

I did take advantage of my weekend off and some long naps that Joshua took to get some stitching in and finished another page of Dragon Moon...

Only twenty-some pages to go! I'm not sure how long I'll have the ambition to keep going on this round as I get back into two pages of almost solid blue but we'll see. Sometimes the solid stitching is a nice break from confetti as I can pay better attention to my iPod or the television but two pages worth is a lot of blue!

Where did October go?

2010-10-25T15:37:00.002-04:00

I think I missed it. Seriously, it was just September and now all of the sudden all my leaves are down and it's time to trick or treat. I'd like to say that I've been off having grand adventures but honestly it's mostly been work and keeping my son happy. He's doing well, just crabby over a growth spurt and some new teeth. I know, I'm still whining about teeth. Poor kid, he's been getting new teeth almost the whole time we've had him home. About the time he finally gets a full set they'll start to fall out again. Oh well, nights like last night are what make it worth it- good bath-time, snack, and a couple readings of Goodnight Moon before bed ending with him blowing kisses as I shut the door to his room make it all okay:)

I'm really looking forward to Halloween this weekend and definitely promise pictures of Joshua in his lion costume. He's been practicing his roar all month. We're planning to hit a few houses but mostly just visit the grandparents.

We're also in the planning stages for Joshua's birthday party which will be taking place in a few weeks. Our big plans for the evening are to hit the party store and find some invitations and fun decorations and party hats. Must have hats! Joshua found a few old birthday hats the other day and loved wearing them so hats are definitely on the list. I can't belive he's about to turn 2 already! It seems like just yesterday we were looking at pictures of him at a year old and wondering when we'd be allowed to bring him home.

I do have a couple stitchy pics to share as well. A few more small finishes...

Tricks or Treats by Val's Stuff from the Sept/Oct 2010 JCS issue. I know, I need to find some candy corn buttons. Thought I had some in stash but I guess not, good reason to make an order from somewhere though!

And Caroline by Miss Crescent's Crowne from the 2009 JCS ornament issue. I think this one is going to be a Christmas present for someone this year, just haven't decided who yet.

And finally, the big project I've been working on. I don't know why but I've had the urge to stitch over 1 this month so I pulled out a HAED WIP, Dragon Moon. I haven't stitched on it much this year but it got interesting as soon as I hit the green of the dragon so I've stuck with it most of the month. I'm almost done with my current page so I'm going to try to finish this week and then see how I feel about moving on to the next page or maybe a new project for awhile. Sometime I'm going to have to put stitching on hold and finish off all those Christmas ornaments.

Not much else to report. I've been blessed with a little free time this afternoon while waiting for delivery men to show up with my new fridge. The old clunker we inherited from the previous owners of this house finally decided to give it up so we're getting a new one today. I've got about half an hour more to wait according to the call I just got so I'll try to update a few little things on the blog and then maybe make it around to some of your entries.

Sorry for the neglect

2010-10-07T10:24:00.004-04:00

I don't have a great excuse, just work drama and life in general. Mostly work drama which is testing the limits of my patience with the company I work for but you don't really want to hear about that. It may work out for the best yet, we'll see.

Other than that, life's been good. Today's a bit of an anniversary- 4 months since we picked Joshua up to come home for good. It amazes me how he's changed from this...

To this in such a short time...

Now granted that smile only lasted a few minutes after the photo because the red bus in the background didn't do what he wanted but it's a major difference from the little guy who didn't talk at all and really didn't play with toys or want to read books a short time ago. He's currently sitting behind me and repeating everything the bus says. Life's good again:)

We actually found a day that all 3 of us had off not too long ago and took Joshua to the zoo for the first time. It was a nice cloudy morning, not too warm and not too crowded. Just a couple of other moms and their kids running around and us. Not all of the animals were out but there were enough and we got to see Joshua's new favorite animal, the lion. I held him up so he could get a good look and he gave the lion his best roar. The lion wasn't really impressed, I'm not sure he even looked up from his nap but we'll not tell Joshua that. Anyway, he had a good time and I think we might just become patrons to save a little money on admission.

I've been stitching too. Not as much as I want to but still plugging along. Erich has been no help as he's recently purchased both of the Professor Layton games I was missing for DS. I had finished The Diabolical Box awhile ago and am almost all the way through The Unwound Future but haven't played The Curious Village at all yet so it's been quite a dilemma in the evening. So far the Professor has won out more often than stitching but I've finished a few more smalls and made a little progress on Skeleton Crew too.

The only small I've got a picture of today is one of the Mill Hill kits I bought recently. It's the Cardinal Tree out of their Festival of Trees series. I'm sure it'll be a Christmas present to someone this year.

Many thanks to my patient model, the Purdue bear:) I'll try to get pictures of the rest of the ornaments soon. For now, it's time for early lunch and hopefully an early nap for Joshua because this afternoon we're going to visit Grandma and Grandpa who are camping in a nearby campground.

Another week, another finish

2010-09-18T12:16:00.000-04:00

Apparently whatever Joshua had last week wasn't that bad. He ended up napping all morning, throwing up one more time and then back to normal or as normal as an almost 2 year old is:) By the time Erich got home that night he was running around and playing like nothing happened. He's been fine this week too except for being a bit bothered by new teeth coming in.

Anyway, despite the fact that I'm back at work full time now I managed to finish something else. It's a kit from The Sweetheart Tree, the Berries and Shortcake Biscornu that I got from House of Stitches a month or so ago. Stitching it was my treat to myself for finishing Santa's Magic. The only complaint I had with the kit was that they really didn't give a whole lot of extra fabric. I'm a hoop stitcher and I had to use a 4 inch hoop which meant I had to move it around several times to stitch the whole design on each side. Oh well, next time I'll use my own fabric.

I'm planning to give this one to Erich's grandmother as a thank you for doing some finishing work for me. This is the first time I've tried a beaded seam on a biscornu and I'm really happy with the result. I think she'll really like it too.

Not too much else to report from around here right now. Everything is back to normal with work and daycare going full time now but I'm looking forward to getting ready for the fall holidays. I see a lot of Halloween stuff going up in the stores right now and I'm on the hunt for some kid-friendly fall/Halloween stuff to put out for Joshua. It's so neat to have a little guy around for all the upcoming holidays, makes me feel kind of like a little kid again too:)

2010-09-10T13:44:00.002-04:00

I really meant to get back here sooner but my first week of work got in the way. It wasn't too bad but it did require getting up earlier than I've become accustomed to. Oh well. The time off was too good to last but I am being treated to a rare 3 day weekend this weekend.

Nothing too exciting going on this week except that Joshua and I found out how to get in and out of the doctor's office in record time this morning. He was just being seen for a followup on the surgery he had a couple weeks ago so it was no big deal but we were running late due to traffic re-routing because of an accident. Then Joshua's belly decided it didn't like his breakfast and he threw up all over himself and the carseat on the way into the doctor's parking lot. Great. Thankfully we had a change of shirt and enough wipes to make him presentable for a doctor's office. We walked in 15 minutes late (their policy is that they reschedule you at 15 minutes late) and I apologized and explained while Joshua looked pathetic. He gets carsick occasionally and I thought that was what had happened. They apparently felt sorry for us as we were immediately shown into a room. The nurse no sooner than shut the door than the doctor opened it again, checked Joshua's incision, and we were back out in the car all in about 5 minutes. Now that's service! Not that I'm advocating vomit for quick appointments but it seemed to work out well for all today as it's continued to be a pukey morning over here. I'm thinking now that he's picked something up from daycare. Had to happen sooner or later. He took a long nap when we got home which was good because it gave me some clean up time and now he's up and running around like nothing happened so that's a good sign. We'll see how the afternoon progresses.

But I really didn't drop by just to talk about puke. I brought pictures. I've been busy stitching ornaments over the past month or so and thought it's about time I share. First up is Be Merry. It's by My Mark from the 2008 JCS ornament issue. I stitched it on 28ct white evenweave.

Next is Santa's Buddies by Angel Stitchin from the 2009 JCS ornament issue. That one's on a scrap of linen from my stash, not sure the count. I decided not to spend big bucks on snowflake treasures and made my own little snowflakes except for one.

I also finally started stitching the Shepherd's Bush series from the JCS ornament issues that started in 2000. I'm stitching them on 32ct lugana but am not sure of the color. It's either mocha or mushroom according to the LNS but no one's been able to figure out for sure. Oh well, it's the perfect color for this piece. So far I've finished 2000 Years Ago and Shepherds Watched with the exception of the charms.

In between the stitching and beading of Santa's Magic I found an old WIP, a HAED QS that I'd started a few years ago, and did a round on that too. It's QS Pegasus and Castle Bubble, part of a Josephine Wall piece.

Before...

And after...

That's about all the news from here for now. Hopefully the stomach bug or whatever it was won't make the rounds in my house and we'll all have a nice weekend off after today.

More pictures

2010-09-02T19:56:00.000-04:00

I finally got Webshots to work for me and got my pictures from the other day reloaded. But before I get to those, Dani asked in the comments if I was going to stitch Enchantment of Winter of St. Basil's Cathedral from Dimples Designs. Honestly, I hadn't even been aware that such a design existed. Apparently the Dimples Designs charts are now out of print though so I haven't been able to find a picture but between Dani's description and what I know of the Dimples eggs I'm sure it will be gorgeous and I look forward to watching hers grow at least until I can find a copy.

Oh, and before I forget again- Joshua is doing just fine. I think he's forgotten all about last week's procedure and the only time he's bothered by it is when we have to put the antibiotic ointment on the procedure site. Otherwise he's definitely back to normal.

But on to the pictures! We finished Joshua's St. Basil's model just a day or so before the baptism. It looks pretty good. The decals for the onion domes leave quite a bit to be desired but from a distance they look really cool.

As I said before Joshua's baptism went really well. I really was there during the baptism, I'm actually standing between Erich and the priest, talking to Joshua while the priest poured the water and annointed him with oil:)

We got some pictures but it was hard to get him to face forward for all the pictures afterward.

And these are Erich's godparents, my cousin Kirsten and her husband Brad. Their son Luke is the little guy Joshua tries to share snacks with occasionally.

We had lunch in the church basement afterward. I know the tables look a little empty here...

...but it's because everyone was in line to get their food when I finally got my hands on my camera.

And of course we had cake too!

Since we hadn't seen everyone since we've been back from Russia we also set up St. Basil's with a digital frame showing all the pics we took on our trips to Russia and a few of our souvenirs. That seemed to be a hit since most people had seen Joshua but not many had actually seen many of the pictures.

Joshua got some really neat gifts from the family for his baptism. Most of them were prayer books and medals and other expected things but he also got some toys and clothes which was totally unexpected but definitely appreciated. The most unique gift came from Holly, my friend from college who has always been a big animal lover. Her current favorite craft is loom knitting and she made Joshua an alligator, jellyfish, and a couple of snakes:)

When I was taking pictures of Joshua's new buddies I realized I never took pictures of Joshua's finished bedroom so I'll add those too since it is a random picture post.

We're pretty happy with the way it turned out. I think about the only thing we're still missing is a shelf above the dresser for some of Joshua's Russia souvenirs like his wooden toys and nesting dolls. We have one, just haven't had time to get it up yet.

I think that about catches me back up in pictures now. I'll have to get some stitching scans for you next time. In between finishing the stitching and beading for Santa's Magic I did a round on an old HAED that's been pushed to the back of my project basket. I've also finished a couple ornaments and started a biscornu kit I bought on my last trip to House of Stitches. I'm sure going to miss all the stitching time when I head back to work on Sunday!

Santa's Magic is finally finished!

2010-08-30T16:34:00.002-04:00

Just put the final stitches into Santa's Magic a few minutes ago! I'm so happy to finally have this one done, it's been hanging around for a few years now. And I think I figured out what's going on with Webshots- they updated and my computer's old so I can't play around with putting a bunch of images into the Private Shoebox and then distributing them to the proper albums when I'm ready to post. Oh well, could be worse. I guess I'll just have to re-upload the other images into each individual album. But anyway, back to Santa...

Santa is stitched on 32 count Days Gone By lugana by Silkweaver. I started him 9/9/07 and finished 8/30/10, almost 3 years later to the date. I substituted #4 Kreinik braid for the recommended #8 braid and I changed all the beads to Mill Hill petite substitutes. The petites just seemed to fit better on the fabric. The 02012 pink beads had a direct substitute with 42012. The other two I had to kind of fudge but I liked 40168 for the 02026 blue shade and ended up using 40374 instead of 03034 for the purple shade. I actually found by accident that there are at least two shades of 40374 out there. I found a lighter shade at House of Stitches that I really liked for the pink/purple beading at the branch edges but I just wasn't as happy with it for the details on Santa's hat or a few other spots so I went searching at a LNS that does mostly quilting but also has a little stitching stuff and found a darker petite bead that I really liked, brought it home and discovered today as I was putting things away that I actually had bought more 40374 but in a darker shade.

Not much more stitchy news to share right now. I'll have to find a new project tonight after the little one goes to bed and I rearrange my freezers. That's right, I said freezers. Erich and my Dad picked up our brand new freezer last night so now I've got some real room to store meat I find on sale and casseroles made ahead of time. No more cramped freezer above the fridge for me:) Yes, it really does take very little to make me happy but this will make both my boys happy when I get back to work and am not home to cook every night. Not to say that Erich won't cook because he will but the results are well, a little mixed sometimes to put it nicely.

2010-08-25T10:35:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to say that the baptism went well. I have pictures of it and of the St. Basil's model which is finished and pretty cool except for the low quality decals that look much better when viewed from a distance. As soon as Webshots and my computer start playing nicely again I'll get the pics up.

Not much else going on this week except that Joshua had some minor outpatient surgery this morning. He's doing fine, the procedure itself was minor but he had to be put under to do it so we got to spend the morning at the surgery center and he's now sleeping off the effects of the anesthesia up in his room. Poor guy, he's now got two teeth coming in, stitches, a bruised up hand from the IV, and a sore throat and upset belly. Hopefully he'll be up to getting some gentle hugs and presents from his grandparents later. Other than that we'll be having a quiet rest of the day today.

Souvenirs

2010-08-18T12:54:00.002-04:00

Forgive me for forgetting to post this sooner but we actually found some rather cool souvenirs while we were in Russia and by the way we're home two months today. That went so fast!

I forgot about these until we were starting to get ready for Joshua's upcoming baptism on Sunday and Erich pulled out this kit to start working on it...

It's a Russian brand Lego-like model of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. We thought it would be really cool to put up on a shelf in Joshua's room. A very high shelf indeed we've decided after opening the box.

An instruction book, 14 bags of parts, and decals! This is definitely a job for Super Dad:) We'll see if he can get it done before Sunday. We're hoping to put it out on a table with the cake along with a digital frame playing some of our Russian trip pics for the family who we haven't seen since we've been home.

And I don't know how I forgot but I actually found Russian cross stitch in Russia. How cool is that! The mall with our favorite grocery store out in the region had a small craft shop at the entrance to the grocery store. It actually had a really nice selection of supplies for various crafts. There was quite a lot of yarn and some beads as well as some cross stitch supplies. They were mostly kits but they did have some fibers and fabric as well. The kits were all Russian brands, nothing I recognized from home. I do remember seeing Madeira silks which I haven't really seen often in the US but I have a few skeins I got in an exchange I received from a European stitcher. I restrained myself because we were worried about baggage weight at that point in the trip but I did buy two kits- one of St. Basil's Cathedral and one of another Cathedral in Moscow that I know we saw but Erich and I are disagreeing on which one it was exactly. I'll have to do a little research into that one another day, Wikipedia is not immediately answering my question.

The Russia Trip- Part 7

2010-08-17T08:36:00.000-04:00

We had a good weekend in Chicago with Erich's family. Joshua got to meet the Chicago crew and we got to make a run up to Mars' Cheese Castle for cheese and sausage goodies. I did indeed take some of my recent stash purchases up with us and got in a little stitching but there wasn't time for much. I do have the last Russia post for you though...

6/13/10-6/18/10: So our stay in Moscow wasn't terribly exciting. We arrived on a Saturday and it was a 3 day weekend holiday so we had a few days to settle in and get into a routine which pretty much consisted of getting everyone up and dressed and eating breakfast in shifts while entertaining Joshua with toys and whatever we could find on TV (we had about a dozen English-speaking channels, yay!). Sometimes we'd take a walk outside if it wasn't too bad then back home for lunch, nap during which we were napping also, then playtime and dinner prep, bath and bedtime. There wasn't a whole lot of good weather for sightseeing while we were there. We mostly got either hot and humid or cold and rainy weather so I'm glad we had the opportunity on earlier trips. Our most exciting trips were to the grocery store down the street which was in the middle of a mall. Since we were living in an apartment we were able to try a variety of dishes from their deli and frozen section. I did have an interesting encounter with a young man from India. I had walked over to the store by myself and was browsing the selection of frozen pelmeni when he came up next to me and asked if I spoke English. I was shocked he had to ask as I was under the impression I stood out like sore thumb. Anyway, he seemed relieved that I did and we had a short discussion about where the fresh veggies were and how to go about getting them weighed before checking out.

By the time the doctor from the Embassy came on Monday for his visit (required for the visa application) we were feeling pretty good about being Mommy and Daddy and he gave Joshua a good report so all the better. Tuesday was the first part of our Embassy paperwork and a translator came to help us fill out the forms and then she submitted them for us. Wednesday was our actual Embassy interview and we spent a few hours at the Embassy chatting with several other adoptive families that had come in from other regions, most much closer than ours. That process was a little intimidating as we had to stand in line to pay before getting Joshua's visa. Apparently the rule in Russia is that if you have a small child you don't wait, you get an automatic pass to the front of the line. It felt very uncomfortable to push through like that but that was the way it was. The actual interview process was pretty easy. We verified some documents, showed our passports, listened to instructions and were given The Packet plus Joshua's passport with his visa. The Packet is very important, it has all the documents needed by the border control on the US side to process Joshua's adoption and get him into the country. Oh, and you can't open it and neither can anyone else before it gets to the US so we were told to be careful with it and not let anyone at the Russian airport open it. Somewhere in the midst of all this Joshua started teething again and decided that he wanted nothing to do with most of the food we had available for him. Rice cereal and the occasional animal cracker were about all he'd accept. Fun stuff.

Paperwork done, we were ready to finally start the long journey home the next day. This was the part of the trip I'd least been looking forward to and notice there are no photos until we actually get home and I didn't take them either. We were too exhausted. I'd heard horror stories and was expecting the worst. It wasn't as bad as it could have been but I don't intend on taking my child on a trip that long again for a really long time. Maybe never.

So we were up at a reasonable hour Moscow time (home time about 10:30 pm Wednesday night, remember that) on Thursday morning. We leisurely packed our things and bathed and dressed. Got caught in traffic on the way to the airport which didn't bother Joshua as he took a nap. Had a small scare at passport control on the way out of the country. We got stopped of course, which we had expected and were detained for about 20 minutes while our documents were checked. Made us a little nervous as we were running a little late because of the traffic snag but a very nice Russian man who spoke English stayed with us and offered to translate for us if needed. Thankfully our documents were eventually pronounced satisfactory and we were on our way home.

The flight from Moscow to JFK was better than we'd hoped for in that it was only half full with the back half of the plane (where we were sitting) even less than that so we were able to spread out over a whole row of four seats and probably could have had a few aisle seats too if we wanted. Turned out to be a great thing as Joshua slept for maybe an hour of the 11 hour flight. Have you ever entertained an active 18 month old for 10 hours in an enclosed space with limited resources? How about an 18 month old who wants to get down and walk but then decides he really doesn't like it on his own two feet because the plane is half dark? Let's just say we were thankful for the seatbelts which were endlessly entertaining, the two Russian grandmas behind us who thought he was a hoot and asked to hold him several times, and animal crackers.

JFK made me nervous. We knew we only had a short layover and a lot to do before making it to our connecting flight. We were lucky in that passport control was not terribly busy. We handed over the paperwork and The Packet and let me tell you, the adoption stories on TV make this part of the process look so sweet and "Aw, welcome home cutie! You're a US citizen now!" Not so much for us, they pretty much ripped open the envelope, flipped through things, and pointed us to the office for the rest of our "interview." Oh, and I got into an argument with the border control officer about the paperwork during the interview which consisted of them taking our documents and that was about it. She wanted to take our original copies of the adoption and birth certificate which the Embassy had told us specificially not to give to anyone no matter what. I ended up winning and she ended up with copies. Probably not the smartest people to argue with but I was tired and I had just had the lecture at the Embassy about how much red tape there is to go through to get new copies.

Unfortunately JFK was where the trip really started to fall apart. After dealing with the folks at border control we got our luggage and got it all rechecked, made it through security with minimal problems, and found our gate. Then the explosive diarrhea all the adoptive parents warned us about hit. Poor kid. It was bad, throw out the outfit bad and I'll leave it at that. Unfortunately that was also about the time Joshua decided he was really, really tired which was also bad because we were in the middle of a large airport and at that point he was having trouble going to sleep anywhere but a quiet room with no one else in it. So we were treated to a lovely screaming fit during which nothing would pacify him. Eventually we got him to drink a little juice which kept him happy for a few minutes. When we boarded the plane we had 3 seats but only 2 together so Erich took him since Josh was favoring him at the time and we hoped for the best and that maybe he might consider taking a nap on the extra seat. Of course the plane was delayed so we got to sit for at least 30 minutes while they did whatever it was they were doing and all sounded well from my seat at the back of the plane until the captain made an announcement about our status and that was the start of a 2 hour screaming fit. And of course since we were mid-roll down the runway when he really got going there was nothing I could do but sit there and listen. Eventually I was able to get up and go help poor Erich but there wasn't much either of us could do but wait it out. Nothing, and I mean nothing and no one could do anything to help. Poor kid was just too tired and couldn't get it under control. I don't blame him, we'd been up for at least 24 hours at that point and I really just wanted to cry with him. Eventually he did wear himself out and slept for the last 45 minutes or so of the flight.

We were almost afraid to move him when we landed and decided that the best course of action would be to wait until the plane was almost empty just in case he woke up and started screaming again. I had to laugh a little bit at poor Erich who had apparently had conversations with some of the surrounding passengers while I'd been stuck at the back of the plane. There were a few people who made some not so nice comments about the screaming as they passed and I guess Erich had had enough. He finally told one group that he was really sorry but they ought to cut the kid some slack as he'd started his day in Moscow and oh by the way he was an orphan we'd just adopted. I think that had the desired effect as their jaws kind of dropped and they mumbled apologies and moved on. Oh well, they'll live. I'm sure the journey was much more traumatic for our little guy than them.

When the plane was finally almost empty I took our sweaty, sleeping angel from Erich's lap and he never stirred. We gathered our things and started the longest walk ever to baggage claim where we were met by my parents and brother, Erich's parents, Erich's sister and brother in law, and my grandparents. That was the most welcome sight I've ever seen as we came down the escalator and saw them all waiting at the bottom.

As you can see we quickly decided that everyone should get a chance to hold him before he woke up in case he was not in the mood then. He eventually did wake up in my mother's arms and kind of gave her a "Who are you?" look but didn't cry. By the time we got outside the airport he had apparently recharged enough to be social again and was pointing at all the cars going by and the lights of the city as it was almost midnight by that time. Now when we asked for a ride home before the trip started I thought maybe my parents would rent a van of some sort but apparently they had other ideas. They rented a Cadillac Escalade limo! We were definitely not expecting that but they said our little guy had to come home in style and besides it cost about the same so why not. So we not only got an awesome ride home but we had a driver too so no one had to drive. They came fully prepared with snacks and sodas and snacks and toys for Joshua who thought this was the best thing ever. Unfortunately we were too tired and it was too dark to get pictures but he took turns on everyone's lap eating their snacks and playing with toys. It would be safe to say that he had them all wrapped around his little fingers by the time we finally hit home.

Since he was so awake and Erich and I were about dead on our feet by the time we made it home my mother stayed over for what was left of that first night. We weren't sure if Joshua would sleep or not but after exploring the house for a few minutes and getting a new diaper and some jammies he went down easy. So did Erich. Mom and I were too wired to go to bed right away so we stayed up for anothe hour or so, talking and looking at pictures of the trip. When I finally crawled up to bed it was almost 5:00AM Friday morning, approximately 31 hours since waking up in Moscow.

I'd like to say we slept the rest of the day away but the adults in the house were all up and ready to go again by late morning. Erich had to go into work and check on some things and graciously offered to bring home fast food. We decided the best course of action would be to let Joshua sleep awhile and we woke him around 2 in the afternoon. It worked perfectly, he stayed up until normal bedtime and has been on schedule ever since. Erich and I were not that easily turned around but we made it there within a week or two.

We spent that first day home making lots of calls to family and ended up with a house full of grandparents all anxious to see the new arrival again. Erich's grandparents who were not able to make the midnight run were over to see their newest great grandson.

And my parents brought Leland home. They weren't too sure about each other at first but Joshua gradually got braver as the day went on and I'm happy to say that now they tolerate each other very well.

So that's really the end of our adventures in Russia for now. I'd really like to do it again someday but I think we need a little time to forget about the frustrations of adoption paperwork and international travel with a toddler first!

Shopping and Santa's Magic

2010-08-12T08:58:00.003-04:00

Joshua's daycare day and Erich's long shift at work lined up to be the same day this week so he suggested I take yesterday as a Mommy Day. I don't know when the last time was that I had a day completely to myself with absolutely no work to do but I enjoyed it.

My first stop was to the optometrist to pick up my new lens. Yes lens, not lenses. I had an exam a couple weeks ago and tried to pick my new lenses last week but apparently there was a little trouble. When they popped the new lenses in and I took a look I couldn't quite get everything into focus. They assured me that it was just my eyes trying to get used to the glasses and I should give them a fair trial. I gave it to the post office and back when I realized that it really wasn't just new glasses- I could see perfectly out of the left lens but the right was worse than my eye without any glasses at all. Back to the optometrist. At first they wanted me to try them for the weekend. No. Then they wanted me back for a second exam. Fine. So they put back in my old right lens and as I'm getting into my car they come running after me to tell me they think they see the problem. I go back in and they show me where when the doctor wrote down the prescription part of it was a three digit number I can't remember just now, we'll call it 147. When they wrote down the order on the sheet to get the lenses made someone wrote 047 instead. Woohoo, I'm not nuts and I told you there was something wrong. So they had the lens remade and now I can see just fine out of both eyes.

But back to Mommy Day- Stop #2 was House of Stitches and I took my time since I had nowhere to be.

I bought more than I intended to but I don't get out there very often and there were a couple things calling so this Mommy got a treat. There was a bit more but those are presents and you never know who might be reading:)

My other stop for the day was Jimmy Johns to pick up lunch and then home to enjoy TV that is neither sports nor cartoons and stitch the afternoon away. The result of my afternoon alone with Santa is that I finally finished the stitching portion and am ready to start the beading.

It's a few days later than my goal of finishing the stitching but not too bad. I think I'll leave the beading until next week though as I won't have a whole lot of stitching time the rest of this week. We're getting ready for a weekend trip to Chicago to go to a baby shower and visit some of Erich's relatives there. I'm going to take some smalls with me but definitely no beading. Take care and have a good weekend!

The Russia Trip- Part 6

2010-08-06T08:16:00.000-04:00

6/8/10-6/12/10: We were lucky enough to have Joshua sleep all night the first night and pretty much every night since. After we got him we had to spend a few more nights in the region while the powers that be processed his adoption certificate, birth certificate, and passport. Erich had to make two trips to the city we had court in to finish things up so our first full day together was spent with me taking care of the baby in the hotel while Erich made the 3 hour drive out, took care of business and then rode 3 hours back. He had to repeat the process two days later to pick up Joshua's passport so it definitely stretched my imagination a few times to try and entertain Joshua.

On one of our in between days the translator took a nice walk to the park with us. We were expecting a park with benches, maybe some playground equipment but we actually went to the amusement park which had all the rides we would expect to see at the county fair at home plus all the popcorn, cotton candy, and ice cream you could want. She told us that in her country the rides are permanent in big cities and are open all summer. Unfortunately Joshua was too small for most rides but we did get to ride the ferris wheel which was an adventure in itself- the ride never stops moving and you have to hop on and off when a free bucket comes by. The view was worth it though...

We were also able to walk around and view some of the city's fountains which are for swimming, again, too bad Joshua wasn't older at the time...

Even though we were not with any other families the last few days in region seemed to go by quickly and before we knew it the time had come to fly back to Moscow. The flight was an early morning flight so we had to be up at about 4:30 AM to get packed and off to the airport. The up side to that was that Joshua was pretty sleepy and did sleep for part of the flight home. He was definitely bored by our treats and toys by the time the plane landed and ready for lunch and a nap so we were glad to get on solid ground again when the plane landed. We thought we'd be going straight to the apartment we'd rented for our stay in Moscow but our driver had other ideas. He wanted to get Joshua's picture for his visa application done and out of the way so we drove around town looking for a photographer open on a holiday. It took awhile. By the time we got there Joshua had fallen asleep and was not too happy to have his photo taken...

We eventually made it to our new temporary home and got settled in. It was a nice one bedroom place on New Arbat Street which had access to plenty of shops and entertainment if we were so inclined but with a baby most of our outings were to the grocery store with an occasional stop at the toy store. It probably didn't help that the weather during our stay was either so hot and humid you could cut it with a knife or cold and raining. Oh well, we'd been to Moscow before so we weren't too disappointed by the lack of sightseeing this trip. I'll leave you with some shots of the apartment and some looks out our windows. We were on the 22nd floor so we had a great view!

The Russia Trip- Part 5

2010-08-03T10:01:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy few days around here- I took Joshua to check out the daycare one day last week and spent some time playing with the kids there. He helped me get all the invitations to his baptism out in the mail. We said goodbye to one of my cousins on Sunday as she left yesterday for her training for Americorps. It was sad to see her go since her assignment is at least 10 months long but we'll see her again at Christmas. And then yesterday we took Joshua to the daycare for a real stay and Erich and I took a day to relax and do some shopping. It was hard to leave him but he really had a good time there and didn't seem to mind at all that we left him. He got an excellent report sheet at the end of the day and I'm sure he's looking forward to playing with the kids again next week. We're going to try to take him at least a day or two every week until I go back to work to get him adjusted and allow him to play with the kids since there aren't any others at our house. And on top of all that we were excited to hear that there's a new little one in the family. My cousin in NC had her little boy yesterday and we saw some pics but won't see the real thing until Christmas so sounds like Christmas will be extra special this year.

Sorry the Russia posts have been a little slow in coming, probably two more to finish the story.

6/5/10-6/7/10:So I left us patiently waiting out our ten days before we could take custody of the baby. We got another visit with him at summer camp and took along his new shoes to make sure they fit. Not only did they fit but he loved them and the noise they made on the hardwood floor!

The expected chain of events was that the two families would leave us on 6/6, the single mother Erich and I were traveling with would have her second court date on 6/7 and Erich and I would get Joshua on 6/8. Not quite what happened but it worked out. We did lose two families on 6/6 as they started their journey home that day so the rest of us went shopping, played with email, and had dinner. We found a really neat Lego set of St. Basil's Cathedral which I'll have to take a pic of sometime soon. After we got settled back up in our room that evening we got a surprise phone call from the translator that we would be able to pick up Joshua a day early, tomorrow! We were very happy to have done most of the food shopping for him a day or two earlier when the other families had gone to the store for their children but we still had to pick up a cake. It is apparently the custom in that region to bring a cake to the orphanage workers as a thank you/goodbye present from the child that is leaving with his family so we set out on a quick walk down the street to the bakery and picked up this...

First thing the next morning when the translator came to pick up the other adoptive mom for court (we would be traveling solo with the driver to the summer camp) we arranged for a crib to be brought to our room and the sweet cleaning lady made Joshua's bed up special for him.

We made it to the summer camp near lunch time and were shown to an office and then were taken back to the playroom and Joshua was brought in. We got him changed and played while we waited for everything to be ready.

We waited and waited and unfortunately weren't sure what we were waiting for since we had no translator but it turned out the orphanage wanted to make sure Joshua had lunch before he left. They brought in a huge bowl of soup and cup of something to drink and fed him one last time before saying goodbye and finally we were on our way. It felt so strange to not have to give him back this time and a little scary but it was finally real, he was really and truly ours. He was a good boy on the way back to the hotel even though we had to make a stop at the orphanage for a few more bits of paperwork.

We got him back to the hotel room and within about 15 minutes could tell it was getting close to nap time so we changed our first stinky diaper and laid him down in the bedroom area of our hotel room. Thankfully this room had sliding doors that closed off the bed area from the little sitting area so we had somewhere to go while he napped. He went down easily and quietly so we checked after awhile just to make sure he was okay and found this...

Now when I left him he was facing the other way with his head on the pillow and covered up with the blanket but apparently that was not his preferred sleeping position:) He slept like that for a few hours and shortly after he got up we had the other adoptive mother we travelled with knocking at our door to let us know that her court session had gone well and she would be able to pick up her new son and daughter in approximately ten days. Unfortunately because of her extended stay she would definitely have to leave for the ten day wait so we would have to say goodbye to her that evening as she was flying out early the next morning. So we had one more dinner together at the nice little restaurant down the street and treated ourselves to tea and pastries from the bakery around the corner afterward. It was sad to see our last traveling companion leaving us but we were very happy that she'd been able to complete her adoption and that we were that much closer to getting home too.

I've never seen such pretty sweets as those we saw in Russia. It's hard to see in the picture but the one on the left in back had little mushrooms made of wafer cookies and little berries made out of icing on top. I wish I'd been able to take pics of the things we didn't buy in the bakery but wasn't sure how the lady behind the counter would feel about that.

The Russia Trip- Part 4

2010-07-27T17:17:00.002-04:00

So we had a pretty nice weekend. Got to go out to dinner with both sides of the family at different points over the past few days so that was nice. We're in the starting phases of planning for Joshua's baptism and an open house afterward on August 22 and got some of the basics set for that so I'm feeling good there. And I finally got to work on a project that's been bugging me for a couple years now- the photo albums. Before we got a digital camera we of course printed all the photos we took and them promptly stuffed them into a large cardboard box which after 6 years of marriage is now overflowing and has been for a couple years. Not that I'm adding to it anymore, just been ignoring it. I'm happy to say that about half of the photos are now in albums and the other half will hopefully join them in the next week or so. Oh, and I almost finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which I've been seeing so much about but for some reason wasn't interested until I picked it up at B&N a week or so ago. I love it! And I really love that I'm not working right now otherwise the nights I've stayed up untli midnight reading would have killed me at work the next day. But back to Russia for awhile...

6/1/10-6/4/10:There's really not a whole lot of exciting stuff to tell in this period of the trip, at least not for our family. We mostly hung out with the three other families in region and watched two of them go through the process of bringing their children out of the orphanage which ended up being quite helpful as you'll see. We walked around and shopped a lot since the weather was nice. We found quite a few grocery stores as well as children's shops, a mall, and an electronics store in our wanderings. We took on the Russian custom of daily grocery shopping and wandered out to the store at least once a day for more bread, sausage, ramen noodle, or sometimes an ice cream. I got lots of requests from our family for pictures of what it looks like to walk around in the streets of Russia so I'll share some of those I took while we walked and out the windows of our hotel rooms...

We actually did get to visit a couple of times once our son was moved to summer camp. His orphanage has some property out about half an hour to an hour's drive (depending on which hotel we were staying at) out in the country and it really was beautiful out there. During the first visit we had there the staff was still cleaning and moving things around so they asked us to play with the children outside. It was very nice except that it was mosquito season so we got eaten alive that day!

The summer camp was located near the top of a huge hill (especially to this Indiana girl who lives in flat land!) and the driver stopped on the way home part way down so we could all take some pictures. There were a lot of people who had built their own summer homes on the hill and plenty of them were out doing yard work and getting their summer gardens ready.

I suppose I ought to leave it here for now. It's getting kind of long and the next part of the story takes awhile so that'll be next post.

Update on Santa

2010-07-23T17:22:00.004-04:00

The weather today is hot and humid and I don't feel like doing anything that resembles housework and apparently neither does the computer. The photo editing program I'm using has decided that it does not want to edit large numbers of photos thank you very much so uploading the remaining photos from the Russia trip is unfortunately at a standstill for the moment. I got a few things through before the program froze, one of them being a current pic of Santa's Magic...

Since Erich went back to work I've been trying to use Joshua's nap times as me time since I'm still home with him and have actually made some pretty good progress. Some of it has been slow going as a good portion of the white I've filled in since last time is white Wisper which is a neat effect but a pain to stitch with. If I get a couple good days in and the Wisper behaves I might still make my goal of having all the stitching done by the end of the month. Doesn't hurt that it's way too hot and humid to spend much time outside right now too.

Not much else to report at the moment. Joshua continues to do well. He's been kind of tired and cuddly the last couple days but nothing seems wrong so we're hoping that means we're either going to see some more new teeth or maybe some growth soon. I'll try and get up a new pic next time.

Oh and before I forget- I played with the new template feature and found a nice, bright one. Let me know what you think, I may have to play with the colors a bit more to make everything readable.

Take care and stay cool!

Russia Trip Part 3

2010-07-22T08:35:00.003-04:00

Meant to get back to this yesterday but I actually had to run in to work to do my CPR recertification for the immunization season. I know, I'm off on leave but if I didn't do it yesterday there was a good chance I'd have to drive 3 hours or better to get to the instructor when I get back to work so this was much easier since it was at one of the stores near my house. Plus I don't want to miss the chance to stick people this fall! Just kidding, though I do think that immunizations given at the pharmacy are a good thing for patients as long as the staff are properly trained. Anyway, back to Russia-

5/28/10-5/31/10:Court day was Friday, 5/28. That was the part of the trip I dreaded most especially knowing that things were tense because of our friend from TN. We were dressed and ready to go by 6:30AM local time as the court session would take place in the region's capital city and it was about a 3 hour drive to get there. We arrived without incident and were shown to a long hallway full of benches of waiting people. The courts had been closed the previous day and I'm assuming half these people like us had had 5/27 court dates that got moved to the 28th.

It took about 4 hours to get to us, the translator told us the prosecutor was busy and I imagine she was with all the people we saw.

Finally it was our turn and we were shown to the judge's office where the judge, a prosecutor, a court recorder, and a social worker waited for us. We weren't sure what to expect but in our case it really wasn't as bad as we feared. We were asked the questions we expected- why were we adopting, what sort of family situation did we have, financial resources, did our families approve, were we aware of the risks, and so on. It was amazing to see the judge leafing through our file, all of our documents with the shiny gold seals that we'd been collecting for almost two years. It was probably four inches high, no wonder we'd always been working on some document. I hadn't realized how much paper we'd produced for this moment. After we answered questions to the judge's satisfaction the prosecutor and social worker spoke and then we all left the room for the judge to consider our case. When we were allowed back in we were told that we were approved and would be granted custody following the ten day waiting period. I think we both felt as though a huge weight had been lifted at that point, now all that was left to do was wait and we'd be a family of 3 soon.

Unfortunately, things did not go as well for the single mother we were traveling with. The judge had issue with some of her paperwork and did not deny her but wanted it fixed before approving her so that was very disappointing for all of us.

Saturday was a quiet day and Erich and I spent our 6th wedding anniversary relaxing in a hotel room halfway round the world from home. The biggest excitement we had was that we had to change hotel rooms (within the same hotel) without the aid of a translator. It went pretty well since they spoke a little English and I speak a little Russian. We had a nice dinner at the restaurant down the street. I wish I could cook as they did, they had the most wonderful soups and blintzes. If I could have bottled their mushroom soup to bring home, I would have. I don't think I really ever saw a bad dish there.

On Sunday we moved to a new hotel. There was a huge convention in town over the coming week and the rooms in the other hotel (and quite a few in the new one too) were booked for it. We were familiar with it, we had stayed there on our very first trip out to the region. Unfortunately the huge room we had been treated to last time was booked so we were given the next best available.

It was like being in college again, only in Russia but it was only temporary. We would go back to the first hotel when the convention was over. The first hotel was nicer and had more shops and things within walking distance but the second hotel was in walking distance to our orphanage so it wasn't all bad. Plus, we met up with two more families from our agency here. They had had court a week before us and had waited their 10 days at home so they were returning to pick up their children. It was nice to meet other adoptive families and to have some other Americans to spend time with in a foreign land and we all shared our experiences over a dinner of Russian pizza which our translator had kindly ordered for us. It was quite good, less sauce and toppings than the American version but with fresh herbs over the top which gave it a pretty unique flavor.

We got to visit the kids on Monday which was definitely a juggling act for our translator as the single mother we'd had court with was put up at a different hotel and one of the families we were now staying with had kids at a different orphanage than the rest of us. We were very excited to see Joshua again and told him that we would be taking him home soon but he was much more interested in trying to get my water bottle open.

This was the last visit we got for a few days as the translator needed to go with the other families to get their kids' birth certificates and passports arranged (all back in the capital city) and our orphanage was ready to start moving the kids to their summer camp out in the country which we did get to visit and I'll get to next time. I think I hear a little one waking up so I'd better leave it here for now.

The Russia Trip- Part 2

2010-07-16T14:35:00.006-04:00

Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a good weekend. We spent most of ours preparing for and then having a family cookout at our house on Sunday. We had our parents and grandparents over to celebrate Joshua being home a whole month as of yesterday. It was nice to get everyone together and Joshua loves having extra people to play with for the afternoon. And now we have lots of leftovers so Mommy doesn't have to cook for a day or two. Everyone's happy! But back to Russia...

5/26/10-5/27/10: So last time I left us sleeping off jetlag at the hotel. I'm really glad we were able to get there without adding an extra night in Moscow but I don't think I've ever been that exhausted in my life, at least up to that point. Add to the almost 2 days worth of travel that we were now 11 time zones ahead of home as we were a little confused as to the current time for almost the first two weeks.

Anyway, our first full day in region was actually quite busy and I forgot to add last time that we were joined in region by another adoptive parent from our agency that shared the same court date as ours so we did all of our traveling and baby visits together from here on. It was nice to have company. Our morning was spent completing the 8 doctor medical panel required by our judge before court. It was interesting, the Russian medical system is a bit different than the system here at home. Where we had only had to see one doctor at home to do the required medical for our home study, here we had to go to the hospital and see 8 different specialists who either asked questions, did medical tests, or in one case drew blood for testing. We spent the morning going from exam room to exam room in the hospital and were just about done by lunchtime.

Since we weren't due to visit the children until later in the afternoon our translator took us out to do a little souvenir and grocery shopping and out to the fort for sightseeing. Erich and I had been to the fort before but it was a rainy day so we stayed long enough to get a couple quick pics and then back to the dry car. This time it was a beautiful sunny day so we took our time walking around and got some nice pictures to show Joshua later.

And these last few are of the cathedral, city, and mill as seen from the fort. It sits on top of a pretty big hill so the view is quite nice on a good day. The translator told us the mill was for some type of metal, probably steel or aluminum but she wasn't sure.

Finally it was time to head to the orphanage and see our children. We were like kids waiting for Christmas, we knew it was coming but we just wanted the time to come already! The other things we did that day were nice (not counting the hospital visit, that was just necessary) but this was the main event. We tried very hard to patiently wait until we could get into the social worker's office to get our blue booties and then to be led up to the playroom where we would have our visit but I don't remember how successful we were. In fact once the kids were brought to us I don't think either family took a single picture. My camera dates all mine from the second visit on. I don't remember much about that first visit except that we were very excited to see Joshua and happy to see that he'd grown and was walking better than our last visit in December. Oh, and that we remembered the hard way that the orphanage starts potty training early and doesn't use diapers anymore after a certain age unless the adoptive parents bring them. Guess what we bought before the next visit.

Our second day in region was slightly less exciting. We walked around and explored on our own for part of the day and goto to visit the children again. This time I took a few pictures.

This was the last time we got to see him before our court session. It was hard to leave him not knowing for sure what would happen in court but we gave him an extra hug and hoped everything would go well and that we'd really be Mama and Papa the next time we saw him.

Originally I was going to talk about court today too but it's getting to be a long post and a certain little boy is very ready for his lunch so I'll leave it here for now and get to the court session next time.

A short stitchy post

2010-07-16T11:04:00.000-04:00

Forgot to post this yesterday, guess I was in travel mode but I actually have done some stitching lately. I'm spending my time this month on a Christmas in July SAL working on my Santa's Magic. I really want to see him above my fireplace at Christmas one of these years so I'm going to try my best to get some good stitching in during Joshua's nap times.

This isa closeup of the area I was working on when I left it last time which I'm sad to say was almost a whole year ago...

And here's the whole thing as of Monday after about two weeks of work...

I'm starting to get close, just the rest of his sleeve then his mittens and all the sparklies he's hanging onto. Not looking forward to the beading for this one though, there's a ton of it and I know I can't get any of that done while Joshua's awake. That may take me the whole month of August!

The Russia Trip- Part 1

2010-07-15T11:24:00.003-04:00

So it's been a few days longer than I meant to be gone but it seems like there's always something else to do before I sit down at the computer these days. You'd think I'd have more time since I'm not working right now but it just isn't working out that way.

Anyway, I promised Russia posts and here's the first official one of the trip. I'm really glad I made small journal type entries in a notebook during the trip, there's so much that happened over the almost 4 weeks we were there!

5/23/10-5/25/10: The best flight reservations we could get were out of Chicago's O'Hare so we were up and out the door at 5:30 AM on Sunday, May 23 to make our first flight. Everything went smoothly for the first leg of the journey.

Had a little scare at JFK as the lady we got our boarding passes to Moscow from couldn't locate our bags right away and it took us about 45 minutes in various lines to make sure our bags were actually going to make it to Moscow the same time we did. Not usually a big deal for us but this trip we decided to make the flight to the region the same day we arrived in Moscow instead of staying overnight in Moscow first so we only had a 12 hour layover and we had to switch airports for our flight to the region. I was definitely not going to be a happy camper if I made it all the way out there for a 3 1/2 week trip with only my carry-on.

The flight to Moscow was pretty uneventful except that we were an hour late for takeoff for no reason that we were ever given, we just boarded and took off late. We flew a different airline than before and this one must have had a different flight path as the flight was actually only about 10 hours instead of 11-12 as before. We got dinner and some sleep since it was an overnight flight. We were hoping they'd be able to make up a little time in the air but we arrived in Moscow an hour late too. Thankfully our driver/translator and the courier dropping off the rental cell phone were still waiting for us at the gate and we made it to the other airport without a problem.

Our original plan had been to go to a day hotel near the airport for our layover but by the time we actually got through customs, got the bags (big sigh of relief when we saw those come on down the belt!), met the translator, and actually got over there it was only about 6 hours until the next flight took off so we decided to wait it out at the airport instead. So we got some pizza from the Sbarro (way too tired to think to order anything else in Russian), napped a little more, read some, shopped, and watched people. Finally our overnight flight to the region boarded and we were really excited to be so close to our son after 6 months of waiting. The flight went well until landing when it became obvious that we were circling the airport for unknown reasons. All of the announcements up to this point had been in Russian and English but around the time we started circling they were in Russian only so we were a little concerned about what was going on. The circling continued for nearly an hour and then finally we realized we were no longer circling but had climbed higher. Eventually we landed and recognized the name of the airport when it was announced but it wasn't the one we were expecting. Still unsure of what was going on as we spoke enough Russian to ask but probably not enough to understand the answer we called our translator in the region and found out we were diverted because of fog. Eventually we arrived where we were supposed to, bags and all, and got checked into our first of 3 hotel rooms for the trip.

Overall travel time from our house to the hotel room was somewhere in the neighborhood of 42 hours and we were ready for a real bed! We spent the rest of the day unpacking and napping. That last pic, by the way, is of a sign we found posted in our bathroom in both of the rooms we stayed in at this particular hotel. We're not sure why it was there, we didn't ask. I'm not sure I really want to know what sort of behavior would prompt such a sign.

Let the Russia posts begin

2010-07-10T19:52:00.002-04:00

But before I get into our recent trip to Russia, I wanted to share some of my favorite pics from our December trip. These are from our orphanage visits, the things I was itching to show but couldn't until recently:)

Our first family photo and one that was included in the photo album we brought to our court session...

Joshua loved the mirrors in the playroom...

Joshua loved this little tricycle but his legs were just too short to do anything but sit on it.

Probably one of my favorite pics from the trip. Sure he looks all angelic and like he's about to kiss the bear but what you don't see is that he's trying to rip the bear's nose off with his four little teeth about two seconds after this pic was snapped.

Definitely my favorite pic of Joshua and me on this trip. This one was taken right after he was brought to us. His caregiver made a big deal of pointing out how nice it was that we matched that day:)

That's it for the moment, it's almost bedtime and Joshua's had enough of being cooped up in the computer room for now. Off to get a snack and then bedtime for babies. Back soon!

2010-07-08T16:45:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post to say that we made it back from the specialist late yesterday evening. The appointment went well and Joshua was very good, even when they had to stick him for the TB test. The initial opinions were pretty close to what I was hoping for, he seems to be doing well but is small for his size and a couple months behind on a few developmental things. No one seems to be too concerned though as long as the bloodwork all comes back with the right values and we continue to make progress.

We really liked the doctor and will be happy to schedule the followup in six months which was her recommendation. It will be exciting to see how much progress we can make in that time and hopefully her "diet" will get him moving closer to normal in size and weight. The doctor basically told us to think of all the things we'd avoid while dieting (butter, fatty foods, cream) and feed those to our son:) Now we just have to make sure that we don't partake of too many of those things ourselves!

On a stitchy note, I did manage to almost finish one Christmas ornament (minus beading) in the car on the 5 hour ride to the appointment and get about half of another done on the way home. Pics coming another day.

Keep cool, we're trying to. We've got temps in the high 80's to low 90's with humidity to match. Don't you just love summer?

The pumpkins are done!

2010-07-03T20:39:00.002-04:00

Sorry to be gone for a week, it's been a busy one around here! Lots of people to visit and I had at least one day I was out of it- had to get 3 cavities filled at the dentist's office and I really didn't feel like much after that. But I feel much better now and I've been busy starting to upload and organize trip pics from Russia so those will make it into posts soon.

There was a little HDing in my house last night- finally finished the piece I've been working on. This is Donna Vermillion Giampa's Pumpkin Patch pillow from JCS magazine, April 2009 I think but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on the issue.

Started on 2/2/10 and finished late on 7/2/10. I stitched it on 28 count Sage Jobelan with the recommended DMC and am planning to talk someone into finishing it as a pillow for me as I still haven't gotten around to getting a sewing machine. It's intended as a gift for our family friend that painted the adorable Noah's Sub animals on Joshua's bedroom walls for us. For now I'm moving on to another round on Santa's Magic for a little Christmas in July fun.

In baby news, Joshua is still doing well. He's got a new tooth on the bottom that just broke through so he's being pretty picky about what he eats again but he's recently tried and liked chicken nuggets, watermelon, and banana so I can't complain too much. I was really proud of him when he picked up and ate the banana slices this morning. He has had a real problem with picking up any wet foods with his fingers since we got him so this is a huge deal:) He wouldn't have done it three weeks ago when we first got him. He still won't pick up the watermelon himself but he will eat it if I hold it, I'm just happy he's trying it. I know one of these days he'll pick that up too. We'll see how he's really doing next week when he has appts with both our regular physician and a specialist who sees only internationally adopted kiddos. I'm looking forward to getting everyone's opinions and advice on things. I think he's doing okay all things considered but it'll be good to hear it from the experts too.

We've seen lots of people this week but Joshua probably had the most fun blowing bubbles with Erich's sister, his Aunt Krista a couple days ago.

I tried to get some of my nephew too but he came out as a 5 year old blur in all the pictures so
that didn't work out so well. He was much more interested in chasing the dog around the yard than standing still for a picture even if it was for Aunt Sara.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th tomorrow! We'll be busy with church in the morning and two cookouts in the afternoon/evening, one on Erich's side and one for my Grandpa's birthday which is tomorrow. We're looking forward to getting Joshua together with all his little cousins for some good play time. I'll try to get back before we have to leave town for Joshua's appt with the specialist.

2010-06-25T13:22:00.002-04:00

2 days in a row, woohoo! Don't get too spoiled by the regular blogging, this mama does have to go back to work eventually:) Thanks for the well wishes, we're beyond thrilled to finally be home with our little guy.

I can't believe we've had him home for a week already. He's changed so much since the shy little guy we met in an orphanage in December, no even from the shy and quiet little guy we visited in the orphanage in late May before our court appearance. It is amazing how much he's opened up and how active and happy he is now. I was really expecting a child who was quite far behind in development but he's really doing quite well all things considered. At 19 months old he's off-the-charts-small for his age (some 12 month sized clothes are still a bit big on him) but his head size is in the 50th percentile and the doctors are telling us that he'll catch up in weight and height. He's surprised us with the amount of chatter coming out of him since he's been home (he was pretty much silent at the orphanage) and the things he can do by himself. He walks and runs quite well and has pretty good fine motor skills. We found out last night that he is pretty capable with a spoon and again this morning...

I guess I had been under the impression that he had always been fed by someone at the orphanage, that was all we had ever seen them do. He sure didn't like picking things up off the tray with his fingers but for fun we gave him a spoon and he's eaten almost the whole bowl of food by himself at three different meals and now that we've found some things he likes to eat we're really in business. Eating has been our biggest challenge so far- in the region he ate everything put in front of him, in Moscow he rejected almost everything except rice cereal and fruit even though we were buying the exact same brands of food we'd had in region. Same thing at home until Wednesday night when we discovered that beef stew is his most favorite thing ever apparently. So now we're up to a diet of rice cereal, some baby fruit, Gerber puff cereal, Pringles, beef stew, mashed potatoes, chicken and dumplings, juice, animal crackers, the occasional other cracker or cookie, sometimes a piece of cheese, and a few sips of milk if he feels like it. We're making progress and I'm a happy Mom.

Lest you think I've done nothing for the past month except Mom stuff, I do actually have a stitching pic for you as well.

This is the beginning of the Donna Vermillion Hydrangea Pillow out of JCS stitched on a mushroom colored 28 ct evenweave. It'll eventually be for my mother and it is what I stitched on while we were in Russia. Not bad for a month's work in a foreign country while chasing an 18 month old for half the time we were there. I'll have to get the Pumpkin Pillow on the scanner sometime soon too, it's almost done and I'm trying hard to finish it during nap times and in the evening after bed. Speaking of, I'd better get going if I'm going to get anything else done during nap time today:) I'll be back soon and hopefully will start to get some trip pics uploaded, no guarantees for tomorrow though- the grandparents are coming and I believe they're bringing new toys and an inflatable pool!

And baby makes three

2010-06-24T14:57:00.002-04:00

It's been a really busy 2 months and I'm sorry I haven't been a better blogger but perhaps you'll forgive me if I share with you the view from the front seat of my car this afternoon...

Yes, that really is what it looks like- my son sleeping in his car seat in my car at home in the US. Finally. It's been a rough couple of months in international adoption with the Hansen case but we were lucky enough to get the call and have our court appearance (almost a month ago today) to finalize Joshua's adoption. We just arrived home with him very early last Friday morning and have had some minor bumps adjusting but everyone is doing well. He's a great kid and we both feel very lucky to have him in our lives. As soon as I get some more quiet nap time I'll work on uploading some of the trip pics and pics from the Grandmas who were kind enough to snap a bunch while Erich and I were kind of out of it with jet lag. We've definitely got pics and stories to share and even a few stitching pics- yes, I got to stitch in Russia and even found a little craft shop that sold cross stitch at the nearby shopping mall in the region the baby is from so of course I had to buy a couple kits:)

These will have to hold you over for now though...

Back soon, I promise!

Crafty Cakes

2010-04-25T15:16:00.002-04:00

I don't usually send you to other blogs to check things out but today's post on Cake Wrecks is on crafty cakes and is definitely worth a look. A few of them even have some cross stitch done in icing. How cool is that!

Not much else is going on around here- work, work, and more work for the moment but Erich's birthday is later this week so we're hoping to get out of town for a night or two next weekend and pick up his b-day gift. He's been lusting after a RC car all of his very own and we've got the money to do it so we are. I'm sure this will require lots of accessories and trips to the hobby shop but I have all the cross stitch I could want and shop for my stuff when I want to so I can't really complain:)

2010-04-18T10:16:00.002-04:00

We're still hanging in there- last week was long and this week promises to be more of the same. Not much to report, Spring is finally reaching us so Erich and I have started to clean up the yard. It's nice to be outside without a coat again. Still stitching on the pumpkins...

At this rate I might actually have a finished project by Fall. Hoping to have good news for you soon.

2010-03-19T19:18:00.002-04:00

Sorry I've been quiet for so long, nothing wrong, just been busy with work and I'm not even sure what else anymore. Still here and still stitching. I'd like to try to get back to at least weekly posting to let you all know that I still live (and stitch!) but we'll see what happens. Here's an update on the pumpkin pillow...

Not tons for almost a month's progress but I'm moving along. The weather's been getting warmer here and I've been itching to do other stuff so this piece hasn't gotten quite as much attention as I'd like to give it but it'll get done eventually. No rush at the moment- no news from the agency but we'll be nearing the 4 month mark in a few weeks so hopefully we'll hear something soon after that. The wait's been harder than last time, we've both been trying very hard to keep busy to keep from thinking about it but that's easier said than done. At least with the nice weather we've been able to get outside more. No work this weekend so we're going to try to get some stuff done around the house and go to Trivia Night at my little brother's school tomorrow night.

Another finished pumpkin

2010-02-23T12:12:00.003-05:00

So sorry to have been ignoring you, I've been working more long days at work which leaves me scrambling to do all the normal stuff I'd do throughout the week on my days off. That and keeping up with the Stitching Olympics over on The Wagon have kept me busy. Not that I've done much stitching for it myself, I'm still kind of stuck on the pumpkin pillow but that's all right, at least I've got some stitching time in on something as you can see...

I really love the colors on this piece, makes me want to do more of the series. Sorry it's a little crooked, it's hard to get it in the scanner just right and still shut the lid without turning it all crooked again. Probably won't fit in there much longer anyway so I'll have to switch to digital pics soon.

Not too much else going on around here. It's still cold and snowy so we're getting a lot of use out of the Netflix trial. I'm really enjoying catching up on shows I never got to watch as well as all the movies we've been meaning to see. I think Netflix will be a keeper when the trial is up.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T13:33:00.002-05:00

It's been a pretty busy week with long drives to work and snowy roads so not a lot of stitching progress to show but I have had a little time. I've spent most of my time on the Pumpkin pillow in anticipation of going back to Russia soon (no word yet, just wishful thinking) but did spend a few hours on Dragon Moon too so here's where they stand at the moment...

Hopefully I'll have a little more time this week. At the very least I intend on taking some time this afternoon and tomorrow (yay, 3 day weekend!) to get some stitching done. Might take a second trip to Joann's and get a bit more floss too. I went yesterday and finished kitting some things but am still missing a few skeins of DMC so I might try the other one in the area tomorrow and see if I have better luck there. I definitely have no shortage of things to watch while stitching between the Olympics and our Netflix trial. We finally signed up and got a month free which we are really enjoying so far. The instant watch selection is a lot better than I thought it might be. Probably helps that with my retail job I haven't had time to watch many new shows the past few years. Oh well, I'll catch up eventually. Now I'm off to enjoy the afternoon!

2010-02-07T14:57:00.002-05:00

I intended to get over here this morning before work but apparently there has been a schedule screw-up (not mine thank goodness!) and I have the day off so I've been out enjoying the morning and am now getting ready for some good stitching time in front of the TV for the rest of the day. And yes, we will be watching the Super Bowl later. How can we miss it- it's our local team, the Colts, against Drew Brees and the Saints. Brees was quarterback at Purdue when I attended school there a few years ago so I have quite a few fond memories of watching him play and would love to see him with a Super Bowl ring. Of course I'd love to see the Colts win again too so I'm a little torn about the whole thing but the Colts won recently so I think I'm breaking out the black and gold today:)

But the real reason I stopped by today was for pictures so here's what I've been up to-

First up is Dragon Moon. I haven't worked on it in a few days but I am up to 7.5 blocks for the Stitching Olympics. I don't think I've got a shot at beating my 125 blocks from last Olympics but I'd like to get some good progress in anyway.

This is part of the reason I'm not going to be breaking any goals this year. It's the beginning of the Pumpkin pillow out of the Donna Vermillion vegetable pillow series JCS ran a few years back. It just stitches up so smoothly it's hard to put down. So my compromise to myself is that I'll work on the dragon this afternoon and switch it out for the pumpkins tonight when the game starts.

2010-02-02T19:31:00.002-05:00

Just got word from the adoption agency today- the documents are now on their way to Russia. My Mom thinks that means we'll be getting a call tomorrow but I'm hoping for something toward the end of the month, expecting nothing at least March. We'll see.

And I was a good girl, sort of. I did work on my Stitching Olympics piece last night but was in the mood for a new start this morning. Didn't have a piece of fabric that quite suited Poppy so I ended up starting Donna Vermillion's Pumpkin Pillow from one of the old JCS issues. I've had it kitted and lying around for awhile now. I'm planning on doing it as a thank-you gift for the lady who painted the baby's room and wanted to give it with a Russian souvenir from the baby after we get back. Thought I better get going now that the paperwork's done again. It'll help the time pass and keep my eyes from falling out over all the over one stitching in my HAED piece for the Olympics.

Stash!

2010-02-01T17:33:00.002-05:00

So today's been a pretty good day considering it's a Monday. First off, our adoption paperwork is arriving at the adoption agency so that it may be shipped to Russia. That one pesky document is lagging behind a day but no big deal. Work wasn't too crazy. And the best part-

The first part of my SB&B birthday/Christmas money order arrived. I'm still missing 2 pieces of fabric, one from SB&B and another from House of Stitches but hey, I could potentially have a new start tonight if I wanted. I admit I'm torn. I really want to stitch Poppy but I also want to try to beat my record from last year's Stitching Olympics over at the Wagon where I've entered the Long Jump challenge for fun. Perhaps Poppy will be my reward for a job well done come March 1, perhaps she'll just be a Monday night treat tonight.

Adventures in paperwork

2010-01-29T19:51:00.002-05:00

So the paperwork is done...almost. It nearly wasn't but I'm getting ahead of the story.

Erich couldn't get the day off yesterday so I left early in the morning to pick up my grandmother (same one that has Celtic Noel impatiently waiting to be hung in her living room) and start our slippery route to Indianapolis. The roads weren't actually that bad, a little snowy but that all cleared up as soon as we were south of South Bend and out of the lake effect bands of snow. The ride was pretty smooth and we made it to Indy late morning. First stop was the home study agency which went well- in and out with my envelope in less than a minute.

Next we worked our way downtown to the Secretary of State's office which was a bit of an adventure as this office is housed in one of two rather large buildings that aren't marked all that well fromt the street. We did a trip around the block (they take up the whole block) and found a small, brick access road that cuts through the middle and started looking for parking. Some was marked No Parking, some drop off for one office or another and some not marked at all. We were a little concerned about making sure we had legal parking as there were plenty of state police cars around and the last thing we wanted was a ticket or worse to be towed to who knows where while we were inside getting the documents sealed. We finally found an end spot that was a little questionable but not marked as anything and did I say it was an end spot (yay for me as parallel parking is definitely not my strong suit!). Feeling quite pleased we headed for the entrance only to find the door nearest us was marked Employees Only. Okay, so we headed in the direction of the arrow pointing us to the public entrance only to find that the door it directed us to had a sign on it pointing us right back where we came from. Not amusing to say the least, especially in the bitter cold wind. We finally found a door not marked as anything but locked and a kind lady let us in out of the cold into some random hallway where we realized that the door we probably should have come in was completely on the other side of the building but oh well, we were in now.

We hit the Secretary of State's office at the perfect moment- no one was there but the lady working the counter. She took my documents, we took a seat and that's when it all fell apart. First approximately ten other people entered the office with documents to be sealed and assorted other business. Helpful hint-be nice to the ladies in the office, they will talk about you after you leave:) We know, we heard. I felt bad for the poor woman trying to do everything at once for everyone and tried to be extra patient and let her know I was in no hurry.

After 15 minutes or so help started to arrive for her and she eventually called me over to talk about the documents and their issues. Most were fine and she sealed them but one (my medical letter) had an unfixable mistake by the notary that notarized it and would have to be redone. This was annoying to me and apparently quite a bit more so to my grandmother who uses the same office. The other document with a problem was a real problem though- it was the petition to finalize the adoption and the notary who notarized it was nowhere to be found on the database that they verify everyone on. Long story short- after over an hour of phone calls to various people both by me and the office workers (who were fabulous, btw, they really went out of their way for us) we came to the conclusion that the notary had failed to properly renew her commision and was indeed no longer a legal notary. I could have cried, not only was this was going to delay us at least another week as we'd have to redo the paperwork, send it back to Indy, then send it on to the adoption agency but I wasted a whole day and dragged my grandmother halfway across the state with no time advantage gained by making the trip. The deputy notary was quite crafty though and worked out a way for us to attach an affidavit that I signed to the document and she notarized for me, making it legal for her to seal it which is all Russia really cares about anyway and after a quick call to verify things with the adoption agency everyone was happy again. The medical letter would still have to be redone but the deputy notary gave me her card and said if I addressed it to her specifically she would see that it got sealed and put back in the mail the same day she received it and our adoption coordinator assured me that this one document being late wouldn't delay anything. We thanked everyone and promised to send pictures of our son after we return with him. They have a picture frame full of pictures of adopted kids whose parents have used them for apostilling, very cool.

Sealed documents in hand, we wound our way back out of the building and back to the car which was thankfully still there and unticketed. Next order of business was to get out of town and get some lunch which was long overdue by that point. I called the doctor's office on the way out and arranged for the letter to be redone ASAP since they had made a mistake again. This is the same letter I had to wait for them to redo when I picked it up because they put the wrong name on it the first time. I thought I had checked everything over but the issue was with when the notary's comission was to expire (she put down the wrong year) so I had no good way of catching that unless I looked her up. Lesson learned there. Grandma offered to pick up the new letter and to check it over before leaving the office. Oh, and to give them an earful if there were any issues too.

We finally made it back home around 5:30 and I dropped Grandma off at home on my way to the nearest FedEx where I copied and mailed all my documents off.

Fast forward to today- Grandma picked up the letter and tells me there are no issues with it and also that she had a nice conversation with a lady in line while she waited for it about how they office had screwed up and were now delaying the completion of this adoption. She said the receptionists had some dark looks for her but no one said anything. I'm kind of glad I have no reason to go in there any time soon and very happy that there were no actual issues as I fear the fury of a great-grandmother-to-be would have been a scary thing indeed. Anyway, Erich is going to go retrieve the letter tomorrow and send it on its way so we really will be done with the paperwork after all.

2010-01-25T20:51:00.003-05:00

I can see the light at the end of the paperwork tunnel! Just stopping by to share that our homestudy update is finally complete which means I'll be using my day off this week to take it and the other assorted documents we've collected since returning from Russia last month to the Secretary of State's office to get their shiny gold apostilles and then our dossier's off to Russia once again as early as next Monday. Woo hoo! Now we get to prep our Trip 2 paperwork (not much really, just copies of financial stuff mostly for our interview at the embassy) and wait impatiently for The Call. You know, the one that says we get to bring the baby home:)

Titania update

2010-01-24T19:42:00.002-05:00

Thank you for all the compliments on Bluebell. She's been sitting on my craft table so I can see her when I come in but I haven't made any moves to frame her just yet. I'm just not quite sure what I want yet.

Had a good stitching week for Titania this week. I did pick her up after I finished Bluebell and I didn't realize how neglected she's really been. My last picture of her was from March of 2007...

I must have picked her up at some point between now and then because I haven't made all the progress you see from that pic to this one in just a week's time but I have done pretty well for me...

Most of my focus has been on the pink ribbon of fabric hanging down from the left, and the leaves and purple ribbon on the right. I got in a whole afternoon of stitching yesterday while Erich was working on his parents' computer and it really helped. I'd like to say I'll be looking at a February happy dance at this rate but we'll see what happens. The Wagon is doing another Stitching Olympics and I'm tempted to enter into the Long Jump for fun plus the adoption stuff is all hanging on the one document we're waiting to receive so we may not even be home too much longer if that gets pushed through quickly like we're hoping it might. I guess I'll enjoy her for now while I can and just wait and see.

Bluebell's finished!

2010-01-19T10:57:00.002-05:00

I finally finished her last night! She was a lot more trouble than I originally thought when I started her but I'm happy with the finished results.

Bluebell by Nora Corbett, started 7/26/09 and finished 1/18/10. She's stitched on a 32 count lugana Silkweaver solo and I did make some modifications. The skin is stitched with DMC 754 as charted for the darker tone and a blend of 754/948 for the lighter tone. I also used seed beads instead of the larger crystal beads for the dew drops on her bluebells and the line of crystal beads along the bottom. I did bead as charted at first but wasn't happy with the result, the large beads were just too big for me.

I did get a pic of the larger beads before I frogged them...

They probably would have been fine on a lower count fabric but I didn't like them on this one which is disappointing because I did like the effect on some of the other finishes I've seen but I've still sort of got it with the line of blue/green beads on the skirt of her dress.

I'm still in the mood to stitch pretty ladies so I did pull out Titania last night and will probably work on her for awhile now.

In a MIrabilia mood

2010-01-15T10:56:00.002-05:00

In an effort to clear out some of my WIPs and have a quick HD too, I've been working on Bluebell lately. I finally got to the point where I had to make a decision about her skin. I tried a couple of different things last night and ended up settling on blending the two skin shades that were charted for the lighter skin tone (DMC 754 and 948 I tihnk) and stitching the darker skin as charted. The effect is much much more subtle and a bit more attractive than the farmer tan look she had going before. I left her leg stitched as charted for comparison's sake but her arms and head are my blended way. And yes, that leg is getting redone first thing today!

I know a lot of people have said that the skin is supposed to be shadowed by her dress and the flowers but I just can't leave her looking like she wore tube socks out in the sun too long. We'll pretend it's cloudy in my interpretation. I'm hoping to get in some good stitching time today and tomorrow and maybe even finish her off by the end of the weekend. If my Mirabilia mood persists I'm currently thinking of pulling out my long neglected Titania next.

Not much else going on today, I'm starting my version of the weekend (Friday and Saturday off, work Sunday) and the weather is crummy so I'm taking down the rest of my Christmas stuff and stitching. Oh, and waiting impatiently once again- adoption agency called and the we finally got the medical test results for the baby and they were negative. Yay! Now we can finally start filing the necessary paperwork to get back there and bring him home.

2010 Goals

2010-01-14T17:33:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I'm a little late but hey- it's still January! So here are my ambitious goals for last year...

Stitching
~Finish Noah's Sub
~Frame Noah's Sub before the baby arrives
~Finish TW's Nativity
~Frame Nativity
~Finish Santa's Magic
~Frame Santa's Magic
~Finish Skeleton Crew
~Frame The Lord's Prayer piece I finished a few years ago
~Finish ornaments with at least one new technique- flat ornaments!
~Finish QS Believe (HAED/Jessica Galbreth)
~Finish 3 full pages of Dragon Moon (HAED/Lisa Victoria)

Nonstitching
~Lose 30 lbs- no, but I did lose 20lbs
~Paint front porch railings
~Paint front door
~Paint and decorate the baby's room before he/she arrives
~Plant grass around the back patio
~Plant more day lilies behind the garage
~Make two trips to Russia and bring our baby home- we were there twice but no luck so far

I actually accomplished a few of them and some of them I made progress on so I'm pretty happy.
I had lot of expectations going into last year and I guess one of the biggest things I learned over the course of the last year was to expect the unexpected. It has been a roller coaster of a year with some incredible highs and devastating lows. We lost my grandmother in March and our adoption referral in October (he's fine, we just weren't able to adopt him) but on the other hand we gained Luke, my cousin's son, in September. Erich and I were able to travel to Russia twice and see some amazing things there in addition to meeting two wonderful children. We're both employed and healthy. I've stepped down from my stressful management spot and into much more enjoyable floater position. Overall, it's not been the best year but we still have a lot to be happy about and we're trying to focus on that. So I guess I'm going to try not to expect big things from myself this year but there are some things I'd like to do...

Stitching
~Start L&L's Celtic Autumn
~Start Watergarden
~Start Nora Corbett's Poppy
~Finish something for every start I make
~Finish ornaments with at least one new technique

Nonstitching
~Lose 30 lbs
~Paint the front porch railings- some year this is actually going to get done!
~Get some more flowers for behind the garage
~Organize the computer room/office
~Have a yard sale and sell off some of the excess stuff we've collected
~Get back to Russia and bring home our son

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what 2010 brings. Hope everyone is having a good year so far.

Catching up on stitching pics

2010-01-13T20:19:00.002-05:00

I never got to post as much as I wanted to this holiday season, lazy thing that I was. I only went to Russia for a week, did TWCOE, stitched a few ornies for family and did the whole Christmas thing. Oh, and I worked at least a 40 hour week every week too. Not sure how I could not have time:)

So now that all the holiday stuff is over I actually have had a little extra time and finally got pictures uploaded of all the ornaments I stitched/received this Christmas season. I didn't get to finish quite as many as I wanted but I got enough done to send them to the out of town relatives.

Sorry in advance for blurry/dark pics, they were all snapped in a hurry as I put packages together for the mail. These are all from the JCS ornament issues which are my favorite source of ornie patterns. Heartfelt Harvey (Imaginating Inc JCS 2008) went out to Erich's aunt in Chicago...

Christmas Peace (stitched earlier and finished in time for Christmas, sorry can't remember which year of JCS) went out to Erich's aunt in Wisconsin...

And finally, Joy Tree (which I've also apparently lost my notes on) went out to my aunt in California...

I also participated in TWCOE this year and received some lovely ornaments from Natalie...

And from Paula...

I'm especially happy with the TW ornie as I've stitched the beginner whitework pattern so many times for others but never for me! That's about it for now, maybe next time I'll get around to making my 2010 goals.

The Russia Trip

2010-01-12T12:08:00.003-05:00

The pics are finally loaded and edited. Unfortunately there aren't nearly as many as last time (it was just too cold to be out long in Moscow and we didn't have much time in region) and we've decided not to show pictures of our referral until he actually comes home so there aren't any baby pictures to share just yet. Sorry if you were looking forward to baby pics but we're just not ready to share him with everyone until he's home.

The trip was pretty smooth this time for the most part. Erich and I traveled from South Bend, IN to Moscow on 3 flights over about 20 hours. We arrived in Moscow about 11am on Sunday, December 13 and were very ready for naps and showers. The weather there was bitterly cold so when we left our hotel in the late afternoon in search of food and a little shopping we didn't stay out long. We stayed at the Arbat Hotel again and so we didn't have far to walk to the nearby Moo-Moo (looks like My-My in Cyrillic) restaurant for soup and pelmeni which are a kind of meat-filled ravioli. We kind of hopped from shop to shop down the street to get to the souvenir place we wanted and to an ATM to take out some rubles for our stay in region but that was about the extent of our adventure in Moscow. We did get a couple pics looking out the window of our hotel room but they are quite deceiving, there wasn't much snow but outside was definitely not where we wanted to be.

Monday afternoon the translator picked us up a couple hours early to head to the airport for our overnight flight to the region. He said there were a lot of families to transport and it would be easier for him if we went early. We didn't mind, we were ready for a break from the construction noise coming from above our hotel room anyway. Apparently the floor above us was under some major renovation. At the airport we got to visit with two other couples traveling to the same region with our agency. One was on their way to pick up a little boy at the other orphanage in the city and the other was going with us to meet a little boy also. The flight itself was pretty uneventful and not particularly full either- Erich and I were able to spread out over a row of 3 seats and got a good nap in before we landed.

We hit the ground at about 6am local time Tuesday morning and were greeted very warmly by the translator who remembered us from last time. Our group got the last 3 rooms at the hotel where there was some sort of business conference going on. We drew the short straw and ended up with the small room but we didn't really mind, it was less expensive and all we were really interested in were the beds and shower anyway. The second pic is of the pretty fountain outside the hotel. Unfortunately the window glass blurred any photo we tried taking so it's a little fuzzy but you get the idea.

By the time the rooms were sorted out and we got all the luggage up there we had about 30 minutes before it was time to leave for the baby home. The winter days are really short in this part of the year and the sun was still rising as we left for the baby home around 9:30 though it wasn't nearly as cold as it had been in Moscow. Our translator actually scolded me for not wearing my hat. It wasn't really that cold but she was worried about us Americans. I think she thinks we don't have winter over here, not that it gets nearly as cold here but it does get pretty nasty sometimes.

Anyway, we rolled into the baby home's driveway around 10 and were shown to the same social worker's office as before. The social worker remembered us which was nice, everyone we bumped into was very welcoming and plenty of people were aware of our situation and tried to make sure we knew that they knew and that they were eager to make things right. We definitely got the impression that they had nothing to do with our loss. We got our child's information and our blue booties (apparently standard footware for visitors) and made our way up to the familiar play room on the second floor. The other couple's child was already playing in the room and ours was brought in shortly after. He was a little shy for the first few minutes but our little guy perked up when we brought out toys and snacks. He was about a year old at the time we met him and seemed to be doing well for a child. He's a little on the small side but is walking and babbling and playing like any other child his age and was eager to sink his 4 little teeth into all the toys we brought as well as the snacks. Over the two days we were there we got to visit 4 different times and found him to be a very happy and curious baby.

I did get a couple of baby home pics. The first is of the entrance to the baby home. As you can see they had snow but not tons of it and they were decorated for the Christmas/New Year holidays. The second is in one of the stairwells. All of the stairwells we saw had murals of fairytales painted on them and this one in particular caught our eye as it is from the Russian fairytale about the family pulling a large turnip out of the ground, the same story told by the set of nesting dolls we purchased as a souvenir on our last trip. I hadn't noticed it the first time we were at the baby home.

The rest of our trip was mostly uneventful. We spent the night in Moscow again on the way home and found that it was still colder than the region and the traffic was still pretty bad too. The trip home was a little frustrating at times. We traveled home the day before the east coast basically shut down for snow. We were delayed at Domodedovo in Moscow and took off an hour late. That was a little scary as we only had a slightly shorter than 2 hour layover in Washington DC's Dulles airport and were a little nervous about making it through customs and security as it was but we figured if we made it back to the US we could worry about making it home when the time came.

Lucky for us the pilot changed his flight plan a bit and we all made it back to Dulles on time, might have even been a bit early. Our trip through customs and security was actually the fastest I've ever seen. I've never been so thankful to be an American citizen as when we rounded the corner into passport control and saw the lines. There were well over a hundred people in line on the non-citizen/visitor side and maybe 15 ahead of us on the citizen side.

Our flight from Dulles to O'Hare was smooth and that's about the best thing I can say about O'Hare that night. Things were already starting to delay for the snow and our last flight home got caught up in it. The plane was fine but we had to wait a couple hours for our pilot to arrive and then got stuck waiting on the plane while they de-iced it right before takeoff. I must say though that the flight crew was probably the most lively I've ever seen. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit, maybe it was the almost midnight flight but I've never seen a flight crew do Christmas carols karaoke-style over the PA and ask if the passengers would like to take the mic.
I think we hit home and bed around 1am home time and my bed felt great:) We were very thankful to be in it the next morning when we turned on the news and found out that Dulles had closed down overnight due to weather and O'Hare was looking pretty ugly too.

So that was our trip and there isn't much more to tell at the moment. We're in the middle of updating the necessary papers to get our court date and it's a little slow right now due to the Russian offices just opening back up after the holidays there. Hopefully we'll get what we need and be on our way again soon. I promise tons of pics when we get this little guy home.