Coming Soon -

I am so looking forward to reviewing 7 Steps to Becoming Financially Free - A Catholic Guide to Managing Your Money as part of The Catholic Company's book reviewer program. Stay tuned!

The Week in Review ~ Murray Style!

We're trying to stay busy over here and have quite a bit to report, actually. First off, we received the "travel packet" from our agency to mark the next phase of our adoption journey. This means we are officially one step closer to being matched with our child! It's too bad that even though we have the travel book we still really have no idea when we will actually be traveling to Colombia. Still, I've read it cover to cover (twice) and I'm trying really hard not to be obnoxious and start bugging our Program Director asking for time estimates. We are still far enough from travel time that nobody's really got any accurate idea anyway. I know as soon as there is something to report or any idea of a timeline she'll let me know -- she's good like that. In the meantime we've learned that our neighbors will be spending six weeks in their hometown in Colombia this summer and have daydreamed of how nice it would be if our travels were to overlap. Kyle would be thrilled to be able to hang out with his friend, if even only for a short time.

In order to make the remainder of the post move as quickly as possible for those of you whose attention span rivals mine, I've decided to do a photo-recap. Enjoy.

The Week in Pictures

Kyle got another new 'do


Katie decided "long hair is for babies!"...

but making keychains...

and earrings and all types of beaded jewelry is something she REALLY likes to do.


The garden is flourishing!

But staking the vegetables allowed me to actually visualize how far out of line I planted!

Regardless, the cucumbers have pretty blooms (and some baby cukes starting to grow!)

And we have more than a few baby butternut squash growing!

Hopefully our radishes, tomatoes, cauliflower, and broccoli will do as well.

But even with all the success of our practice garden, there's a LOT of available real estate!

OH YEAH! And the corn is closing in on knee high, but I don't have a photo of that either. Maybe next week.

Am I Crazy?

Our dossier was just sent to Colombia last week and already I have four (count 'em) packages of Huggies and two mega packages of wipes stored in my closet for someday in the unknown future when we'll need them. We are requesting 0-2 and I know babies require a lot of stuff -- and heaven knows we're starting from scratch all over again over here! -- so I figured diapers and wipes are a given and stocking up on the largest sizes is a safe bet. And they were on sale so I only spent about $15.00 on all of them after coupons and reward bucks and all that stuff.

As if that weren't enough...I admitted to a fellow adoptive Mami to be last week that I have a designated drawer in my bathroom vanity that is starting to brim over with the toiletries and such that we will be taking to Colombia when we go. Yes, I have started to compile things already. But in my own defense, I am buying everything on sale for next to nothing and the way I see it I am doing my pocketbook and my sanity a favor by doing it slowly and not waiting until I am in one of the great emotional whirlwinds of my life trying like crazy to get ready to go pick up BABY K.

So what do you think? Am I crazy? :)

No, seriously...It's for real this time...

I just found out that our dossier documents are being mailed to Colombia today for translation and submission to ICBF.