First Day of School! First Day of School!

Daniel's first day of second grade was last week.  

He's obviously too cool to need a first day of school picture. 

 

And Benjamin started kindergarten this past week.  So, now I have 2 and a half hours all to myself each day (except Wednesday, which is shorter).  Crazy!  I'm not old enough to be sending my "baby" off to school every day.  Benjamin loves getting his picture taken.  He lives to entertain. 

This is the neighborhood party we went to after kindergarten.

Everyone keeps asking me what I do with all of that extra time.  The first day, I spent it crying.  No, I really cried for about 5 minutes, and then I had a bunch of other stuff I had to do at home. I also spent some time this week Visiting Teaching without the kids.  I'm signed up to help out in both Daniel and Benjamin's classes, so that will take up some of the time.  I also have a goal of catching up on my scrapbooking.  Besides all of that, I just look forward to going grocery shopping alone.

3 Months--But Who's Counting?

We've now been officially approved as potential adoptive parents with LDS Family Services for 3 months. How long can we expect to wait? Well, most couples wait 1-2 years. But I couldn't tell you if that includes the time it takes them to finish their applications or if that's only after they are approved. I do know that many people take a LONG time to finish their applications (like a year). We finished ours in just a couple of months.

People keep asking me how our progress is. Really, I have no idea. I mean, we have our online profile with LDS Family Services. It gets about 2 hits per day, which I think is pretty good, considering that there are about 900 couples listed there. If you haven't seen it yet, it's at

https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/22920363/photoAlbum.jsf

Our caseworker, Lauren, also distributed our file to the other LDS Family Services offices in Utah, so other caseworkers can suggest us as a potential family to their birth moms. We email back and forth with our caseworker, but every three months of "waiting," we have to go see her. That's supposed to help us keep our stuff up to date and make us think of ideas to help us find our birth mom.

The whole "finding" issue is a huge part of what makes LDS Family Services different from other adoption agencies. Most adoption agencies will find you a birth mom. LDS Family Services gives birth moms the opportunity to choose the adoptive family. That means they want their potential adoptive couples to do a lot of work to advertise their desire to adopt to the general public.

So, what do we do to advertise? Well, we were in the Fiesta Days Parade. I think half of Spanish Fork saw us there. We have also been wearing our adoption shirts around. The kids especially love wearing their adoption shirts. It's a good thing that Benjamin does because he's always telling people about his "little sister" that he's going to get, and then people give me weird looks and say, "Oh, I didn't know you were pregnant." We're also working on our online presence with this blog, facebook, etc.

We made up adoption cards that we pass out sometimes. We plan to put up our adoption cards on community announcement boards. Do any of you know some good places to put up the cards? I will even send you some to put up, if you are willing.

I think part of why the caseworkers want us involved in the "finding" of our baby is so we don't go nuts. It helps to feel like some progress is being made, while still remembering that it's all in the Lord's hands and on His timetable. When it's right, it will happen.

By the way, my best idea was that I want a billboard along I-15 to advertise our adoption! Wayne said no, though. Ok, so maybe I have better things to do with the thousands of dollars that would cost. But it would be so cool!

Teresa's Terrific Tantalizing Tomato Soup

With all of the yummy fresh tomatoes from the garden, I had to make my favorite soup recipe. Anyone who has seen me cook knows that I can't really follow recipes. It's like I feel compelled to change them, to add my own signature or something. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I couldn't find a recipe for tomato soup that I liked last summer, so I made this one up.

8 large tomatoes (or 12 smaller ones)
48 oz. tomato juice (not generic, it doesn't taste as good)
1 stick butter
1 T. dried basil leaves
2 c. cream
Salt and pepper

Bring a pot of water to a boil and add tomatoes. Boil for 8 minutes. Drain and allow tomatoes to cool. Peel and de-seed tomatoes.

Put tomatoes back in empty pot and add tomato juice. Bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes. Cool slightly and scoop out large chunks of tomato. Cut up large tomato pieces in blender. You can blend all of it if you don't like pieces of tomato in your soup, but the restaurants always leave some small tomato pieces (and so do I).

Return soup to pot and add remaining ingredients. You can use fresh basil if you have it. You can also substitute half and half, but the cream is better. Heat the soup through (but it doesn't need to boil again).

Yummy, yummy, yummy!

Last Few Days of Summer Vacation

I haven't had time to blog this week, so I have a few things to catch up on. First, the boys finished off their swimming lessons last week and had a great time.

Last Friday, I was in charge of the ward campout! Yep, my calling is Activities Committee Chair. We had a fabulous campsite up Hobble Creek Canyon. This is me, making root beer. We made 20 gallons, and there wasn't a drop leftover.

And I attempted to join in the entertainment. It's probably a good thing that we didn't get it on video. But at least we all had fun!

As soon as we got home from the campout, we were packing up for our family reunion at Bear Lake. It was too cold for anyone but polar bears to go swimming, but that didn't stop my crazy boys from jumping in (especially Wayne). This is Wayne, Daniel, cousin Kenna, and Aunt Wendy.

We camped out overnight in our huge new tent, and the low was 37 degrees! It was so cold. We could have squished everyone into the house, but the kids were very excited to camp, so we toughed it out with them.

This week, the boys had their soccer clinic to get their skills polished before the fall games start. Benjamin is thrilled to be old enough to play on a real team.

We keep busy around here.

Visit to Salt Lake: Day 2

On the second day of our trip, we went to Hogle Zoo first thing in the morning. It was a great time to be there because it wasn't hot yet and the animals were very active. The monkeys were swinging and singing in their cages. The leopard was pacing. The penguins were swimming around. And the baby giraffe was adorable! Sorry I don't have a picture of it. These are the picures of my very own monkeys playing at the zoo:

The zebras were Benjamin's favorite this time.

I was actually scared of this drinking fountain as a preschooler.

Our second stop was at This Is The Place Heritage Park. Daniel was getting tired and cranky by then, but there's nothing like some Pioneer chores to put your problems in perspective and cheer you right up. The kids washed clothes by hand with a washboard and hung them to dry. Then they had to beat the dust from some rugs. After that, we moved on to crafts and activities.

This is Daniel with some clay marbles he made.

This is Benjamin riding a horse.
Those Pioneers sure had fun after they finished their chores!

Our last stop was the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. I love aquariums, so I was excited to see this one. It was a little weird because the building used to be my favorite craft store before it went out of business. From the outside, the aquarium doesn't look like much. Inside, the wall murals were beautiful. It's a small aquarium, at least compared to others I've seen in places like Seattle and San Diego. Still, it's fun to have an aquarium so far from the ocean. There was even a "petting tank" with sting rays. The lighting is low for the comfort of the sea creatures, so it's hard to take pictures. Here's one, though.

This is a boat/video screen the kids can use to explore the Great Salt Lake.

We got our money's worth from the Connect Passes. We might have overdone it, though. When we got home, I was really ill. I must have had food poisoning or something because I was sick through Sunday and felt much better Monday morning.