Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Secret Pal!!

I just had to take a minute to thank my Secret Pal again this Christmas morning! We opened Raven's Christmas gift this morning and it's the Calin doll! She is soooo cute! Thank you SO much! I can't wait till she gets here to see her playing with it!

Merry Christmas!!

Happy Holidays!

While I'm on a posting roll, I want to with everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday!

Nov/Dec Secret Pal Gift & Electric Collars

Thanks to my April2007DTC Secret Pal! She did a combo gift for Nov and Dec which I received earlier this week. There was a 3-pack of pink and white bodysuits, a package of plastic bowls, this great black iron candle holder with a pine scented candle (LOVE candles), a great card and Raven's very first Christmas present!!! We can't open the gift until Xmas, by orders of my secret pal! lol


She also included a gift for Yoshi! This adorable Chinese food take-out box squeaky toy. And in the background is Raven's gift under the tree already!





Let me tell you, Yoshi was VERY patient with me trying to get a picture of him with his gift!! If he loves anything more than squeaky toys it's posing for pictures!!! But this one was tough for him!! He humored me and let me take a decent picture. Then...

"Let's see if I can get the whole thing in my mouth!"


"Don't EVEN think about taking this away from me!"

Thank you Secret Pal!! I can't wait till Xmas to open Raven's gift!!

As a side note for all you dog lovers, you may notice from time to time Yoshi is wearing an electronic collar. Let me assure you, we never use this collar with the shock feature. When we first got it we did test it out it isn't so much of a shock as a vibration, so it isn't too bad, but we still don't use that feature. The feature we do use and does some in helpful is the "beep" part. You press a button on the remote and a very high pitched beep comes from the collar, not loud or anything. This usually will get him to at least pay attention. He is still young and still has his moments where it's hard to get his attention to make him stop doing something any other way, like chasing the cats (who will beat the you know what out of him if ever gets close enough to them!), chasing birds or squirrels, trying to make a run for it thru the front door, eating the sofa, tree, and anything else he can put in his mouth. So sometimes it's necessary to just catch his attention when he doesn't listen to "leave it", "no", "come", all things he does listen to if he is not focused on catching a kittie at the time! lol Anyway, I just happened to notice that some of the pictures have him with the collar on so I figured I'd let everyone know we only beep him. lol And usually I don't even put it on him, I just leave it by the stairs and if he chases the cats, I can just use the remote to make the collar beep and he'll back off. Good boy, sometimes! lol

Catching up...

I haven't been posting to much I know, but I'm going to try to make more of an effort to do so since I know there are actually a few regular readers out there.. Hi Donna, Kim and my April2007DTC Secret Pal!!

Let's see, first was our annual "decorate the tree" get together which we've had 3 out of 4 years we've been in our house, the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. We don't have a huge house so we don't have too many people over, maybe 12 or 13 people, and that is a full house! Other than the cleaning and shopping to prepare for that, I also wanted to finish this mini china cabinet I've been building for the past year off and on. I say mini but it's really less the half the width of a normal size china cabinet. I think it's called a chimnet cabinet. Anyway, our dining room is kinda small so I just wanted a small tall cabinet in there so it wouldn't take up to much room so I found these plans online last year and started working on it. Then when it got warm I stopped to do work outside but I at least wanted to have it finished for the party. It's pretty much like a bar since all the liquor and glasses are in there, but I guess I could always put plates and such in there if I wanted to. First 2 shelves I have crystal vases and glasses then the last is the bottles. The bottom shelf is for storage. I LOVE the way the stained glass panel makes it look! I purchased that online from a stained glass place. It's all clear glass, but 3 different designs. Most of it is called "clear seedy: and old fashined look to it with little air bubbles in it. Then the strips are called "clear water" and the diamonds are just clear beveled squares. I tried to do an antigued aged paint finish on it and I think it turned out pretty good. Of course, I had practiced with several colors of stain prior to doing this. Very time consuming but I wanted it to come out right. Here are some pics...

Not quite finished in the below picture.

After the antiqued finish in the (very messy) garage.

The finished product!

The pictures aren't that great, it looks better in person! LOL I've learned alot making this cabinet! Plus got to use a variety of tools and techniques including my new table saw I got last year!

Not sure what I want to build next, but It definetly won't be anything big. I actually put more money than I wanted to into this cabinet (like the glass panel and shelves), so the big projects will have to wait a while. Whatever I make next will be with scrap wood I have left over, maybe I'll make Yoshi a doghouse! lol

Next, I set aside one Saturday to make Christmas cookies with my Mom (her recipe). So that was an all day venture, since I am hardly the cook! lol Only problem is we made them way too early and they are all gone now! LOL So much for loosing another 5 pounds in December! Here's a pic of the yummy butter cookies!!

I also was working on DVD I wanted to give my mom for Thanksgiving because I knew she would be going to my brother's house and I figured she could watch it there since she didn't have a DVD player at her house at the time. I bought her one a few weeks ago, but she is technically challenged to say the least so she hasn't used it yet. This took me a little while to put together. My mom LOVES my dog, calls him HER dog! She also is a huge Barry White fan. So I took one of her favorite songs and pics of the dog and her and the dog so she could watch it from time to time when she is bored. Please excuse the messy messy house in some of the pics! (See a theme here? LOL ) I also wanted to practice making a video like this so I can make one when we get home from China with our daughter!

I think I mentioned this in another post but I've been trying to think of some ways to save/make some extra money for the adoption. When we started this journey we refinanced the house so that we'd have enough money to cover the cost of the adoption, but I am thinking we are probably going to need more. Probably another $5000 or so. We spent more than we were planning on getting all of our paperwork expedited so we would meet the deadline. I think we are also going to end up spending more money getting things updated after our first fingerprint/USCIS which is free I believe. But the year after that won't be, and also I think we'll need a homestudy update in order to do the USCIS part, not sure exactly how that works yet. Plus now that I'm on different message boards and groups I've heard that people have spent more than what we originally budgeted for. One "good" thing about this extended wait time is we'll have plenty of time to come up with the money!

Anyway, I've been trying to come up with some ideas for either fundraising or selling stuff or whatever to make some extra money. I've pretty much sold everything I could get rid of on Ebay already..LOL I was thinking about adding a ChipIn box to the blog, but I'm SO not the type of person to ask for donations. So I was thinking maybe of doing some type of raffle, but I'm not sure what kind of raffle to do or exactly how it would work. I think most of the people who read this blog are probably also waiting for their child to come home as well, so I'm not sure if I'd be able to sell enough "tickets", but it seems like it could be more fun than just asking for donations, which I really would rather not do. I'm not sure what I could raffle off either. Maybe something simple and generic like a gift card(s) or maybe something more specific like a collection of baby items, like a gift basket or maybe a set of books or adoption related items. I could actually get my shopping fix by buying a nice collection of baby items to raffle off! I haven't been buying anything lately except for my Secret Pal. I've been really good otherwise! This might even be the last Secret Pal Swap I do for a while once this one ends next year. It's only about $20 a month, but $20 is $20 right. It does help to pass the time, but I may need to take a break just to accumulate some funds.

Maybe you guys could help me out with this. Let's see if I can add a poll...

I could always just add the ChipIn and then decide if I shoudl do raffles later. I could also add a ticket for all fundrasing efforts, like things funded by Ebay sales, etc. I'll have to think about this some more.

The other thing I have been doing this month is researching ways to make some extra cash online. Yes, I know.. very risky, but I'm a very very careful person as far as identity theft and viruses and spyway (I'm a computer tech so I have that covered as best I can.. lol I'm trying to be careful). So I've been doing as much research as possible and have found a few things that will work, but won't make me rich or anything. One is doing online surverys for market research companies (only the reputable ones that actually pay). I've already signed up for a bunch of market research companies that from my research actually are not scams, don't sell your personal info and really pay either by check or by PayPal. And we are only talking about maybe $5-20 a month per company, depending on how many (IF any) surveys are available and that I qualify to take. There are a few where you can do a daily survey and if you qualify to complete the survey that's $1 a day.

There are other programs where you get paid to click on ads and maybe get 1 cent per ad you click on or a fraction of a cent. I've made a whopping .18 cents already! LOL Actually deposited in Paypal. lol I probably won't spend to much time with those. But hey every little bit helps right??

I've added a separate page to this blog called Making Extra Cash if anyone is interested in seeing if this is going to work or not! lol I'm not putting a link for this blog on that one since that one will be anonymous since I am on a message board just regarding surveys and making money online and those people might check out that blog but I don't need them to check this one out. LOL I can also make some extra money from having people sign up to some of these programs under me as referrals, which is why I have the separate blog for that. I'm not putting any links on this blog for those programs because I'm sure 99% of you are not at all interested! LOL So I'm not going to go into more info about that here, just wanted to share what I've been up to in my spare time which is why I haven't been blogging much lately.

I'll continue in a new post. This one is getting LONG!

8 Months!!

WOW! It's been 8 months already! I guess this whole "keeping busy" thing really does work! LOL Next post I'll post about some of the things I've been doing to keep busy during this LONG wait. Congrats to all my April LID buddies out there!!!!

Referral Time - December 9-14

For those not familiar with how referrals work, imagine you pick a number at the deli counter or DMV. Our number (LID) is 4-17-07. They (China, CCAA) are now serving (matching babies with families) people with ticket numbers (LIDs) between 12-9-05 and 12-14-05. Referrals only happen once a month. You do the math.

Some days are good days, some days are not so good days. When I spend too much time thinking about it, it doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen. But on the other hand, if I keep busy, it doesn't seem too bad. I know our number will be called one day. Just wish it was sooner than later.

Hopefully Jan will bring more days referred at one time.

Congrats to all who have been matched this month!!!

1 Year Ago...

One year ago today we mailed in our application to CCAI. CCAI was actually our second choice (should have been the first) but the first agency we applied to was already putting the unofficial (at that point) restrictions into place and rejected our application. CCAI on the hand told us there were no official restrictions yet (they came out on Dec 8, 2006 I believe) and even when they did come out just told us to get our Dossier to them by April 13th, 2007, which we did. Thanks CCAI for at least giving us a chance!

I can't believe it's been a year already!