Cheeky Haatim

Little stinker…

You would think he doesn’t like me! Haatim actually licks my pet off!

Introducing…

Laughlin!

formerly known as “Leftie”

“dweller by the lake”

We picked Laughlin (pronounced Laak-lin) up yesterday in a whirlwind trip to the coast – He is spunky, brave, polite to the cats, and a big suck to me.  His daddy was the top cairn terrier in Canada in 2004… which really doesn’t matter at all except that the lady who bred him obviously took wonderful care and attention in cultivating good temperaments. He’s been like a little whirlwind through the house – constantly wanting to play and waking us up twice last night with jumps and licks and suggestive whines towards his toy on the dresser. I told Jrock that Hamish, who was half cairn terrier, was like this for the first four years.  He just raised his eyebrows, laughed, and looked exhausted already!

Enjoy the pictures and video from the first 24 hours.

Trick or Treat

Well, we are off to get a new brother for Maggie tonight – “Leftie” was the viewer’s choice but we’ll have to see who the cocker spaniel prefers!

Speaking of the little devil – Maggie has always enjoyed the falling reminants from Jrock’s granola bars.  But she would never, for example, rip into the box of them in the pantry or anything.  She’s too polite.

But in the last couple of days, she’s found a new trick.  If I leave the pantry door open and unattended, she will go in there, get a granola bar out of the box, and then bring it to us to be opened and shared!  It’s a cute little trick, but instead of the granola bar, we just put it back and give her a doggie treat instead.  What a funny little puppy to come up with that. 

Here she is as she appeared in the family room last night!

Which Puppy?

Since our Hamie passed away, our house has been very empty feeling…. so we’ve decided to get a puppy to keep me and Maggie company, run around, chase the cats, eat our socks and pee on the floor.  Hmmm…. well, it comes with the territory.

So… here are the two candidates – 4 month old cairn terriers. [Edit: Both boys!] Which one do you like the look of best? 
Cast your vote by leaving a comment below.

Leftie?  – or – Rightie?

(…and remember to leave politics aside – this is puppy choosing, not the election, people )

Fun Cooking

Pictures served!

My sister (seen above cooking and crying over onions!) and I had fun cooking for our guests – she brought some of her favorite recipes and we resurrected some of my successful ones.  We cooked and we cooked – actually, it took about 4 hours.  (And then the next day we cooked the injera and fritters for 1 1/2 hours.) 

The result was great.  Really, Jrock said it was the first time that he enjoyed the leftovers – and there are always a lot of leftovers when we cook Ethiopian! 

Some tricks and tips:

• First of all, we put the two meat stews in crockpots and cooked them for hours and hours. 
• Second, we thickened the stews (Doro Wat, for example) so that they were easier to eat, and that worked really well. 
• Third, we sliced all the onions (all 15!) ahead of time, so we could just scoop out a cup at a time. 
• Fourth, we made the best honeyed wine which went really well with the food.  I’ve shared the recipe below.
• Fifth, we made cheese for the first time.  Basically you just boil buttermilk, let it cool, strain the solids out and then add some chopped chives and parsley.  It was awesome!
• And lastly, we tried a new recipe of chickpea fritters and served them as an appetizer with a really thick onion/berbere sauce.  It was nice to have something to start with, instead of just the one course that you usually have.

As for the meal itself – well, it was fine.  We didn’t know anybody who was coming… and they were all very nice! but it’s weird making small talk all evening.  (It was a dinner that I had put up as a silent auction item for our Rotary fundraiser, and the lady who had the successful bid brought her friends.)

In amongst the small talk, we tried to talk about Ethiopia and what we know about the country and culture.  They were pretty interested, and for all but one of the guests (who is coincidentally adopting a 6 year old girl from Ethiopia) it was new news.  

One thing we discussed was AIDS and HIV and the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa. I found some of their questions surprising - one lady wondered if people got AIDS for life or if they grew out of it, for example.  But I rose to the challenge and I did some education in that regard and there are some more AIDS-aware people in Kelowna now!  I did get a chance to mention Meg’s Faya Orphanage for HIV+ Kids and collected some donations, which was nice of them to help out. 

Thank you, sister “Ena” for your help!  It was a pleasure spending the weekend with you and I was so glad for the help!

Tej Recipe

Our Tej Honey-Wine Recipe

This is our Canadian version of an Ethiopian specialty.  It’s delicious!  Try it!

Ingredients:

• bottle of Riesling or another light, sweet, wine
• the bottle full of water
• 1/3 cup honey

Simply pour the bottle of wine into a big jug or carafe, and top it up with the equal amount of water.  Stir while adding the liquid honey – and then chill for at least an hour in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Ethiopian Dinner with Surprise Guests

Tomorrow I am having a big dinner with 7 surprise guests.  Earlier this year I donated an Ethiopian dinner to a silent auction o raise money for local charities, including the hospice.  This lady bought the dinner and we’re now hosting it.  The trick is hat we don’t know any of the people coming! ha ha

Luckily my sister is in town and she’s just as good (if not better) of a Ethiopian food cook than I am – so we spent the morning organizing and now off to the farmer’s market we go!  For all of you who have cooked Etiopian, you can appreciate it – we need a LOT of onions!

Our dishes planned:

• Chicken Wat
• Bef Wat
• Gingered Vegetables
• Red Lentils
• Chickpea Wat
• Collard Green
• Iab (buttermilk cheese)
• Tej – honeyed wine

Maggie’s Fav Summer Activity

Maggie LOVES playing in the garden hose.  She is a really good girl and waits patiently by while I water the vegetables, but when I say “ok” – she just goes nuts!

1 year

Break out the candles!  The balloons! It’s our one year anniversary!

.

Oh, wait. 

I mean, it’s ONE WHOLE YEAR of waiting for a referral.  ONE WHOLE YEAR since our dossier arrived in Ethiopia.

Hum.  Well, that doesn’t sound so celebratory…

Well, I suppose I can wish us good luck for next year.  Right on – that’s what I’ll do. 

Good luck, self! 

Good luck, Jrock! 

May you be blessed with children in the coming year!

Fall Fair

Yesterday Jrock and I drove up to Armstrong (where they make the cheese!) and went to the widely-acclaimed but never-yet-seen Interior Provincial Exposition.  It was super fun, and brought us back to our childhoods. 

Jrock said it was like the fall fairs back home, except that this was “much more polished.”  We actually couldn’t believe how clean everything was – not one bit of trash anywhere! Plus, he got his fix of examining the cattle. (Farm boy.)

I enjoyed seeing the cute and furry animals, and told Jrock in length about the money-making I used to do at the North Peace Fall Fair.  I would enter everything from photography to vegetables to poetry to sewing, for the $7 and $10 prizes.  I remember one summer I made $70, which was a whole lot to a little kid!

The food was great too – look! how healthy is my plate! a delicious taco salad and a fresh blueberry slush – the poutine and coke is Jrocks.  He is counter-healthy.

My favorite part of the day was watching the dog agility.  You know you are part of the community when you start recognizing people where you go – a lady I work with and volunteer with in Rotary was MCing the dog events.  And the receptionist from the Adoption Centre was showing her (joyfully misbehaving) black lab.  Here’s a little treat video from the dogs below, if you like such things…

 

The whole day we said that we’d love to bring the kids back every year – super fun.

We finished the day with a trip to the Village Cheese Company – the artisan cheesmaker in Armstrong.  Delicious! I especially love their Westwold (herbed) white cheddar, and the garlic havarti, and the blueberry, and the cointreau-infused cheddar, and the smokehouse gouda, and… we came home with a lot of cheese!

Breaking in the Back Yard

  

We’ve been in this house since October last year, and it had been presentable since January, but until last weekend, we hadn’t hosted a party.  I decided I needed a pick-me-up and it was time to invite a bunch of people. So we sent out the invites and enjoyed the company of 20+ friends, all from different areas of our life: work, adoption friends, Rotary, friends from our home in Alberta…  We had grandparents to babes, and (in typical fashion,) people originally from Sweden, Zimbabwe, etc. It was a great time and the bunch of strangers walked away with some new friends. 

   

On the menu (I’m always about the food) were blueberry bison bratwurst, fresh corn-on-the-cob, homemade lavender biscuits, garden salad (you guessed it – from my garden!), tabouli with veggies and mint (from my garden,) and watermelon and cupcakes for dessert.  Yum yum!  Oh, and I made scratch lemonade and some mint green suntea with mint from the garden. People brought wine, and I’m glad to report that we have friends with taste, since there was quite a bit of good wine leftover. Double yum.

Our Oregon Trip

I’m a little slow in getting this up, but here are some photos from our trip to Oregon two weeks ago…

We headed down straight south from Kelowna with our truck (mostly empty with a very large blanketed area we called “Maggie’s Palace” in the back,) towing our new-to-us 30 year old 17′ RV trailer, Gordon. (It’s a Bigfoot – get it?  Gordon Bigfoot?!?)

Our mission was to get away, relax together, recuperate from Hamish’s passing, and, drink a lot of Pinot Noir! The pinot was actually the original purpose to the trip… so we drove down through Washington with a brief stop in Yakima, Washington, (merlot etc, not PN) to check out a few choice vineyards, and then spent 5 days in the lovely Willamette Valley, Oregon (PN all the way…). 

The first few nights we stayed in Silver Falls Park, with lots of nice hiking and peaceful, quiet forests.  The last 3 days we stayed closer to the action and spend the hot sunny days floating from vineyard to vineyard, with stops in antique shops, parks and cafes along the way. We spent one morning at the aviation museum, where Jrock had the best time.  It took two days to get there and two days to get back, but I highly recommend this little area in Oregon as a family vacation – just lovely.

We came back with ’somewhat’ healed hearts, a renewed appreciation for Maggie’s sweet little spirit, and 15 bottles of wine.

Enjoy the pictures!
(If you click on a picture, it will make it bigger… then just click on the small picture below/right of the big one to move you to the next one, and so forth…)

Grabbing fruit before we leave Canada. Strangely, the only fruit we couldn’t take into the States was a Florida orange!

On the road with Gordon…

She felt right at home in the trailer, I think!

Relaxing after breakfast in the trailer.

Some wineries are pretty – some are functional.

One of the boutique wineries in Washington.

Out on the road with my girl! On the way to Oregon.

Antique shopping with Maggie – she enjoyed the AC more than the antiques, I think.

Such a good traveler….

Catching a sandwich at Silverton – that is such a cute little town!

PRetty old barns…

Hiking for 3/4 hours around Silver Falls – just lovely. Maggie was pooped. (So were we!)

Yee-gads! There be cougars in the woods!

Sketching – on a hike.

Pad Thai and a glass of Washington Reisling… what more could a couple want?

Enjoying one of the many off-leash parks.

The mountains were close, but the valley was all farmland and trees…

Lovely hazy evenings in Oregon…

MAggie’s favorite spot in Gordon…

These huge vultures were everywhere! Must be the state bird or something?

The historic site we stayed at for 2 days… very pretty farms here.

Archery Summit – some of the best we tasted. Argle was great too.

Happy but tasted-out after about 5 vineyards (that day).

I’m spitting and driving, but still enjoying myself!

Wild Rose – one of the small, pleasant surprises.

This guy nicely gave us some vine string from the barn since we forgot MAggie’s leash that day!

Pretty views – reminded us of Beaujolais – except the soil was red here, no limestone or brown.

Maggie visited a lot of wineries since it was too hot in the car – this is in Carlton, a cooperative winemakers studio.

One way to beat the heat!

Wading on the banks of the Willamette River on a hot day.

Jrock happy as punch at the Aviation Museum.

Faster than a speeding bullet!

Many of the vineyards we visited had pretty gates… this one also had great quality wine.

Elk Cove in the Northwest – very pretty, and great value wines.

Jrock happily studying the wine menu at La Rambla tapas bar in McMinnville.

Dash Point State Park, near Seattle, Washington

Maggie loves the beach!

Picking blackberries for breakfast and dessert – never mind it’s a state park!

Chowing down at Dash point, Washington. Wine, pasta and still fresh vegs left over from our garden at home.

Ah, the border on the way back to home sweet home…

Hannah’s Hope

 

We always want to hear from adoptees, and understand their points of view.  Click here to watch some great videos narated by 11 year old HAnnah, adopted from Romania. I think her inspirational videos show us the power of young people and hope for children, one little starfish at a time.

Changing our request

We’re well approaching a year – in fact, it’s only a week out.  For months, we’ve been debating if we should broaden our age request.  So last week we made the jump and expanded our request to the agency for 2 children under 4 years old.

Why did we change?  The big reason is because of the time… the “1 under 1 and 1 under 4” was definitely eliminating the few sibling groups that did come in – the younger age bracket being the main reason. Obviously these children were not meant to be our children; but it gives a person pause.

We’ve also spent a lot more time with children of different ages in the last year.  L, who has a .5 and a 1.5 year old, our godson who is 2.5, and another friend T who has a 3.5 year old.  We’ve been able to see the different ages and are excited about parenting slightly ‘older’ kids.

You also have to think if we are waiting this long that there isn’t a need for parents who want a baby and a toddler.  For sure, there is a need in general, but for the groups of kids that come through the Canadian adoption process, parents for ‘older’ kids seem to be more needed right now. 

Lots of other factors and questions came into play – some serious, like: will I miss never having a baby, if we are referred two toddlers? These are our two only kids, according to the plan. -Some not as important, like: what if I never use the change table I painstakingly crafted? lol.  I suppose I wouldn’t miss diapers.  Are we prepared for the attachment and grieving challenges?  Do we have the support network?  Can we hit the ground running with appropriate and coordinated discipline?

Now that it is made, I’m at peace with the change.  Sometime next week Imagine will get the paperwork and email it off to Ethiopia.  Who knows?  we could still be refered twin infants (yikes – maybe I’ll leave that up to the Sandi’s of the world – a braver woman than I!)) or we might just have a 2 and a 3 year old.  Guess we’ll just have to see.

PS.  Our much appreciated social worker, if you are reading this, thank you so much for hustling out that paperwork!!! And more importantly, for helping us through this decision.  (I should actually saying helping me, since Jrock said “as long as I don’t have to teach them to shave when they arrive, we’re good.” )

A baby boy blue shower

This shower actually happened two weeks ago, but with all that was going on, I’m just posting about it now…

Our group Okanagan Families With Children From Africa hosted a shower for the Okanagan’s newest arrival from Ethiopia, little X.  He’s a cutey! The theme was baby boy blue stuff, and boy oh boy! did the moms pull through with the shower gifts, lol!  Enjoy the pictures.