'tis the season to be... jolly?

This morning Nick and I drove to a friend of ours family's tree farm to pick out a Christmas tree. It's been 3 years I do believe since we've had a real-live Christmas tree. The past few years we've used a small 2ft tall artificial one my coworker bought me. We haven't really been in the holiday spirit since starting our 4 year and counting adoption journey. The holid

ays are such a magical time for children and we want nothing more than to have a little one(s) of our own to share this time of year with. To say it's a difficult time for us is an understatement.

However, this year is different for me. I can't explain it and don't know why, but I'm feeling quite holly-jolly this time around. I hung up some new stockings for both us and our boys, Chewie and James (dogs - not real children - but they're all we have). I set out all our red & green candles, cinnamon pinecones, artificial greenery garlands and the little christmas village I painted years ago - with cotton snow and all. I decorated the little 2ft tall tree in our den, and just finished decorating the deliciously aromatic tree we cut today.

Here are a couple pictures of the big - and I mean BIG - tree in our living room. It's funny how much smaller they look out at the tree farm. I must say though, these pictures do it no justice. They don't capture how twinkly and sparkly it is, but here they are anyway...

This little guy is hiding in a bare area - love it!

Okay, well maybe not...

A quick update on our seemingly endless adoption. We received an email today stating that Kaed's birth country is in complete disarray. Elections are going on, people are getting killed, communication is nearly impossible. So, while things looked up in August, things are looking less than stellar right now.

We'll just keep trudging along in hopes that someday we may be able to bring this little guy home. Until then (if ever!) i'm still trying to catch that darn ovulation, and I think we're going to proceed in getting our foster license through our state and see where that takes us.

(mostly) wordless wednesday

grown from seed heirloom belarusian heart tomatoes

a lone heirloom chiogga beet... the others were destroyed by a rogue chicken

heirloom black beauty zucchini

someone wants a tasty garden treat

Wordless Wednesday

Bullet Post!

Man oh man it's been some time since I've written on here! Lots has happened these past couple months...

• I just finished up my fourth round of Clomid (an infertility medication) for this year and again it did not work.
• All my hens are laying! It's so nice to get 4-5 eggs each day. Soon I'll be able to start giving them to friends. Yesterday I integrated the 3 baby chickens with the 6 big girls. So far so good. All feathers are still intact. haha
• I made a Star Wars birthday cake this past weekend for my favorite little 5 year old. He went bananas and started hugging and kissing me!
• Spring has FINALLY decided to arrive in western WA. I'm hoping to re-fence off the garden this weekend and plant the 18 tomato plants I've had growing in our living room window. I'm also going to be planting several old heirloom varieties of corn, squash, melon and beans.
• I have made a fantastic new friend, Amber, who lives in Kentucky. We met on a Trying To Conceive (TTC) forum and it feels like we were always meant to be friends... we have a crazy amount of stuff in common.
• We traded in our Volkswagen Jetta and Kia Sorento for a Honda Insight. It's taken some getting used to being a 1-car household, but with the distance we commute (we carpool together), we HAD to get something with good gas mileage. 43-47MPG isn't too shabby. ;)
• I want to throw a tea party!

And I'll end this post with a cute pic of our friend's dog buddy (him and his momma live with us). He says Hi!