Two blog entries that made me smile this week:
A website that tells you how green the candidates are:
Musical Christmas Card
Today I got one of those cute musical Christmas cards from some dogs I take care off. I thought I would share Tank’s opinion of it:
BBB Complaint?
Matt received an email this morning that his BBB case had been closed. Ummm what? We never got one that said we had an open complaint. The complaint stated that the person never got a reply to an email. I was, ummm, quite peeved at this point. Who complains over not getting a response to an email? So many things could have happened to that email. Also, why weren’t we ever given the opportunity to respond to the complaint? I was going to call the BBB, but first I had to see the email and complaint myself. Upon further investigation I figured out that my computer genius husband had been phished and had fallen for it. The thing that really made it stick out for me is that he said he had to open the link to the complaint in IE 6, which is odd because the BBB.org site works just fine in Safari and FireFox. So, I told him to take me to the link and it linked to another site. I thought my genius husband would notice this, because he usually is so alert in these matters, but I guess emotions can take over, but since I just couldn’t believe it could be true (because Matt is so wonderful at getting back to people and he saves every email he gets regarding wanting information) I didn’t fall for it. So, I logged onto the BBB site to get their phone number to call and see what can be done about phishing scams and they had a whole article about it right on the home page. To all the business owners out there please be aware of this, and don’t click on the link. Matt always says he is fine he is on a Mac, but the silly boy opened this link on Virtual PC and now has to run a virus scan.
So not cool!
On Saturday morning we woke up to shards of glass and torn down lights. No we didn’t not have one heck of a storm, and nope we don’t have a wildlife problem. Someone tore down our lights! They are stapled up so it completely tore the cords. We were lucky and only two strands were destroyed and none of the decorations in the front yard were touched. We were still upset that someone would do this, and that they don’t have respect for others. They didn’t dampen our Christmas spirit, the lights are back up, and we have moved on.
Polar Bear Pic (for those of you waiting)
Also, dad helped us fixed the nativity, we had it set-up all wrong. It looks much better now.
Need a holiday gift idea?
Greendimes is perfect for someone who is sick of all that junk mail. Plus you don’t have to hope it arrives in time to wrap, you just select the date you want it sent to their email.
They will also plant 10 trees for the recipient.
Mmmm Coffee
I don’t know about you, but I cannot start my day without my cup of coffee. According to the makers of Black Gold retail sales of coffee are 80 billion dollars per year, so I know I am not the only one with this morning addiction. (A short excerpt, 8:15 minutes, of the documentary is included below.) Continue reading “Mmmm Coffee”
Christmas Lights!
We put up our Christmas lights yesterday afternoon when we had a break in the windy, rainy weather. We wanted to do it last weekend, but it rained all day Saturday and we had other stuff to do on Sunday. Yesterday only required one emergency trip to the store to get one more strand of lights and some replacement bulbs because somebody (Matt) broke a couple. While I was gone at the store Matt decorated the shrubs with lights and I had one question for him when I got back. Did you make sure those worked? His answer, No. My response, okay I’ll do that. Two strands didn’t work, of course, and maybe Matt will check next year before putting them up, silly boy. I didn’t get any action shots of us working on the lights, but here is the finished product:
Matt didn’t take a picture that includes the other side of the yard where my polar bear is, maybe I can convince him to do it tonight.
Line Drying
This posts is for all of you considering line drying and weighing the pros and cons. My friend Tara recently finished Serve God, Save the Planet and was considering this next step. Continue reading “Line Drying”
Grocery Store Faux Pas
Today I committed the ultimate grocery store faux pas, something I hadn’t done in a very long time and work very hard at not doing. I went to the grocery store HUNGRY! It was bad. I bought things I never buy chips, pretzels (I wanted to go back and find chocolate after this so I could make dipped pretzels for people and us, of course), and carmel dip (at least this one was to go with the apples I bought and really for Matt). I had to talk myself out of buying so many other things. I wanted a frozen pizza! I haven’t had one in years, luckily I talked myself out of it. I wanted pretty much everything I saw, luckily I did have a little self restraint and didn’t buy it all. Later I discovered a granola bar in the bottom of my purse (I keep it there for emergencies like this) and had I noticed it sooner, I would have saved myself some money. What are some grocery store faux pas that you have fallen victim to?
Disaster in Bethlehem
The story of who stole baby Jesus, told in pictures
Continue reading “Disaster in Bethlehem”
Adoption Process Explained (sort of)
I am going to try to explain the adoption process as best I can. It is the one thing we get the most questions about right now and every time we think we understand it we learn something new. So, this list is just my best understanding of the process right now.
Apply to Agency: Done, September 23, 2007
Apply to Home Study Agency: Done, October 3, 2007
Home Study Process, involves the gathering of paperwork, writing biographies, two in home visits, two days of classes, and then your social worker writes up the home study, which is then reviewed by our agency, and then the social worker sends to the courts (I am told the last one in Pinal County she did took a month, boo), if the courts certify us we can move on, completed everything on our end as of November 30, 2007, our social worker is writing the report now and it will get it to our agency at the beginning of next week
Citizen and Immigration Services approval to bring the adopted child(ren) home, our certified home study will then be sent to CIS and processed, sorry I don’t have an estimated time on that one
Certification, all of our notarized documents now have to be certified by the Secretary of State in the state where the documents were originated, basically they are stating that we used a real notary
Bundling, our agency double checks our dossier (dos-ee-ey: a collection or file of documents on the same subject, esp. a complete file containing detailed information about a person or topic), it then travels to Washington, D.C.
Authenticated at the U.S. Department of State
Second Authentication at the Ethiopian Embassy, both authentications take about 1-2 weeks, then it is returned to our agency’s main office
Dossier Sent to Ethiopia, in Ethiopia it is quickly translated into Amharic and the new translated copy is authenticated
Sometime after that we will receive our referral, we will get basic info on our children at this time, this step has been taking about 1-3 months but could increase due to more agencies being approved to work in Ethiopia
Once we accept the referral our dossier is then presented to the officials at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, and to the court, after this we can expect to travel in approximately 2-3 months
Hopefully ya’ll find that helpful and not too boring! Please post any questions in the comment section or if you know something I don’t know inform me.
World Aids Day
Though Africa accounts for only 10% of the world’s population, it has 64% of all infections worldwide – 24.5 million people. This is a real crisis: Continue reading “World Aids Day”
Still have leftover turkey?
If you are sick of eating turkey sandwiches I have a recipe to help you use the rest of that turkey up. Continue reading “Still have leftover turkey?”