Of Remodeling and New Recipes

Well, I thought things would slow down once the new year came in.  Ha, ha, I should have known better.  New Year's eve on through Monday, Scott and I worked almost constantly on Hunter's new bedroom in the addition we put on this summer.  I know borders aren't really "in" right now, but I found this border at a resale and it is just so Hunter that I had to use it.  This was kind of a good thing because, Mom could use the excuse of matching the border to tone down the John Deere green and yellow colors that Dad and Hunter wanted to paint.  As you can see, it is still green and yellow but hopefully a little more muted and tasteful.  Hunter absolutely loves it.  He kept running in as I got each section of border done to look at it and even touch it.  I do really like how it turned out and most of all I like that the room is done except for trim molding and carpet (both of which are not my job, yeah!).  Since Scott went back to work this week, I have started tackling closets, cleaning the drywall, priming, and painting.  It keeps us moving ahead, and I figure I can't mess those up to badly despite frequent interruptions from a little person.

Looking in from the doorway

I also decided to use one of my Christmas gifts this week.  Scott got me two books that I wanted as shown below.

I figured that there was no time like the present to try preparing a Filipino meal.  I saw with my own eyes how much it meant to my nephews, especially at the beginning, when my sister would cook them an Ethiopian meal.  Familiar food can be so comforting.  So this children's book is about a little girl who helps her mom cook pancit and the recipe is at the back of the book.  I also picked a recipe for chicken lumpia from my new recipe book.  Pancit is a rice stick noodle dish with vegetables and either chicken or pork, and lumpia is chopped chicken and vegetable eggrolls.  I forgot to take a picture when I dished it up, but I did remember just as I was putting the leftovers away.  This is how it looked:

Hunter really liked the lumpia (eggroll), but he kept calling the pancit snake noodles.  He did eat one whole lumpia and about half of the pancit on his plate, so I felt that was pretty good for a new experience.  Not sure if it was at all authentic, but at least it was a start.

I've also been spending hours this week filling out paperwork.  We had three forms to fill out for Immigration Services, one of which was 12 pages long.  We also had a couple of forms to fill out for the US Embassy in Manila and had to send copies of the last 3 years taxes.  It was a crazy big bundle.  Last night, I just kept shoving pages in front of Scott saying, "Sign here and here; now sign again here."  I went over them all one more time today; found a BIG envelope and took it to the Post Office.  It gave me a good sense of accomplishment, and it takes us one step closer to bringing our girl home.