RQ's Projections Update

Rumor Queen posted this projection update today. Last week China Adoption Forecast updated their forecast for our LID from 11/20/10 to 11/12/10 referral projection. CAF's rationale is China is matching on average 3.5 days / month and we have 31 days. I think we will get a referral in September and travel in November. Sooner would be fantastic. International adoption had some incredibly sad news this past week with the reports that a 7 year old boy was sent back to Russia with a one way ticket and a note by his adoptive mother. The adoptive mother lives in Tennessee and apparently close to Vanderbilt which has an IAC that could very probably have provided the support / help needed. It is heartbreaking to think how this will impact this child and future adoptions. I believe this will change adoption education requirements. The IAC courses we took were optional but we thought important and reassuring. On a completely unrelated topic the pictures below (taken with my phone this morning) are of 2 new tulips that bloomed in our garden overnight. The first one is in the patio area. The 2nd one is a lily flowering one in the perennial bed.

Working in the Garden

Today was another gorgeous April day and so even though I need to pull a lot of financial information together this afternoon, I worked in our garden instead. John and I are close to finalizing plans for the patio pavers (brick pattern). We hope to have a referral party this fall and a functional patio will be fun for this party. I adore these snowdrops little green drops on the tips. Bonus that they perennialize! Tulips are my favorite flower and I think the geometry of this one is fascinating.

Our south facing garden means we get our blooms later than usual. So we are just now getting the Easter Egg colored tulips. Many of our still have not yet bloomed.

The Viburnam smell heavenly right now.

The Azalea I planted today. The azalea Lucy's old mommy's gave us died (not surprising as it was a gift to her from a florist) so I replaced it with this one from Rahn's.

Stewartstonian azalea planted. I believe the only noticeable difference with this azalea is the darker colored leaves. The other 2 azaleas that are already established.

The Lily of the Valley look like they are spreading this year.

Plumbago (planted today), hopefully this ground cover spreads quickly, next to coral bells.

Hostas coming in on the slope down to grass area.

Jack in the Pulpit is spreading nicely.

The brunnera in bloom.

Brunnera with glass butterfly feeder. This picture does not do it justice.

Looking up at the slope from the garden section.

I planted 24 3" plants of ground cover in the perennial section today.

And in the last bed (adjacent to the fence) I weeded, added soil amendment and planted 12

3" plants of ground cover Pink Chablis

I really hope this information proves true for our garden. Particularly the CARE: easy.

Rumor Referral! 1st Monday of the month again!

Per Rumor Queen looks like CCAA (who is soon to be CCWC) has matched throught March 17, 2006! This is a nice trend that referrals are coming the 1st Monday of every month. This gives us more reason to hope for a 6 month wait! Today we went tothe Reds Opening Day (v St. Louis) with our friends Statz and Molly. It was a lot of fun even through the Reds lost. The weather was really great. Statz and Molly are 5 years away from being empty nesters and joke that we could switch houses nin 5 years to take advantage of the Wyoming school district. It was a sold out game (40+ thousand people) and of course the Reds lost. The Great American building which will be getting it's crowning tiara at the end of this month.

Hinkle garden has really never looked so lovely. These pictures do it no justice but were taken on a walk over the weekend.

Eden Park Mirror Lake.

And the Gazebo.

The power lines were removed on St Gregory street last Thursday. Huge improvement.

The Bradford Pear in bloom on Fort View outside our 2nd floor bedroom.

Another view a little closer to the window.

I love that the neighbors advertise what is happening with their flags. This one on the neighbor across the street (the bagpiper brit who is an investment banker) was up when we returned home last Saturday from Easter lunch with my family in Bloomington.

Easter Morning in our garden

This morning before church I took these pictures of our garden with my phone. Because our garden faces south our garden blooms later. The Jane Magnolia just started to pop yesterday.

The Daffodils in the perennial section and courtyard are in full bloom.

I can believe I did not notice the brunnera coming in on the slope until this morning.

Scilla is starting to perenialize.

Snowdrops.

I wonder if this is the Solomon Seal.

Tulips should bloom in a week or so.

Babar's USA

The attached video I filmed while we were in Key West visiting the Custom House. Laurent de Brunhoff, Babar author for the last 60 years, and his wife live in Key West during the winter months and this exhibit runs from February - June. According to the Gift Shop staff the author is a genuinely kind man who offered to autograph all the copies of the Babar USA books. We bought one for Audrey.

I loved Babar when I was a child and also mispronounced my whole life ("bar-bar"). I particularly liked this book for several reasons: the unique photos as discussed in the above video, the contemporary elements, the parents encouraging observations on vacation and the different culture views of Americans.

RQ's next referral prediction

RQ was spot on last month but this prediction seems overly optimistic.

China forecast is still predicting our referral for 11-20-10.

So for now we predict September 2010.

March 1, 2010 referrals

The CCAA referrals arrived today and this month they matched 6 days! It was great to rip April 6 - 11, 2006 links off today. When I woke up this morning the first thing I did was reach for my black berry to see if there were any RQ updates. I was surprised to see new information and knew then it was going to be a fun day. Before noon April 11 was confirmed in Denmark but there was still some hope for the 12th. This lead to some hilarious texting between John and I. We are cautiously optimistic and will need to know next month's result before we invest in believing this trend is true. As of 6:30PM tonight RQ has not published her BABIES post. But I saw at least 2 referrals that are 6 months old babies! Yes!! This is a new trend that has been in happening in the last several batches! Tonight there are so many very happy families in disbelief and I am looking forward to reading their stories. This may have to wait until I'm on vacation at the end of this week. Over the weekend I bought this hat and mitten set at The Spotted Goose. I just felt so good about Friday's rumor I could not resist. The Spotted Goose is next to Aglamesis where I was picking up truffles for a family dinner party Saturday night. Oh, they were a deal and will be so cute on our little girl.