Waiting

When people ask me where we are in our adoption process I say, “Just waiting.”  And here we are, definitely just waiting.  It’s looking like Chinese New Year is going to hang us up a bit, but everyone is still hopeful for a mid-February travel.  I think about our little guy every day.  My BIL and SIL are hosting a Chinese New Year party again this year and I instantly thought how next year we’ll all be celebrating together.  Our little dude has likely been hearing fireworks as the celebrations have already begun in China.  Josh Kelley has his fireworks ready to go and I’m thinking about asking the kids to help me make a cardboard rooster head…it’s the year of the rooster this year.  I already snagged some of the rooster stamps at the post office…one sheet for me and one for Harper.  We’re both mail buffs.  One of my goals for several years now is to send mail weekly.  Loving that all my letters have been adorned with a little rooster love.  Emails from our China director are the highlight of my day.  My stomach always drops and perks simultaneously with every waiting email I see pop up.  She has been the absolute kindest…I love our agency in general…hence why I’m on their reference list and get emails from prospective parents every now and then asking about them.  Thumbs ups and praise hand emojis galore.  We’re definitely all ready to meet littlest brother.  We talk about it daily.  We talk about travel.  And chop stick use is in heavy practice.  Josh said this morning, “Please look at Harper.”  I peeked around the corner from the kitchen to see this.  God love that girl.  She is absolutely already heavily emotional invested in her smallest little brother.  A very important piece of our guy’s paperwork got misplaced with immigration a few weeks ago and Harper cried harder than I did.  It was the sweetest thing in all the lands.  It was found…no worries.

BTW…why does she look like a freakin’ teenager?!?!?!

Sidenote:  If your library does not have playaways, ask them to get them!!!  They are basically modern books on tape.  Every Kelley kid loves them!!!  End sidenote.

And in other news, I have two things you must make for dinner or lunch asap.  First, White Bean Turkey Chili.  I pretty much halved the recipe exactly and made a few adjustments…nixed the chicken stock base because I didnt have any, black pepper instead of white because again I didn’t have any, 4oz can of chopped green chilis, 1 box of chicken stock (4 cups), only one can of white beans, left out the sour cream all together…Hudson cannot do dairy…and added leftover rice.  Crazy good.  Served it with a side of fruit and some people threw in some tortilla chips.

Second, Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas.  Shut the front door you guys.  Massive hit.  I followed the recipe except I was out of cumin so I subbed coriander…still delish.  We warmed up some hard and soft taco shells, whipped up some pico de gallo and topped them with pico and chopped romaine.  Just shut the heck up.  A side of black beans and fruit and dinner was served.  Make these asap.

Sidenote:  Our sweet butcher Scott at Kroger cut me exactly a 4lb boneless pork shoulder.  He’s the nicest!  I ended up letting it cook the full 6 hours and it fell apart between some forks.  Perfection.  End sidenote.

I feel like random is all I’ve really got lately.  The world is quite in turmoil and my mind is having a hard time breaking it all down to be truthful.  So I’ll keep trying to be kind to my neighbor, line up thoughts, ideas and feelings next to Jesus’ and tell you guys about delicious pork tacos.

Peace out.