Actually

I'm going to change my menu a little. I'm going to make summer rolls with shrimp instead of the fried chicken. It will be easier to make the summer rolls in the morning than frying chicken. Plus I can use some of our mint in the summer rolls which should make Dick Rickles happy.

Picnic time

Anthony and I have always loved going on picnics. We usually go on a couple during the summer, but this year time has been flying by and of course for once I don 't mind. ;)

Tomorrow we are going on our first picnic of the season. We are going to go to a lake near here so we can go swimming too. I'm trying to come up with a menu. So far I'm going to make Vietnamese sandwiches, cellophane noodle salad with mango, and Korean fried chicken wings. It's an eclectic mix covering all of Southeast Asia. I want to make one more thing, but I'm not sure what. Maybe a cold tofu salad?

Here are my cream puffs

They came out really good. I liked the green tea ones a lot. They weren't the prettiest. They actually looked a lot like little santas/the travelocity gnome. But they tasted great.

New Years resolutions?

So for this New Years I made two resolutions: to join a gym and to learn to bake. I did join the gym and I've been going fairly regularly before this last month. I need to get back into it. Anthony and I did learn that we can't go to the gym together. Well, we can go together, but we can't work out together. I don't love him telling me how to do things and he doesn't love me constantly rolling my eyes at him.

Anyway, to the baking. I haven't really tried to do much with that. Last week I found a pretty cool baking blog called Tuesdays with Dorie. Every Tuesday the group bakes a different recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. To join the group you have to open your blog up to everyone at TWD and you have to bake at least twice a month from the book. I'm not sure how I feel about opening our adoption blog to that many people. For now I decided to bake what they are baking and just follow along. This week they are making the peppermint cream puff ring.

Of course, the cook in me can't help but change it up slightly. I'm making cream puffs because I think the ring will be too hard for us to eat. It just looks huge. Also I don't love mint so I'm not doing that. If Anthony is reading this he is rolling his eyes at me because we have so much mint in the garden and he is trying to get me to put it in everything.

I think I'll make the cream and to some of the cream I'll add green tea powder. We'll see how this goes.

Yummy

Catching up

So after my bummer of a week last week we had a great weekend. It could have easily gone the other way. We had a heat wave, our a/c went out and Anthony got stuck at the Charlotte airport for 6 hours. Despite the heat and no a/c Kim, Brendan, and Ellie came over. Kim and Brendan smartly brought along Ellie's kiddie pool. We made our seafood boil and sangria so that helped a lot. Anthony and I had so much fun with Ellie. I owe them an apology for keeping her up and feeding her so much sugar. I look forward to the day when they can do the same to Oliver!

Get ready to smile

Anthony commented last night that I haven't done much posting and if I want to keep my readers happy I should try to post more. I think he is having too many meeting about web traffic ;)

Last week kind of sucked for some reason, but this week has flown by and I haven't had much time to post anything. I should have posted immediately that we got new pictures of Oliver. I love them so much. These are my favorite so far. I have a feeling I'll being saying that every month. I really like the one where he is on the floor grabbing the baby seat.

Nothing new

It has been a slow two weeks around here. Anthony has been away for most of it. Our agency posted new pictures from the orphanage where Oliver is, but somehow they forgot to take pictures of him. A family went to get their baby the same day, but they also didn't take pictures of Oliver. We were disappointed, but could understand how it could happen. It was nice to see all of the other babies that Oliver gets to play with. Our agency said they should be back there in the next two weeks and they promise that they will take pictures. I hope so.

Otherwise we called our congresspeople and urged them to help adoptions in Vietnam to continue. They said they have received a lot of phone calls. I hope it helps. I hope everyone can complete their adoption. I hope we can bring Oliver home. I'm usually pretty positive, but for some reason this week I've been kind of blue about it all. It has been such a long process and I just hope we can bring him home.

Anthony and I have vowed to have a fun weekend. He has been away for the last two weeks. We are going to kick off summer this Saturday. I'm really in the mood for a clam bake. It is going to be in the 90s this weekend so besides the fact that we are two hours from the ocean I don't see why we can't do it.