Corteo

I've been dying to see Cirque du Soleil and finally had an opportunity - we saw Corteo live a few nights ago and it was amazing! We were 5th row center and had a perfect view - although there really are no bad seats in the tent. So was it good enough to satisfy my craving? Uh, no - now I want to see all the Cirque shows...wow!

Butterflies!

The native prairie garden is now blooming like crazy. When I purchased the plants I was told it would attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Well, look what visited us recently? It's a Tiger Swallowtail. Unfortunately I wasn't home but Jacek was able to get this great photo. We've seen at least 3 other kinds of butterflies several kinds of bees in the garden in the past week, too. One butterfly even let me get nose to nose with it. It's so relaxing to sit on the patio and just watch.

3 Months LID

As of today we are officially 3 months into our wait for referral. The current rumor mill says the wait from LID to referral is going to climb to 18 months. Thankfully I have my new job to keep me busy and distracted and like I mentioned before, it's a good thing for us if we don't travel to China until I've been there more than a year due to FMLA rules - and summer is the busy season at my company, so if it goes into fall, like it will if the 18 month wait pans out, then even better - only in terms of work of course. Ahhh, see how easily I can make the number 18 look better in my brain?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Well, you can see for yourself and the season's not quite half over...fresh organic veggies anyone? We have tomatos, hot peppers, banana pepper, snap peas, green beans, onions, chinese kale, leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, spinach, carrots, radishes, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelon, raspberries, strawberries, sunflowers, rosemary, parsley, dill, basil, cilantro, oregano and thyme. On the bottom right of the picture is our native prairie garden - still in it's baby stage, but already giving beautiful flowers.

The fence keeps the dog out and the photo doesn't do the size of it justice - the raised beds are 16'x4' each and there's another 6-8 feet on the far end for the overflow and berry patch. Not bad for city dwellers, huh?

Little Angel

We visited family over the holiday weekend and we got to meet Sandy, who comments on our blog occasionally- she's married to my father's cousin. It was so fun to finally meet in person! She gave us a gift for our baby - it's the cutest little stuffed Precious Moments angel boy. When you press his belly he says the "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer. It is just adorable. Thank you so much Sandy - we will treasure this little guy and we can't wait to give him to our child.