Buster, were not in Texas anymore.

My deepest apologies for the dramatic pause in posting recently. Not that you all have been sitting on pins and needles wondering, “When will Loralee post again?” like you do in my dreams – but my apologies just the same. I wish I had a wonderful and useful excuse like I’ve been knitting 12 million sweaters for orphaned fur-less squirrels in Poland, but unfortunately I do not. My only excuse is it’s been cold here. Something about cold weather makes me want to curl up in a ball and do nothing but sift hot soup over my body. Buster (my chihuahua) has been freezing inside the walls of our heated home. For some reason just knowing it’s cold outside puts him into intense hypothermia. He keeps staring at me with his beady eyes saying, “How could you do this to me? You promised me we lived in Texas.” When I open the door to let him out, he looks at me like I’ve just severely abused him. The number of sweaters I put on the dog doesn’t seem make a difference.

Then today, something miraculous happened!
It’ snowed…..in TEXAS…. a lot!!!!!
And I love snow. I simply adore it. Now I want the cold weather to stay. For some reason if there is snow on the ground then it’s okay in my mind for it to be cold and I can start blogging again and actually making dinner. If there is snow on the ground it can negative 389 degrees and I am a happy productive woman.

Along with all the cold weather has been other news. None of it goes together to make a meaningful post, but here are more unimportant thoughts/happenings here in LL-land:

A few weeks ago, a lady I barely know told me that she got a chin implant and that she had taken photographs of me (and more specifically of my chin) to her plastic surgeon to replicate. I now find myself staring into changing room mirrors contemplating chin modeling much much much too often. The irony of it is that I have vivid Vivid VIVID middle school memories of staring into Dillard’s changing room mirror and wishing that my chin wasn’t quite so prominent. Oh, the irony.

I have been thrilled at the success of No Fuss Fabulous lately. I just wish I had more time to give towards it. The most exciting news as of late has been from Woman’s World magazine. Woman’s World contacted me and asked me to help them with two different spreads in upcoming issues. One is about baby showers and another on family pizza nights. I doubt it will be a big deal – probably just a little quote or two, but you can bet that those issues will be some of their best-sellers since I will force Lee to buy 10,000 copies of each.

A few things in the media have been bothering me. I am disturbed that the girl on The Bachelor is named Vienna. I just keep saying, “What is Jake thinking? Why am I watching this show?! And why does her name have to be Vienna?!” I am positive that it’s just a terrible terrible edit and she is a lovely girl. To make matters worse, after each episode I then watch a little bit of Toddlers & Tiaras. All I can do is shake my head at myself even as I type this. Another media story that has irritated me is the 10 Americans detained in Haiti right now. I don’t know the Baptists who were caught trying to take children from Haiti to The Dominican Republic or their real story, but the damage they have done to Haitian pre-earthquake REAL DOCUMENTED orphans (as well as International adoption in general) is reprehensible. As of right now I just want to send them a card that reads, “Please, please, please do not try to do humanitarian work ever ever ever again. No, really. I’m serious. Please, just don’t. Ever.”

Speaking of people being stalled in international adoption, we picked up the paperwork for our Ethiopian adoption we put on hold last year due to Boston’s speedy arrival! So we are all updated for international again. International adoptions take a long time but we are feeling really good about everything and hope to have much less bumps in the road as we go forward.

Our little Boston is getting surgery on his little eyes this next week. It’s a very minor surgery. One of his eyes has had a difficult time aligning so we are getting it fixed on the 24th. I am so thrilled that we live in a country that can just go in and fix these little minor things in a very minor way! It’s especially nice for us. What can I say? We have bad luck with eyes in this household. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of eyes, Lee’s eyes are doing well. He will be getting his cornea transplant later this year to our happiness! He never complains and rarely mentions it. He hasn’t let it effect his work or his life. He has been amazing throughout this whole ordeal. I’ve always said that resilient is one of the best words to describe him. I’m now finding out how true that is. You think you know someone after having known them for over 10 years, but then their strength can still surprise you. I think that is what I like most about marriage. On the toughest of days, you can be reminded how lucky you are.

The kiddos want to go outside again now. I better run!
Thanks for listening to my ramblings! I’ll post again soon!
Happy Snow day!