The Principle of Compensation

We get our church magazine each month, which is called Ensign.  This month there is an article titled, Learning to Cope With Infertility.  It was a very moving article.  The part I really enjoyed was a side script to the article and these words came from a talk given by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, "Come What May and Love It", given at our church General Conference in October 2008.

"The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss.  That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in His own way.  While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude."

I am so thankful for a loving and merciful God, who loves me enough to offer these words of encouragement.  

Starting to Set Up the Nursery

Starting to set up the nursery has been exciting.  We got the changing table from a friend who was getting rid of it.  We added the blue organizing bins on the shelves.  We are glad the table is white.  We plan to get a white crib and we will put my grandfathers rocking chair in the nursery too. 

We had the 3x3 white shelf and just updated the pull-out brown drawers.   I have quilted or crocheted all the baby blankets in the photo.  I've been collecting small white stuffed animals too.  I think that they could be used by either a boy or a girl.

If we get a girl we plan to decorate with white daisy flowers.  I painted the daisy picture in the frame.

  We will wait to finish up the nursery until we have our sweet bundle of joy home with us.  

Family Recipes

Here are a few of my favorite family recipes.  The first, Grandma Goodson's Meatloaf, is a hit every time I make it!


Grandma Goodson's Meatloaf


1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1/2 lb sausage
1 cup uncooked oats
1 cup tomato juice
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced
4 eggs


Mix all ingredients well and form into a loaf in a 9"x13" pan.  Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, than pour cream of mushroom soup mixed with 1/3 can milk over and bake for 45 minutes.  Serve with potatoes and the mushroom gravy.


I am named after my grandma, and as such, I made up my own meatloaf recipe!!


Turkey Noodle Meatloaf


1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
1 can of Campbell's Double Noodle soup
1 clove minced garlic
1/4 cup bread crumbs
salt and pepper to taste


Form into a loaf and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  **Bake the first 15 minutes, then pull out and cover with 1 can of cream of mushroom soup mixed with 1/2 cup milk.  Finish baking for 15 minutes more.  Let sit in oven for 10 more minutes with oven turned off.  Serve with rice pilaf.




The next recipe is a sweet, yummy treat my mom would make.


Apple Hill Cake


Combine:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 egg


Add:
2 cups diced green apples


Sift together:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda


Add to apple mixture and mix well.  Spread in a 8" or 9" square pan.  Bake for one hour at 350 degrees.
(This can be doubled and put into a 9"x13" pan)




Each Christmas my mom would make this next cake as our Birthday cake for Baby Jesus.  The recipe came from my Aunt Ann, my mothers sister.


Sunrise Cake


2 cups self rising flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
6 whole eggs
1 tsp almond extract


Sift flour and sugar, set aside.  In a large bowl, beat oil and eggs with a mixer.  Add sugar and flour, then the extract.  Beat for 10 minutes on medium speed.  Bake in a greased tube pan for 1 hour at 325 degrees.  Cool for half an hour before removing.  Drizzle with a powdered sugar icing.  Place a small nativity ornament on top and sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus.

Family Traditions...Part One

We have set up several family traditions over our marriage.  One that I ready love is one that I brought into our family from my parents.  We hold an annual ICE CREAM PIG-OUT!!!  This is always in the summer and we invite several friends to come 'Pig-Out' with us.  Everyone brings their favorite ice cream and we have all the toppings and sauces.  The goal is the be the person who eats the most ice cream in the set time period.  I have prizes for the top three 'PIGS'.  I am looking forward to this this coming summer!!

Another tradition we have is to go visit our dear friends in Defiance, Ohio for the Halloween Parade.  The first year we dressed up as Ketchup, Mustard and Relish.  We like to go for the candy, friends and the small town charm.

We host a Valentine Couples Dinner each February at our home.  We eat, play games and talk.  We have had some great times getting to know our friends better and enjoy good food.  We feel lucky to be together as a couple and value our dear friends example of being a great husband or wife.  Really every day can be Valentine's Day if you let it be!!  XOXO.

One of our more silly traditions is to jump on hotel beds.  This started when we took a trip together while we were engaged.  We have to check the ceiling heights before jumping, as not all hotels have tall ceilings!!  It is more fun if there are two beds in the room, so one can jump from bed to bed!!

Garage Sale

So I couldn't resist going garage sale shopping last weekend.  There were some great deals on baby clothes.  I know we will get a lot of clothes as gifts once the baby is here, but these were so cute.  At one I got a whole grocery bag full for $5.00, in which I stuffed 8 pairs of girl infant shoes and about 40 pieces of girl clothes!!  At another I got some super cute boy clothes for a quarter each!!  This baby will have a very stylist wardrobe!!

Ordering Adoption Cards

So I set up an adoption email.  It is jmadoption @yahoo.com.  In a few days we should have our profile up on the itsaboutlove.org website. I want to set up our profile onto another free website for adoptive couples, and then I will be ready to order the adoption cards.  I will pass them out to friends and family so they can help us spread the word.  

Let the finding begin!

We are Jeff and Margaret.  We are finally ready to start our finding process for our sweet baby.

Let me back up a few months.  Back in June of 2011 we met with our case worker to get started on our adoption journey.  We got all the paper work... and there were a lot of papers!! We reviewed the items we could get started on. We had to do some reading for our training log, so off to the library I went to checkout the book, Dear Birth-mother.  This book helped us understand how important it is to have positive, open ideas about birth-mothers.  We learned so much from reading this book.


We had to pull letters of reference from friends and family, along with letters from our employers and our bishop from church.  Once all these were in, we had to get the fire inspector to come check to see that our home is safe.  Our case worker came as well to do a more thorough home safety audit also.  We finished all the readings for the training log.  We all had to get our doctor check-ups too.  The last few things were interviews with our case worker and to write a birth-mother letter and put a couple scrapbook pages together to have at the agency office.


We are very happy to have all the paper work done and move into our finding phase!  We hope you will follow us on our adoption journey!