This is my favorite Market Place Money Story (of this week). Sean Aiken graduated from college but didn’t know what he wanted to do for a career so he’s trying 52 jobs in 52 weeks. He’s been working different jobs for one week each just to test them out. If the company wants to pay him he insists that they take his salary and make a one time donation to The One Campaign, so basically he’s volunteering for a year. He gets hired through a website he set up and you can also read up on his jobs so far. What I can’t find is how he’s affording to not get paid for a year.

I’ve added a few links to the side bar in on my blog. You, too, can check out my facebook profile, follow me on twitter, read all the random stuff I’ve saved in del.icio.us and check out my talent for sewing things on flickr. (And just so you know my flickr pictures are only pictures of the things I have made or that I’m currently working on. If you are looking for cute Lexi pictures you need to go here.)

I stumbled across this website a while ago and it just occurred to me that there are probably a lot of people who read my blog who may be interested in it. It’s called Mamas Like and it’s basically a blog filled with reviews of various kids’/family products. Their guidelines for reviewing something is that a) they need to like the product, b) it’s a small-business venture run by women and more specifically work-at-home moms c) your product is your own unique creation. They have a whole bunch of other guidelines, but those are the biggest.

Here’s my favorite part of the site - almost everything that they review they get an actual sample of and they almost always give it away. To win, all you have to do is leave a comment. I won a gift pack from Sophia Bean a few months ago. And I never win anything.

The baby’s room is going to have an “underwater” theme to it. And I came across this. I think it would make a pretty cute room. But I think I’d only do it to one wall. A whole room of this may be a little overwhelming.

So, who wants to help do a big kid paint-by-number?

Seriously. Do you really think I spend the last 20 years of my life waiting for this?

(HT: Jaime Hunt)

Play a vocab game and donate 20 grains of rice for every correct answer. Go on try it. You know you want to….

Happy St. Nicholas’ Day.

We’re back from Kansas. We woke up around 4:30 this morning, left at 5 and got home just a little after 5. The trip home was pretty uneventful, except for the part when Lexi threw up in her carseat. And of course it happened just outside of Kansas City which meant 8 hours of traveling with that lovely aroma. Her carseat now smells like bleach.

Kansas was fun. I’m sure Kevin will be posting stories and pictures soon. He’s in the process of downloading his camera and I think he said he took over 300 pictures. He also scanned a whole bunch of his Grandma’s old family photos so I’m sure those will be up on flickr as well.

I always go to Kansas with the mindset that there is nothing to do. (And if you know where we were, there really isn’t that much around.) But every time we go we run out of time to do everything. We rolled into town around 6 pm on Wednesday, ate dinner and then opened Christmas presents with Kevin’s parents, Grandparents and his brother’s family. Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with everyone - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents…-. Thursday night we hung out, Kevin scanned pictures, ate more turkey. Friday we went to Uncle Junior’s house to visit and went out to dinner. Saturday we went to Kevin’s Grandparents’ house for lunch and to see more family. By the time I realized it, “nothing to do” had turned into “time to go home.”

Ethiopia, like any other country, has several religions and holidays, but the majority celebrate Christian holidays. This is probably due to the age of the country. Ethiopia is said to be the Beginning of Civilization. Ethiopians claim the Ark of the Covenant is housed in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Many believe that Ethiopia was converted to Christianity when Phillip met the Ethiopian traveler (the traveler was an important official of the time) in the book of Acts. While others believe the overall conversion of the country happened later when a ruler was converted.

I’ve been looking into the customs and holidays of the country, trying to see which ones we could adopt into our family. For the most part, they celebrate many of the same holidays we do - Christmas, New Year’s, Easter - but the dates are slightly different because Ethiopia and most of the Western world are on different calendars. One of the holidays that they celebrate is Epiphany (which is when the Magi reached Jesus as a baby).

I think Epiphany is one of the holidays I would like to add to our family’s celebrations. Partially because it’s not a completely foreign holiday to me. It feels like a good way to bring the 2 cultures of our family together and celebrating a holiday that is already a part of our family’s beliefs.

There is lots of discussion around the cost of adoption. There are those that really dislike adoption because they feel it is like “buying” a child, there are people who just don’t know where the money goes, there are people willing to adopt but unsure of where their money is going…the list goes on and on. But one of the reasons that we chose Children’s Home Society is because they are very upfront about the cost and where the money goes. When we send in our dossier we also send in a check for $8700. That’s a large chunk of money going to something called “country fees”. But those fees help cover the cost of the care our child has been receiving for however long they are in the care center (and considering day care, on average, in MN runs about $900/month and the kids are only there 8-10 hours a day, $8700 barely begins to cover the cost of several months of round the clock care, with medical treatment if necessary.). The fees also go towards humanitarian aid projects such as these in the various countries CHSFS works with. So although I’m not thrilled with the amount, I’m not uneasy or worried about where our money is going.