Celebrating with Chana Saag

May 1 marked an important anniversary for our family: it was the day we received Anya Rashi's referral five years ago! I will always think of what our son Nathan (who had just turned 5 that week) said about this first photo of her: "She's as cute as a pie in spring!" He was right then -- and she still is today!

To celebrate, I thought I'd share a recipe for Chana Saag (chickpeas and spinach). I made this for dinner tonight.  This is a mild recipe, and very easy to prepare -- so it's perfect for those who are newer to Indian cooking. If you like a little more spice, increase the cayenne pepper and garam masala. If you've ever ordered Chana Saag in an Indian restaurant, you know that the spinach is usually cooked to the point of looking like it's been pureed. One thing I love about this recipe is that the spinach stays a little more lifelike. :o) Enjoy!

CHANA SAAG

2 Tbsp. oil or butter
1 large onion, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, minced (or use 1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder)
1 Tbsp. freshly grated ginger (or use 1/2 tsp. ground ginger)
2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
1 1/2 tsp. garam masala
1/8 tsp. ground cayenne pepper
1 tsp. sea salt
15-oz. can diced tomatoes (and the juice)
1 lb. spinach (frozen works well; if using fresh, reduce cooking time)
2 cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk or half-and-half

Saute onion in oil or butter until translucent. Add garlic, ginger and spices and saute for a minute or two.  Add tomatoes and let simmer for about 10 minutes; then add the chickpeas, spinach, and water. Stir every few minutes until spinach is thawed and hot, then simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Just before serving, stir in the milk or half-and-half. Serve over jasmine or basmati rice.

This girl needs a sister

This is Anya Rashi and her new playmate. She is hauling a big rock up to our

fort and sending it down the slide. She also perched her rock on the swing and gave it a push. Clearly, this girl wants someone to play with that is smaller than her great big 10- and 11-year-old brothers, and needs her little sister to come home soon!

No news = good news, and a brief digression about Peeps

We have no news from India, which for once, truly is good news! We haven't heard anything from CARA since being assigned to our orphanage in Bangalore at the end of March -- which is good, because it means that the orphanage has not found any reason to refuse to work with our family. Some families have been turned away from their assigned orphanage for a variety of reasons, such as having no children that match the family's criteria for age, special needs, etc.

So after months (over a year!) of hearing nothing, at this time we are actually glad to hear nothing! Many friends and family have asked us when we will be matched with a child. If the process plays out as we hope it will, we may hear something about our referral (in adoption lingo, that means receiving information and a photo of our daughter) in June or July. But as always, there are no guarantees of anything.

So for now, we continue to wait for news of ANY referrals, from ANY part of India. This will be a huge reassurance that things are happening and children are moving closer to having a family, as every child deserves.

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And we continue to enjoy and cherish the three kids who are already here in our home. For Easter this year, they saw a photo of a sunflower cake in a magazine, and asked if we could make it for Easter Sunday dinner. The main attraction was that it used Peeps for the sunflower petals -- their Dad hates Peeps, and each year they tease Peter mercilessly about eating just one Peep. (I suspect that was the main reason they wanted this cake to be our dessert.) It has become a tradition in our house to sit around the table chanting "Eat the Peep!" until Peter caves in and shoves one in his mouth just to get us to be quiet. Other people make gorgeous traditional Ukrainian eggs, and dignified stuff like that. We, on the other hand, force people we love to eat artificially-colored marshmallow poultry.

As I type this, I'm having a twinge of guilt about how irreverent I'm making our Easter sound. Why the silliness, when Easter is the most meaningful day of the year to us? Here's why: amidst the Good Friday nature of real life, laughter is a holy experience. It is a defiant, joyful reminder that amidst tragedy and loss, illness and pain, Easter Sunday always comes.

A feast, a play, and a New Year's Resolution kept

The past two weeks have been FULL. This week, our kids have been off of school for spring break, and we originally considered a road trip of some kind. But with so much happening in the weeks leading up to spring break, we decided to stay home and do a few fun things around here -- and prepare for celebrating Easter, of course.

First, Nathan was part of his class' Medieval Feast. The feast is preceded by entertainment, most of which is written by the 4th grade students. Nathan was a knight, Merlin, a jouster, a troubador, and also wrote a funny rap for the monks following their more traditional evensong. This child loves to be onstage, and does a wonderful job singing and performing. We were so proud of him using his talents.

Then all of the "boys" had five performances of our community's Passion Play. It's the boys' third year in the children's chorus, and Peter's fourth year in the role of Jesus. I love that they're involved in this production because it makes the Easter season markedly set apart for us. It always seems that the trappings Christmas virtually take over the entire culture, while the real meaning of Easter is diminished into only a visit from the bunny -- so I appreciate that our family gets to spend time helping 2,000+ people remember the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. I think that next year, if we still don't have our little one home from India, Anya Rashi and I might join the cast for the crowd scenes and songs.

Rounding out our week was Aaron fulfilling his New Year's Resolution to train for and run a 5K. He and Peter ran together during our unseasonably warm spring, and he successfully crossed the finish line with his Dad. We are so proud that he set a goal and did what he needed to do to achieve it. He plans to do more races this summer.

This morning, we boiled eggs to dye for Easter, and tonight we will have our Lord's Supper together as we prepare for Good Friday and Easter. Happy Easter to all . . .

Somewhere in Bangalore . . .

. . . there is a little girl who might be our daughter someday! Yesterday we received some VERY welcome news from Dillon International, our adoption agency. Several Dillon families have been matched with an orphanage, and ours was one of them! It is such a joy to finally see something happening that will bring us closer to our daughter.

This news is by no means a guarantee, though -- the orphanage has the right to refuse our paperwork (if, for example, they have no children meeting the parameters for which we've been approved). So we will be holding our breath for the next few weeks, praying that they accept our dossier and that the next months will bring a referral.

For people who went through the process more than two years ago, this probably all sounds very strange. In the past, Dillon worked with only one orphanage in Kolkata. But with the revised process in India, all families become part of a "pool" of adoptive families under one government authority, and we are assigned to whichever orphanage currently has children with paperwork ready, or who meet the family's criteria. It's designed to be a faster way to place children in families -- and we certainly hope that will be true in the future.

For now, though, we wait for news from Bangalore . . . and pray for a good news for our friends who have not been matched with an orphanage this week.

March creativity

The month of March is very fickle in our state. This week we are having a glimpse of spring, with temperatures close to 60 . . . while last week, we had a storm that dropped five new inches of snow. A few people got creative, despite everyone's longing for spring. With Peter's help, our kids built a fort using 5-gallon bucketfuls of snow. Our lawn was nearly scraped bare of snow by the time they were finished! A few blocks away, some neighbors made a 5-foot-tall replica of the statues on Easter Island. It was a big hit -- while I stood on the sidewalk taking a photo, I saw another driver slowing down to take a picture with his phone.

At home, we were happy to host Anya Rashi's first "friend" party, a belated birthday celebration. Because her birthday is also her homecoming day -- and falls during the week before Christmas -- we have always celebrated her actual birthday just with family. But with her world opening up in Pre-K this year, we decided to host another party for friends after the holidays were over.

The theme was craft activities, and the girls made flower rings, tissue paper carnations, bookmarks, lanterns, and wooden spoon dolls. It was definitely different from the many pirate/snake/space-themed "boy" parties we've thrown over the years, and was a reminder of how much our lives have changed since our sweet daughter joined our family four years ago.

Anya Rashi did very well with all the hubbub, and remembered to thank everyone each time she opened a gift. Even when she opened one gift that was something she already had, she thanked the giver profusely. We were so proud of how gracious she was all afternoon, and thrilled that this "first" was so much fun for her!

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You may have noticed the new "Cupcake Kids" button on our sidebar. If you have some creative, compassionate kids in your family, you may want to get involved with this opportunity. It's a child-driven effort to help raise funds to support children who live in "remand" homes in Uganda. If you click on the button, you can learn about their stories. After I heard about this, I mentioned it to the moms in our Bible study. Our six families have 20 children between us, and each family will be helping with the May 5 Cupcake Day. If you'd like to participate, you can "officially" register on their web site and your kids can be part of changing the lives of children who desperately need help. Drop me a comment if you do participate -- it would make my day!

A season of "yes"

It's March 1 today, which brings us to a season we've never experienced before: being three years "pregnant." We submitted our first sheaf of paperwork to Dillon International back in March 2009, when Anya Rashi was only 2 years old. I've been joking with some other frustrated, sad adoptive moms about how good we look for being in our 12th trimester . . .

Ironically, next month I am emceeing at a women's retreat where the theme will be "Seasons of Life." They will be using the four seasons as a metaphor for our lives with Christ, and for the hardships and joys that this life contains no matter what our age or life stage is.

A question kept occurring to me as we got closer to this three-year mark: if we'd known it would take this long, with no referral in sight, would we still have started this adoption? There are a hundred different angles to this question, but most of them boil down to the question of trust. Do we trust the One who led us to adopt in the first place? Do we trust that we heard His voice whispering that there was another little girl halfway across the world who belongs in our family?

Many times in this life, we are asked to do something without fully knowing what it will entail. So, to you, our as-yet-unknown daughter, we say a resounding, joyful "YES." Our hearts have broken many times thinking of you and all the other children waiting for families, and that makes us say even more strongly, "yes, yes, yes." With tears, with joy, with all our hearts, yes.