fun with my niece and our first GPS class

The last few days have been busy.  A couple of doubles at the restaurant, dinner and laughter with friends, spending the day with my niece, and our first GPS class on the road to foster/adopt.

First, I harvested my first eggplant from the garden!  It was so pretty AND tasty!  I was really excited about it given that last year I got some small fruits but then the plants died before any were mature enough for harvest.  I made this delicious pasta primarily with fresh ingredients from my garden!  Whole wheat pasta, tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplant, basil, thyme, oregano, parsley and I had some fresh spinach from the store!  I sauteed all the veggies and mixed it with the pasta.  I topped it all with parmesan.  It was so very delicious, healthy, and very very simple to make.
After a couple days of doubles at work, it was really nice to get together with my college friend, Laura and her fiance, Brion.  We really don't get to see each other very much, but I love this girl! We spent a few hours just us girls at the pool catching up on each others lives and then picked up our guys for dinner our.  The evening was filled with laughter! Chris and Brion realized they have very similar movie tastes; and Laura and I further discovered that we love a couple of geeky guys :)  It was a great evening shared with friends over some authentic Mexican food at Pinches Tacos in Homewood.  I am intrigued by the cactus taco on the menu, but was hesitant on my first trip to try it.  I tried the pork, fish, and vegetarian tacos.  The vegetarian was my fave! Thin sliced eggplant, peppers, and onions, topped with crunchy cabbage and a spicy red sauce. Yum!

Today was spent with my beautiful niece, Phoenix.  I love this child!  She arrived this morning and we started our day making muffins together!  She loves to cook with me and I have so much fun teaching her! Her new phrase today was "It's missing something" which she'd say with a wrinkled forehead while tapping her chin.  Where did she get that?  Afterward we went to the pool and played hard with Uncle Chris and the boys.  She loves her cousins and the boys are both so very good with her.  I am so thankful for Matthew being such a great kid and looking after his baby cousin.

This evening Chris and I attended our first of a 10-week course on foster care and adoption.  I was anxious about the class, but I'm prone to that so it was expected. I'm still excited, but am feeling somewhat overwhelmed with the paperwork.  In addition, we learned that at each meeting we will complete a self-examination of our strengths and weaknesses based on that evenings topics.  Completing that doesn't bother me, however, doing so under time constraint does!  Composition on the fly bothers me... We've also already been informed that next week will be very important and that at least some portion of the class will involve role playing.