Veeeeery slowly:



We skipped MLK day return traffic:



and it sounds like we probably beat the worst of the weather by leaving a day earlier than planned.

Crazy fun!

I did my surrogate journey by word of mouth. Actually, it was entirely governed by providence, I believe. However, since I carried Baby J, I've been approached repeatedly about either carrying again, or by people simply interested in having a child via surrogacy who don't necessarily know where to start.

With that, I would recommend looking into Independent Journeys as a matching service. I'm leary of agency matches - which creates a middle man with a vested interest in the outcome of the match. Yet so few people understand how to go about finding a surrogate, or intended parents. This seems like an ideal middle ground, with good guidance. I'd go further and recommend online forums, except that there seems to be so much drama involved in those services which those who have enough drama in their lives simply trying to have a baby just don't need.

We've been at the snow.

We "won" a week at a house in Tahoe/Donner at the kid's school's auction last year. We finally took advantage of it this past week. We were nervous about our thusfar dry year, but I think we did okay:



Looks like we're in for more precipitation, thank goodness, 'cause California has had some dry years lately.

This documentary about the food industry in America was not surprising to Phil or I, as he'd read "Fast Food Nation" and we'd both talked at length with his sister, and then done some research about how food is produced in America today. However, seeing it first hand was alarming for sure.

We already did what we could to buy organically, but are making even more of an effort to do so. We eat minimal processed foods. The bigger step we're going to try to take now is to buy more locally grown produce - time to hit Farmer's Markets.

For all of us.

After being surprised that the girls DIDN'T have school on Monday, they've been back for a few days. Today I go up to campus for my one seminar class.

I've been working on my research proposal, and it looks like I've got a good start on it. My advisor has looked it over and just sent it back with some suggestions for edits and additions. I'll hit that one tomorrow.

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...."