Godmother in Training

My older brother's wife is going to have a baby. She's due in March and they have asked me to be the baby's Godmother. 

This is a very important role in the life of all Catholic families.  And, while my Godmother is my wonderful Aunt Clare, I have to say, I know very little about it.  What does a Godmother do?  I know that officially speaking their role is to assist in the spiritual upbrining of their Godchild(ren).  How does one go about this? 

I have to say, as touched and humbled as I am by this honor at this point, I feel little equiped for it.  I need guidence.

Please keep my good friends Bonnie and Travis Engstrom and their family, especially their new son James Fulton in your prayers.  James is in critical condition in the NICU.

Grocery Shopping

Usually, I shop at Aldi because they have cheap off-brand food.  But I'm beginning to wonder if this is the best way to do the shopping.  I tend to like to do my grocery shopping every 2 to 3 weeks.  And even with shopping at Aldi, I easily spend $100 for just Nathan and I for those 2 weeks. 

We have a Jewel card because we lived really close to one in Tinley Park and it was easy to run to Jewel for small things.  I only shopped there once or twice, because, while they are my favorite place to shop, they are much more expensive.  I have never been a coupon-shopper but I'm starting to think if I maintain a list and take coupons and use our prefered card Jewel might be cheaper.  Or even Wal-Mart.

Any thoughts?

Parent Profile

Yesterday I mailed to the adoption agency the disk with our parent profile materials on it.  Getting all the information together was harder than I had initially thought.  It was a lot of listing of favorites, and Nathan never claims to have a "favorite" anything.  Then we had to write short essays about our lives, our home and our families while attempting to make everything sound great and keep a certain humiliy.  But I think the hardest part was getting pictures.  I mentioned in a earlier post that we needed at least 15 pictures of just the two of us.  We have never had that many pictures of us.  Finally, we just took the camera and went first to my parents and then my in-laws and asked them to take our pictures a bunch of times.  It worked out okay.  These are a couple of the pictures.

We actually had this one in the house, it's from a recent Thanksgiving.  I don't know which year exactly.  I was surprised at how many pictures we were able to come up with in the house and through friends' and families' cameras.

So, Nathan got a rake for his last birthday.  I don't know whose idea it was for us to take an "American Gothic" picture, pretty sure it was Nathan's.  I don't imagine they'll use this one, but we sent everything we could find.

This is one my mom took, I think it's great.

My father-in-law took this picture on the old merry-go-round next to their house.  I wasn't dressed up the best, but it's such a nice picture.

So, initially we were going to send seperate pictures of the cats, because we didn't a have a picture of them together that was nice.  Then a few weeks ago the cats and I were all hanging out in the bedroom and I looked over and they were sitting like this.  It's perfect!  I took a couple, but this is definitely the best one.

Reading list

One day, while I was wandering around Barnes and Noble, I decided I needed to carry a little notebook with me when I went into bookstores so I could write down all the titles of the books I saw and wanted to read so I could order them from the library.  Not long after, I acquired the notebook and started scribbling down titles I wanted to look into.  This is what I have come up with so far.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Mistress of the Art of Death
Romancing Miss Bronte--Read it, loved it
Water for Elephants--Reading it now
Wide Sargasso Sea
The Secret Garden
Les Miserables
The Clowns of God
Chasing Shakespeares--Read it, found it aggravating...see previous post
The Forgotten Garden
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
How the West was Won
The Jewel of St. Petersburg
The Eyre Affair
Captive Queen
Lost in Austen
The Agony and the Ecstacy
Rooftops of Tehran
The Lacemakers of Glenmara
Within the Hollow Crown
Quo Vadis
Agnes Grey
Shirley
The Insomniac
Villette
American Lion
Goodbye Mr. Chips
Silas Marner

 That's it for now, but the list is ever-growing, ever changing.  If you can think of something you think I should read, let me know.