Why Wouldn't I?

Peder Eide is a Christian singer/songwriter who released a Christmas album last year called "Perfect Surprise".  This CD had 7 Christmas classics and 3 original songs, one song is called "Why Wouldn't I?" and it's a song about adoption.  Peder and his wife have adopted two children, a little girl from Korea in 2004 and then in 2008 they adopted a little boy from Ethiopia.

Every year I buy a new Christmas CD for our collection.....I know which one I'm gonna buy this year!  =)  Check out this YouTube video where Peder explains how his family came to consider adoption, which in turn, gave him the idea for this song.  Peder sings the song after the explanation.



Have a great weekend.....

It's That Time of Year Again....AAI's Holiday Project Time, That is..

Just wanted to share a message from Mandie, who organizes AAI's Holiday Project every year:

In the spirit of the season, and reflecting on how truly blessed we are, and all the things we have to be Thankful for, I have to say how Thankful I am that we chose AAI. AAI brought three beautiful daughters into our family, and has offered me many opportunities to travel to Ethiopia, and to Layla House.

My life changed on February 10th, 2007... when I stepped out of Bole airport and into the crisp night air of Addis, and I haven't looked back. My eyes were opened to the plight of the people of Ethiopia, especially the orphans... Since that first trip, I've been back to visit and volunteer 7 times. My heart has the imprints of tiny hands and big eyes, workers who wash tons of laundry a week to provide for their own families, sponsorship kids, whose lives are changed by the contributions that thier sponsors send every month. 

I'm Thankful for the Holiday project... that allows me to play 'Santa' every year to hundreds of kids, not only in AAI's care center, but to sponsorship kids, and children in smaller government run orphanages, that AAI works with.  And I'm especially Thankful for all of YOU. You are the ones who keep this project going, who make it a success, and who brighten the lives of these children and caregivers... You continue to help me show them that someone out there is thinking of them... that they are loved... and that they mean something. 

Thank you to all who have donated! And Thanks in advance, to those of you who will find it in your hearts and wallets to do so now. 'm happy to say, that we have raised $5,705 since my last update, bringing our total to date to $5,755. With only 4 weeks left until Christmas, we need to really buckle down and raise the remaining $14,245.... I have no doubt that we will do it.... but I need your help! 

Here are a couple of pics from last years Holiday celebration

Debritu holding our daughter Tihun....Tihun waving 

Tihun receiving her Holiday Project gifts.....she's a little afraid of Santa, 

but who can blame her?  Santa's can be scary...have you ever gotten up close to one?  

Nice sandals Santa...  ;)

Back to Mandie's message:
Two years ago, my then almost 6 year old son, overheard me talking with my husband about the huge amount we still needed to raise, and how I was afraid we might not make it. An hour or so later, he came to me with his piggy bank, and a handful of change that he scrounged from around the house... he wanted to donate it all to the project. I thought it was a great idea (he has been to Ethiopia a few times, and has met and played with some of these kids!) and told him that whatever spare change he could find around the house, we would donate. Over the next day or so he managed to collect around $120 in coins from seat cushions, night stands, and the car.... Unbelievable, right?! This has become his annual tradition, the scouring of the house for loose change. I can't wait to see how much he finds this year!

I encourage you to get your kids involved... Allow them to empty your change purse, and look under the cushions... And when its all said and done in January, you can show them the photos on Snapfish from my trip, and let them see what they were able to do. I encourage you to give BIG... even if the best you can do right now is a few dollars... Every donation counts and helps us get closer to our goal! Go without the morning coffee for a week... Stay in this Friday night, and watch a DVD, instead of forking out money for dinner and a movie...
pack your lunch for a week... there are a lot of things we as American's could go without for a week (or more)in order to make a child's holiday brighter! What can you go without? How much can you donate by going without it for a week?

We have received many donations in the past in honor of a family or child that is home, grandparents, teachers, great aunts and uncles...A donation to the Holiday Project is also a great gift, for the 'folks who have everything'! For a minimum $30 donation, we will collect those names and addresses and a special "a holiday gift from _______________ in your honor will benefit children at Layla House and Humanitarian projects in Ethiopia" will be sent in mid-December to the recipient of your choice.

This year, the project will be smaller, and will encompass the following programs, with half of each total going towards Humanitarian Aid... (A $30 donation will provide for one child or caregiver)

*Children at Layla, Wanna and Opportunity Houses will receive A New Traditional Outfit, Small wrapped gift and Candy.

*Caregivers at Layla, Wanna and Opportunity Houses will receive a modest cash bonus which they can use to purchase holiday foods, and other items for their families.

*Children in the Orphaned Student Project (OSP) will receive a modest cash bonus which they can use to purchase holiday foods, and other items for their families.

*Sheep will be provided for several small orphanages in order for them to have a festive holiday meal.

For families who would like their donation to go to a certain child or program, I would be happy to receive those requests! Since I am in charge of keeping it all straight, Once you have made your donation via mail or online, please send me an email with your name, donation amount, and where you would like the money spent.Don't forget to send me the 'In Honor Of' info, if you would like a card sent to your honoree. Once we begin receiving donations, I will post weekly updates to let you all know where we are, and what we still need!

There are 3 convenient ways to donate....
1) Donations can be made by check or money order and sent (with a note
specifying "HOLIDAY GIFT PROJECT" and your preferences) directly to
AAI at the address below....

Adoption Advocates International
709 South Peabody Street
Port Angeles, Washington 98362

2) Donations can also be made conveniently at the AAI website, by
clicking the "DONATE NOW" button, click on "Holiday project" and type
what portion of the project you would like your donation to go to,in the Donation Designation Field.
www.adoptionadvocates.org

3) An option is also available at the Benefit Orphans store, where you can also find great gifts for the holidays that benefit the GRACE Fund and other AAI projects.
www.benefitorphans.org

**PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO EMAIL MANDIE WITH YOUR DONATION DETAILS! And feel free to email her with any questions! If she doesn't know the answer, she will find someone who does!
Mandie's email address:
socialbug69 @ hotmail.com (omit spaces!)

The children and staff at Layla, Wanna, Opportunity House, Orphaned Student Project and the orphanages that AAI works with, all thank you for helping to make their Christmas holiday a truly joyous one!

In Honor Of Mother's Day Yesterday.....

Katrina Kenison, Mother of two boys, wrote The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir.  Here is a review from Family Circle Magazine:

This eloquent book is subtitled "A Mother's Memoir," but that's not giving Kenison's chronicle of her sons' increasing independence its full due. It's also about longing and fulfillment , taking stock of failures and achievements, a search for the elusive "something more" of one's existence-and a reminder that life's seemingly mundane moments are often where we find beauty, grace and transformation".


In honor of Mother's Day and to help us all remember the importance of our "ordinary days".....Here is Katrina reading a chapter of her book..... 

I am a Mom that is experiencing the full spectrum of what Katrina is talking about in this video clip.  I have one child that has left our nest, has graduated from college, and is now married and I have 7 children living here at home at various stages of their lives and I also have a baby on the way.  Many times I have wished that I could bring my oldest back and do it over again.  But sadly, time doesn't stand still and we are only given so much time to enjoy our children while they are "in our nests".  Not to say that you still can't enjoy them after they are gone but it won't be very often that you will: wipe their nose (or their behind), fix a boo boo, read them a story, watch them participate in sports, trip over their things, take their temperature and nurse them back to health, drive them places at obscene hours of the night, lose sleep because they're not home yet, settle their arguments, teach them countless things that you know they will need to know before they leave home to set off on their own........and the list goes on and on.  


My prayer is that each day I will remember to slow down and savor these "ordinary days" God has blessed me with......because some day, they will be gone.  Wishing you also, the joy and blessing of discovering your Ordinary Days!


Wendy


"Seen in the right light, through the right eyes, everything is extraordinary." Katrina Kenison

World Aids Orphans Day...May 7

In 2010, the number of children worldwide who have lost one or both parents to AIDS is expected to reach 25 million – equivalent to the number of people living in New York, Paris, and Bangkok combined. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 15 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic. Experts believe that millions more orphans remain unaccounted for in India, China and Russia. 

The Impact:

• In addition to the trauma of losing a parent, orphans are often subject to discrimination and are less likely to receive healthcare, education and other needed services.
• In HIV affected households lacking community support, food consumption can drop by 40% putting children at risk to hunger, malnutrition and stunting.
• Impoverished and often without support to educate and protect them, orphans and vulnerable children face increased risk of HIV infection.
• Orphans are often easy prey to many forms of exploitation: forced labor, prostitution and child soldiering.

World AIDS Orphans Day (May 7) is a grassroots campaign to draw attention to and advocate on behalf of the millions of children orphaned by AIDS.

More than 15 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In 2010, the number of AIDS orphans worldwide is expected to climb to an estimated 20 - 25 million children.

Too little attention is given to orphans and vulnerable children. Few than 1 in 10 orphans receives any external support.

Governments should direct at least 10% of their overall HIV and AIDS funding to support AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.

Speak up for orphans. It’s easy to get involve. Host a World AIDS Orphans Day event. Lobby world leaders. Generate press coverage about the orphans crisis. Spread the word.

All info taken from the World AIDS Orphan Day website.
Check out: www.worldaidsorphans.org

Your voice is their future.

Easter.......Drama Anyone?

I thought about saying that things like this only happen at our house but I have a sneaking suspicion that there just might be a few families out there -like ours- that are blessed with a bit more "drama" on a daily basis.  So this is the story of the Pastoor family Easter.....with a bit more drama, of course....

(Warning...this is a bit long)

*******

We decided to dye our Easter eggs on Saturday afternoon.  We broke down and bought two different packages of "fun" egg dying kits.  Let me just tell you that I know for a fact that last year I told myself I wouldn't buy one of those ever again.....why did I not listen to myself, I ask??  Anyway...we followed the directions and the kids started dipping their eggs.  I'm pretty sure I saw looks of disappointment and frustration ALL the way around the table!  The dye didn't seem to want to stay on the eggs and one of the packages we bought had a foil paper that you were supposed to be able to rub on the egg after dying it and it would leave bits of shininess all over it.  Um...not so much.  We did everything we could think of to try and get the foil paper to leave SOMETHING on an egg.  We were probably successful about 10% of the time.  Next year I'm going back to the "dark ages" and using plain ol food coloring and white vinegar.

Easter morning......happy smiling faces.....

Haylie and Hana with their Easter baskets

Family photos taken before heading to Easter service

   

Hana with the Lily we ordered in her name at church.  The adoption ministry held a flower sale where you could order a flower in "Memory Of" or "In Celebration Of" someone.  We ordered flowers in "Celebration Of"  Hana because we are so happy that she came to join our family last December and we ordered one in anticipation of our baby Amayah coming to join our family this year!  We also ordered one in "Memory Of" our sweet baby Joshua who would have been 20 years old this year.

The gang right before the big Easter egg hunt.....Lillie hiding her face  =)

  

Nathaniel showing that he found a REAL egg that one of our chickens had laid outside somewhere!  Jake trying to count his eggs.....look at that concentration!

    

Haylie holding Lillie securely because she would love to go on a Easter "animal eating" hunt!  Chloe and Hana searching for eggs.

Haylie's birthday ducklings...getting so big!

     

Some of our animals that were watching the Easter egg hunt!

So, you should now have a pretty good idea at how our Easter day went from all of these lovely pictures.....cue the romantic-ish music and think of being swooped back to the "perfect" 1950's or into a scene from Better Homes and Gardens......well, you understand what I'm trying to get at.  Imagine yourself in that "perfect day" scenario and then.....RIP yourself right out of it because that's not how our day went at all!!  Well....at least part of it didn't....

The morning seemed to go just fine....everybody up and happy to be celebrating Easter.....enjoying Easter baskets and goodies and toys and anticipating church services and coming home to a nice meal and an Easter egg hunt!  Well, someone who shall remain nameless (cough cough...Mom) had a touch of PMS and so "this person" was tending to be a little over emotional, but she was, of course, trying really hard to keep it all under control....EXCEPT.....

Church services were quite an emotional experience so "this person" was already worn out from that and then she came home to find that, somehow, the potatoes that were in the slow cooker had been cooking for the last two hours on a higher temp than they should have been so.....yep....you guessed it, the house was smellin pretty bad and the potatoes were a bit burnt...to say the least.  And as if that weren't enough to send this person into a mental breakdown in the "condition" that she had no choice to be in----(thought I'd just throw that part in there to remind everyone how uncontrollable this womanly disease is)....

"This person" hears one of her children sobbing and moaning from the basement and immediately she knows what has taken place.  She runs down the stairs frantically and discovers her child in pure agony over the sight of his brand new Teddy Bear hamster that was just given to him (late b-day present) the day before (he hadn't even owned him for 24 hours yet).

The crime scene was grim.  Cage was knocked over and laying on its side.  Poor hamster laying next to it looking soggy like something had been licking it like it was a hamster-sicle.  The poor thing had no where to go to escape the wrath of its perpetrator.  Immediately "this person" knows just who is to blame for this heart wrenching and mood destroying catastrophe... on Easter no less!  How dare they ruin Easter for our family!!  Justice will be served!!  This person stomps back up the stairs in grief and (now) anger and tells her daughter that her dog just killed her brother's new love.  The poor boy just lost his pet rat recently and was still in mourning over that and now he had to endure THIS!  I don't know who was in a worse state--the boy...... or the one with PMS.....you decide.....

So now we not only have "boy" crying and "PMS person" wanting to cry and VERY angry......we have added "dog owner" to the traumatic turn of events!  "Dog owner" is now in her bedroom with "dog" and  she is wailing because she knows that her "dog" is already in enough trouble with family members on a continual basis so she is in fear of "dog's" life.  "PMS" woman has no outlet for all the anger she is experiencing so she decides to show "dog" how much she hates her at the moment...which in turn makes "dog owner" even more upset!  "PMS" woman heads out to the livingroom and sees son #2 crying hysterically.  She demands to know who has died now!!  Boy can't answer---most likely due to the grief he is experiencing and also from sheer terror ....must have been scared of "PMS" woman???  Who knows??  Anyway.....no one else has died, he's just experience the trauma of the moment.

"PMS" woman walks into the sunporch and looks down to find an un-identifiable piece of "the victim"....ARG!!!  She glares at the cat sleeping peacefully in the chair in the sunshine....how dare she lay there so happily when the rest of the house was in an uproar!  How smug of her!  Humph!  "PMS" woman felt like kicking the cat too, but she was able to refrain.  

"PMS" woman decides that probably the best thing for her to do would be to go to her bedroom and fold some clothes to try to calm down and regain her composure.  Ten minutes into it she stops dead in her tracks!  Oh my word....she says.  It wasn't "the dog"!!!  It was the SMUG one that was happily laying in the sunshine out on the sunporch!  That's why a piece of the victim was found so far from the crime scene and so close to "you know who"!!!  "PMS" woman runs to tell "dog owner" and the rest of the family!  "Dog owner" is SO relieved because "dog" now has a stay of execution...however short it may be.  Everyone else is glad that the drama is finally winding down and that it is almost time to eat dinner!  

The rest of the day is pretty uneventful....thankfully....I'm not sure how much more we could have handled.  You will be glad to know that the one hamster was replaced by not one--but two, yes two--gerbils.  We now have a more secure cage and kids that are now more aware of the predators that are lurking around, just waiting for a good meal!

Disclaimer:  No animals were hurt during the moments of this day......well, except for the poor TB hamster, of course.  And, I'm pretty sure that the good memories of the day far out weighed the bad, thank you Jesus for 24 hours in a day! 

Congratulations if you made it this far!!

Hoping your Easter was NOT filled with as much drama as ours was....

Wendy

It's Friday.....But Sunday's a Comin'!!

These are my two favorite videos for Good Friday.  I wish someone would do a new "Sunday" by Tree63 video.  Maybe one of these days I will have to attempt it???






I just love Easter when it falls later in the year!  Warmer weather makes for wonderful scenery and Easter egg hunts with...... NO SNOW!!  Spring is my favorite season because everything is "new" again.  It reminds me of so many of my favorite things......fresh starts and new beginnings, babies, new growth, green---as in grass and leaves on the trees,  sunshine and blue skies and most importantly God's love for us, Jesus dying on the cross and His forgiveness for our sins which brings us right back to...... fresh starts and new beginnings!!

Wishing you a thoughtful Good Friday filled with anticipation and thankfulness!
Wendy

Valentines Day

I started out this Valentines Day by decorating the dining room and kitchen with streamers and paper hearts (lovingly cut out by Hannah). While the kids were still sleeping, I silently worked, decorating and delivering bags of treats....setting them outside of their bedroom doors.

While I was waiting for everyone to get up I also put the sausage in to defrost, started mixing up a quadruple batch of waffles and making strawberry sauce to put on top. **Quadruple because we are a lot of people and also because we like to put the leftovers in the freezer.

Slowly I began to hear doors opening.....children were following their noses to the smells of Sunday breakfast cooking. We don't usually do it up this big on Sunday mornings but it was Valentines Day after all =)

Here's a picture of the dining room all decorated....I didn't go all out this year but needless to say, the kids were impressed and that's all that counts. Hana asked if we could keep the decorations up until next Christmas.......ummm, I think not....

For Valentines dinner we made homemade pizza. Each person got to pick out the ingredients they wanted on their pizza. We ended up with about 6 large pizzas, 3 pans of bread sticks and two small loaves of bread! One would think that that's an enormous amount of food, but around here that's a meal and leftovers for lunch the next day.

I tried a new punch recipe. It's pink lemonade, red sherbet and sprite. Everyone thought that it tasted pretty good but I thought it was a bit on the sour side. That could have been my fault because, ya see, when I follow a recipe, I don't usually follow the recipe....unless I really, really, have to.....at least pertaining to punch or things like that.

These pictures are self explanatory......pizza + fun drink = happy kids =)

Except for a minor attitude problem from an unnamed child, (who was able to recover after a short amount of "quiet time") we all had a wonderful Valentines Day! So Jake was able to totally prove the theory correct that says, "it is actually possible to be unhappy on the day of *Love*" ....oops, did I say Jake?? Oh well....I wasn't going to name names but guess it's too late now. ;)

Hope you all had a great Valentines Day!

~Wendy

Ethiopian Christmas--Melkam Gena!

January 7, 2010--We took our first shot at having an Ethiopian Christmas celebration this year, and well, it was an interesting day filled with all kinds of learning opportunities.......

I had everything planned out as to how my day would go. So I set out with my lists in hand and my two helpers--Haylie and Hana. We headed for the East African Market to buy some supplies for our dinner. I had never been there before but I was able to find it very easily. We lingered quite a while in the store checking off the needed items on our list and we were excited to find out that they sold injerra at a good price! We thanked the store owner and left the store....still walking on air that we now had freshly made injerra, because we were starving!! We tore into the bag and started pigging out and I'm pretty sure that what happened next was #1 because I was concentrating on eating the injerra, #2 because we were actually in the smack middle of a snow storm and I couldn't see anything, #3 because I was unfamiliar with the parking lot since it was my first visit there, and #4 because of plain old stupidity!!!

I started backing out of the parking spot and my eyes landed on two bright orange driveway markers. Great, I thought, I'm within the driveway boundaries and so I started slowly moving forward and before I could stuff another bite of injerra in my mouth, my car went THUD and immediately died! I KILLED MY CAR....I cried silently to myself.....I slowly opened my car door and got out. I walked around to the front of the car and bent down to take a look---not really sure that I would learn anything by doing that, but I decided that it was probably what a guy would do. So I did it. Well, turns out that I just happened to drive right off a cement retaining wall! Both tires.....off the ground....underside of the car balancing on "said" wall.....in the middle of a snow storm....freezing my behind off. Oh boy.....this was definitely NOT in my plan for the day! How could this happen?!

My next thought was "Now I have to call Todd and tell him what I just did". I don't know which thought scared me more.....the realization that I probably just ruined my car or the fact that I had to endure the torture of having my husband look at me with that "look". You know the one I'm talking about.....the one that is made up of "I can't believe you just did this and "This is great, now I have something to bring up every so often...just for fun"! All this, while trying really, really hard NOT to laugh at you! (or should I say, trying to laugh ONLY when you are not looking??)

So I got back in my car and slowly turned the key...praying that I would again hear the sweet sounds of my engine purring. Thankfully I did hear that wonderful sound and I breathed a sigh of relief to find out that my car wasn't "killed". I called Todd and slowly started to tell him what I had just done and he stopped me--mid story--to remind me that we were in the middle of a severe weather advisory (Oh really?) and "Did I realize what my chances were for having a tow truck get to me any time soon?" "Oh" I said....didn't think of that. Hmmm....."Well, could YOU come and help me"? I said, as sweetly as I could muster. Sounding slightly annoyed, he told me he was leaving and would be there in about 15 minutes. YES! Help is on the way....I smiled. So I sent my girls in to one of the stores so they could get warm and I sat in the car and waited for my Night in Shining Armor! EXCEPT....while sitting there I gradually started to realize that my predicament was being noticed by other people.

The first guy pulled in to the parking lot, got out of his car and walked over to my car and slowly started walking around it. I got out of the car and looked at him. He looked back at me and just shook his head. He wondered if I had any help coming. "Nothing I can do for you, you're gonna need a tow truck" he said. He went into the store and I got back into my car. Guy #2 pulls in, gets out of his car, and proceeds to start checking me out...I mean checking out my car. =) I get out of the car again....starting to get a little annoyed. He is now standing there, slightly leaning to one side with his head tilted so as to see what's going on under my car. I wait. Finally I can't take it anymore and so I say "Pretty bad, isn't it'? He looks up at me, and in a Jamaican-type accent he says, "Oh...it's not good". I assured him that help was on the way and he seemed very relieved that HE didn't have to help me!! I get back in the car AGAIN just to notice guy #3 pulling in. He was very nice and told me that he would come out and....help....my "help"..... and to come into the store and get him when they arrived. He was very kind but I was starting to feel like a piece of road kill just laying there watching the buzzards circling above me. It really didn't help my self esteem any when an old couple who were driving down the road in front of me, slammed on their breaks and then slowly drove by --pointing and staring at me and my poor baby. UGH!

So my Knight finally got there and I found out that he brought along "Mr. Muscle". This is great, I thought....more help. Until .....Mr. Muscle got out of the car and I noticed that he was having a bit of trouble maintaining his composure. Can you say hyena? Um yeah.....so I gave him a big smack and we got down to the matter at hand. Since this seems to be an everlasting story, I will just tell you that it took 5 guys to finally get my car off that dumb retaining wall! After trying many different things they decided that the best thing to do would be to just pick my car up and lift it off. It worked!! Thank goodness! I had places to go and people to see!!

I didn't die of embarrassment....but I wanted to. I learned a lesson....actually I probably learned quite a few lessons that day but I won't go into them here....that could end up being another story in itself!!

Congratulations if you made it this far.....I really didn't mean to be so long winded....really.

We went on to do our other errands and made it home to eventually enjoy our Ethiopian Christmas dinner. Everything turned out super! I just hope that next Ethiopian Christmas.......

I won't have so many lessons to learn! =(

Here is a picture of our yummy dinner!

Injerra

Misir

Alicha

Gomen

and

DoroWat

Happy New Year--2010!!!

New Year's Eve is a favorite holiday here at our house and we have a few traditions that our kids never let us forget about.

The first of these is eating pizza for dinner. The second is renting movies to watch for the night and throughout the whole weekend. The third is enjoying root beer and other ice cream floats.

This year we had Root Beer, Orange and Grape pop and vanilla ice cream or sherbet.

We usually decorate the house a little, but this year was special because Hana just joined our family, so the kids did it up a bit more than usual. You can't really tell from the pictures but there are decorations all in the living room and dining room areas of our house. It looked quite festive after they were all done =)

We always turn off any movie we are watching just in time to see the ball drop in Time Square! We count down the seconds and........

then we shoot each other with silly string and fire off those little party poppers!

It is another tradition of ours to give our kids a can of silly string in their Christmas stocking to save for New Year's Eve. This year, Hana was the target because we all felt that she needed to be initiated into our family, and what better way than to be lambasted with silly string?!!

Here they are after all of the silly string was gone and the last of the poppers were popped.....sadly, now it is time to clean up the mess....

May you have a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year!

May God richly bless you and your loved ones!

Wishing you the best....

Todd and Wendy

Pastoor Christmas 2009

We had a wonderful Christmas this year, starting with the news that we could travel to Kansas to pick up our new daughter Hana!

Our oldest daughter, Liz, made scones for the kids to decorate with sprinkles. They had a really good time being creative!

Haylie, Hana and Chloe's turn doing the decorating.

We went to our church's Christmas Eve service and then came home and opened our traditional Christmas Eve "pajama present". Every year we buy everyone new pj's to wear for Christmas.

The kids opening their stocking presents.

Hana is very excited about getting a gift card! =)

Haylie and Hana waiting for their turn to open a present.

Chloe trying out her new microphone.... serenading us with a Hannah Montana song.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!

Wendy

November is National Adoption Month and this Sunday is Orphan Sunday

Click on the link above to find an event near you and join Steven Curtis Chapman and others. Plan to be a part of this shout out to the world and help bring awareness to the cries of the orphan.

Steven Curtis Chapman Invities You to Join in on Orphan Sunday from Show Hope on Vimeo.

Halloween Fun

My boys found this yesterday and of course NEED to try it. =) Decided to pass it on cuz it is pretty cool! You can purchase the supplies for this and other science experiments at this website: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiments/

Mother's Day

Just reflecting on my day.....      

Breakfast, made lovingly by my husband.  Eggs, potatoes, bacon and strawberries.  Off to church. Week 4 of a 5 week series on marriage...very good.  Back home and lots of relaxing and/or doing things I would like to do instead of things I have to do.....love that!  Had my house tidied up by my kidders and daughters Hannah and Haylie and Hubby made dinner.  Steak, salad baked potatoes and much much more.  I don't think I have eaten that good or that much food in a long time!  In the evening I got to do more of what I wanted to do, also got to talk to my Mom and Grandma on Skype.....pretty exciting even though I just spent a day or so with them.  Oh, and Chloe (3yrs) made me a couple of pictures for Mother's Day.....one was of two dead dogs and the other one was of a poor man who didn't have a face.....such an imagination this child has......yikes!

On another note....

All of this relaxing has allowed me to be able to spend time thinking about our future Ethiopian child and especially her Mother.  How is she right now?  Is she pregnant with our baby?  Is she ok?  Does she have enough food to eat?  So many questions.  I also have been thinking about all of the children in this world that don't have a Mother.  Children that we will have to leave behind in Ethiopia when we go to get our child and bring her home.  There are so many children out there waiting for a forever family....on every continent, in every country, in every state, in every city, all over the world.  

Do you have room in your heart for one of these children?

Happy Mother's Day to all of you Moms out there!!!  

Easter 2009