Some Pre-Bed Pictures

 These were taken last night before bed - 

 Tuesday morning are our craziest morning of the week. Everyday, JD takes Moriah at 7:00 a.m. to school, then I head to the bus stop with Tori and Julia at 8:05; but on Tuesdays I throw in getting everyone ready to leave the house at 8:40 to take Alyssa to Classical Conversations. We all then have to leave again by 10:30 to pick up Moriah. Today I headed to the little people's room to get their clothes and came back to this. The girls always want to ride on the boy's backs and shoulders, so James and Ben were attempting to keep the girls happy while they also obeyed and started math.

By they way, the girls did great shopping since they have carts at the Commissary with double seats!

Blessed Sunday

This wood burning stove is my husband's latest claim to fame; it is ready to go other than the stone on the wall and two floors of chimney. We can begin using it before the stone is installed, and it will be none too soon, as our non-Geothermal heat is not working quite right. (I am trying to avoid fixing it so that we can focus on paying for our trip to Ethiopia.) 

My Sunday consisted of staying home with small, snotty-noses. I also tackled lots of laundry - 

 Corn-rowed two little girl's hair (check out those darling wet curls) - 

Watched children play and learn - 

And thankfully, enjoyed lots of smiling and laughing - 

Hope you had a blessed Sunday as well!

                                                                         Jenny

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING from "Indian G" and all the rest of us at Our Plans Multiplied - 

My morning started early at the 1 mile kid fun run at the 5k Turkey Trot. It was cold, but my three runners did very well and enjoyed themselves. 

 We are most thankful that Selah and Bella are here with us this year; last Thanksgiving we had just begun our Ethiopian adoption adventure. (I'm hoping that next year they will try some of the delicious food beyond bread and peanut butter, but I'm not too hopeful about that this year!)

Saturday and Sunday

 I "let" JD go out of town for a men's retreat; my job at home wasn't too tough since Aunt Deb came and helped me the whole time. Good old Aunt Deb has filled in a gap that I have ignored for years - board games! She taught the kids how to play Yahtzee and Sorry. It can be a bit challenging with little "helpers." 

I wish I had thought to have someone video the excitement when I got out Selah and Bella's new church outfits. They squealed, clapped and jumped up and down. They are always super eager to get dressed and like to admire themselves in the mirror.

Check out the girl's heights. Tori is almost 8, Julia is 6.5, Selah is supposedly 5 or 5.5 and Bella is 2.5. I'm anxious to get a bone scan done on Selah to determine her age range.

When the camera comes out, Bella starts posing. Selah didn't want to be left out, so she gave it a go also. 

You got to wonder where they learned this!

We made our first trip to a store with the girls - Costco after church. They did great, but wouldn't touch the pizza.

When the 12 of us rolled up to the food court, there was only one table. Two different people offered us parts of their tables, which was so nice. Only one little girl asked if we were just one family.

You really can't miss us rolling through the store!

The good news is that we wore them out and the ride home was quieter than usual.

While the shopping went well, I'm not taking all of them without JD for a while!

First Cup Cakes

Alei's friend came over today to meet Selah and Bella and to bring them "welcome to America" cup-cakes. An additional advantage is that she brought her little boys for Elijah to spend time with.

Selah and Bella both really appreciated their first cup-cake.

Selah is currently refusing to smile for the camera. She just kind of ducks her head when we pull out the camera, so I didn't stress her and just snapped these pictures quickly.

The mess was remarkable. The floor was covered as well as the back of Bella's pants.

Speaking of cameras, Bella LOVES to have her picture taken. She will pose for shot after shot.

See what I mean?

Here's one shot she didn't pose for...she had just thrown up her giardea medicine.

Check out Tori in this picture - darling, other than the half chewed food.

Another Round of Africa

 It seems I often can't show the really cool pictures from Africa, because they have other adoptive children in them or children awaiting adoption. I can't even show the good pictures of  Brooke with us YET, but I'm going to show a few from the day that we picked her up at the orphanage and brought her to the transition home. I think I mentioned that we went kayaking at a resort.

This is Alei and I in the front, JD in the middle and Alyssa and Brooke in the far canoe.

Alei and I got pretty close to several cool African birds.

 We watched the cattle come down for a drink.

Here's the pretty inside of the resteraunt - 

 And the lavish gardens - 

I am going to post this picture of Brook (hiding behind Selah) and her sweet friend looking at books with the girls. 

I'm going to have to do one (or two) more Ethiopia posts because there are just more cool stories and pictures.

                              Jenny

Leaving America and Arriving in Ethiopia

 I decided I would start my story telling at the beginning of our adventure to Africa. First I thought I would address the fact that we decided to take two daughters with us. Way back in 2006, we took our oldest son, Gabriel, to Liberia with us. When the next year brought two additional adoptions, we took Alei to Liberia. The next logical step would be child number three, but that is Moriah and she had no interest in going (and goes to school part-time.) We then knew that we would take Alyssa. Somewhere along the way, we thought that it would be in all of our best interest if Alei joined us as well; while she loves Africa, lets just say that she wasn't our biggest adoption cheer-leader when we started down the path to Ethiopia. Since we want all our family on board, we offered her the option of going with us. In the aftermath, we really feel that it was a plane ticket well worth the price, since it afforded her the ability to bond with Selah and Bella and to meet Brooke the year before she is able to come home.

We took 12 very full suitcases with us - over eight were items to be donated at specific places. We packed and repacked many of them up until hours before we left for the airport. JD was the final "weigher" and either our scale was off, or his technique was flawed, because eight to nine of the suitcases were over 50 pounds. One of them was 56 pounds! Since we were also carrying on backpacks of spiral notebooks that we couldn't fit into luggage, we had no buffer to shift the weight around. The man that we checked in with let them slide one by one until they were all floating down the belt bound for the aircraft. We stood and watched the person in line next to us get charged overage for the ONE suitcase that he had that weighed over. We definitely breathed a prayer of thanksgiving!

 Here we are after gathering our luggage in Ethiopia; all 12 arrived and none of them were damaged! (Another blessing since most of them were borrowed from friends!)

We arrived at the guest house about 2 a.m. and went to bed. Early the next morning we got ready to head out to claim our little girls. Selah found us before we even left the entry-way. She was pretty impressed with her new big sisters.

 She was also very happy to see her Mommy and Daddy.

When we went to find Bella, she was just playing around the corner. I got the camera ready and called her name. She looked up and started running as fast as she could to us!

FIVE months after our first visit and two-year old Bella remembered her Mom and Dad as well.

It was a blessing to have exactly half my daughters in Africa for the week. We had no idea at this point that we would also be able to spend a few days with Brooke.