August 1, 2011

Three years ago today, on August 1, 2011, my husband, oldest two children and I stood outside these gates in Ethiopia:

And we walked in through these orphanage door:

And met this little girl for the very first time:

Meeting your nearly 3 year old daughter for the first time in an orphanage in Ethiopia is an experience I still cannot put adequate words to.

 

Oh, the fun these 2 sisters have had over the past 3 years since this first touch!

It is hard to believe it has been 3 years since we met her.  But today at lunch as we talked about the anniversary, my 11 year old said, "It's really hard to remember life before Little Girl!"

Indeed, it is!  She is so much a part of all of us.  We wouldn't want to imagine our family without her in it!

If She Had Superpowers

The 13 year old girl we sponsor in Ethiopia recently wrote us, "If I had super powers, I would create a medicine to relieve all HIV sufferers all over the world of their pain."

Oh, don't you just want to hug her?

She has a beautiful smile and was just accepted into a new elite school program because she is so smart.  AND, God just got the logistics worked out so that we'll get to meet her soon when we travel to Ethiopia!!  I am so excited to be able to hug her and tell her in person how proud we are of her!!

The photos below are from our first trip to Ethiopia 3 years ago when we got to meet Mathews, another of our sponsored children.  Meeting him was such an amazing, surreal experience.  I will never, ever forget it!  Praying everything works out as planned for us to meet Tsion this time!

Best Bag for Mission Trips

I'm packing right now, so travel products are on my mind.  But, it did occur to me to share my favorite bag for packing donations/supplies for mission trips in case it helps anyone else. 

It's this duffel:





The bag is awesome because it holds a ton, but then collapses really flat and small for transporting back home once you've dropped off the donations! 

It's a tough bag.  We bought two in the large size and they have seen us to Ethiopia twice and the Dominican Republic once on mission trips.  And I loaned them to my friend who traveled to Ghana for an adoption and still the bags look new!

And now back to packing . . .

Photographing Four Children

I was going through pictures recently, and I came across these taken after my oldest son's 5th grade graduation at the end of May.

This string of pics can otherwise be known as why I hire a professional photographer once a year -- to get just ONE GOOD PHOTO OF THE FOUR OF YOU!  Is it too much to ask, really??!

Jeans Shopping With My 11 Year Old Son

I fell into a panic last night that our Ethiopia trip was coming up so soon and I was not ready, so rather than blogging I spent time last night ordering 24 bottles of nail polish, 10 soccer balls, 300 balloons, rocket balloons, bottles of bubbles, and jump ropes.  

What?  Doesn't everyone take 24 bottles of nail polish with them when they travel to Africa?!

We'll be spending time with kids in the different care points so the nail polish is for painting the kids fingernails and all the other stuff is for playing with the kids.  Nothing breaks down language and cultural barriers and allows connection quite like nail polish and rocket balloons!

Oh, and travel toilet paper!  I ordered some travel toilet paper.  You know you are in for an adventure when your packing requires travel toilet paper!

 

_______________________

Then this morning I panicked again when I realized that the 11 year old, who is going with us to Ethiopia, had outgrown all his jeans, and jeans are pretty much what he needs to wear every day of our trip.  Guess I should have thought of that little detail sooner, because it has been months since we've worn jeans around here, but really, for none of them to fit, the boy has done some growing!

So, tonight after dinner, the 11 year old got the pleasure of me taking him to Old Navy to do some jeans shopping.  Typically I buy the kids clothes over The Internet, once they ship I have the kids try them on at home, and then I return to the store what doesn't fit.  Therefore, my kids have been totally spoiled and have not spent much time in dressing rooms or hunting for their size at a store.

My son got an education tonight!  He is now very well versed in the different sizes and styles of Old Navy jeans.  You have the 5 different styles - super skinny, skinny, straight, boot-cut, and loose.  Then within each style there are sizes (like 10, 12, etc. that correlate loosely to the child's next age).  AND THEN there is the further break down of each size into slim, regular, and husky!

Needless to say, I had the boy try on about eleventy-million pairs of jeans before we figured out exactly which combination was right for him!  12 regular boot-cut, 14 regular straight, 14 slim boot-cut, 12 slim loose fit, and on and on!

All while I stood outside the dressing room door.  Because he's an 11 year old boy, you don't get to go in there anymore as his mom, which is a little sad.  But, OF COURSE I was right outside the door to his dressing room and he had instructions to come out as soon as he had the jeans on.  I certainly wasn't leaving the judging of acceptable fit up to my son (my daughters, yes, my sons, no)!

So, while I stared at this:

A lady walked by holding her baby boy and I thought, "Just wait, you blink and he'll be trying on jeans with you on the other side of the door!"

Really, my son was good-natured about the whole thing and even suggested some of his own size combinations to try, "Mom, maybe I should try the 12 slim loose fit."  Don't even get us started on the fact that there is such thing as a slim in the loose style or a husky in the skinny style!  

I think it would have been less complicated to become rocket scientists, but we did discover the 11 year old's best size right now is a 12 regular in either the bootcut or straight fit.

My boy reached his personal wall in shopping with his mom when I began laying out various jeans accross the floor in Old Navy so that I could compare colors once we'd definitely decided on the size and style we needed.  "Look, this one is darker.  And this one has the faded parts there along the thigh." I said as he began to twitch and looked around to see if anyone was staring at us.

Then as I dug way into the back of the shelves to find certain colors I deemed best in his size, he began begging me, "Mom, let's just get these!  I like these!"

When I complained that one pair had what I referred to as a "wrinkled fly" and we needed to look for a different pair, I sensed that I was pushing the whole shopping thing a little too far.  I saw the look in my son's eyes that I've seen in my husband's eyes many times over the years.  It is the I-have-to-get-out-of-this-store-right-now! look and I knew then that it was indeed time to go.  I brandished my 20% off coupon and headed to the check-out.  As we left the store with count them THREE pairs of jeans that fit the boy for a total of $36 with tax, I congratulated both of us on a successful jeans shopping expedition!


May your weekend be as merry!  

Load Your Own Dishes In The Dishwasher

This summer I decided to up the expectations for my kids.

For one, it is no longer acceptable to just clear your plate after lunch, leaving it by the sink as you run off to play.  Now you must also dump the contents of the plate and load it into the dishwasher!

I taught them all the proper plate positioning for our dishwasher.  My 7 year old demonstrating the technique:

I have no idea why I didn't start this sooner!

Find more Works For Me Wednesday here.

I finished a book!

I loved to read as a kid and read a ton just like my kids now do.  But, me, now I read to my kids, and I read the Bible, but otherwise I do not set aside much time to sit down and read a book for myself, to myself.  And it doesn't help that I'm always "reading" about 8 books at one time, no joke.  There is the Bible studish book, the Christian living book, the solving world poverty issues book, the adoption-related book, the parenting book, etc., etc.  And I typically don't finish a book, I just read a bit of each of them over the course of months.

But, another lovely aspect to our week-long vacation a couple weeks ago, was that I actually read an entire book!

And it wasn't even in a book I read in during the car trip, there was another I read then.  This book I started on our first full day at the beach and finished it by day 5!  It was that good and it helped that I had the time to read while on vacation!

Here's what I read:



It is a fiction book, but based in fact, from the 1850s to 1920s there really were trains that carried orphans and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities in the U.S. to the rural Midwest in the hopes of finding homes for them.

The book was a fascinating read and right up my alley as a person with a heart for orphaned children, but this book would appeal to a wide audience.  

Reading this book cover to cover in just a few days was so enjoyable and inspired me to make reading more of a priority even in my non-vacation life!

****This post contains an affiliate link, but I truly did read this book and would strongly recommend it to my friends and family!****