Grateful for a Chance to Help

It really happened simultaneously, our deep love for adoption and our love and respect for Ethiopia.

Is it strange to love a land you've not yet visited? No stranger than loving a child you've never met, I suppose.

But, from the beginning we've known that, for us, adopting a child from Ethiopia meant that country would forever be an extremely important part of who we are and we're excited about this fact! We desire to help the people of Ethiopia, not just to take one of their children and never look back, but to somehow, do something, hopefully many somethings, spanning the rest of our lives, to make things better for them.

As we freed up money from our budget to pay for our adoption expenses, we realized just how much money God had given us that we were not being the best stewards of. And even after the adoption expenses were covered we didn't want to go back to the old way of living, with our main focus being our own enjoyment and comfort when there were people (children, even!) with enormous true need in the world.

We've prayed a lot about what we could and should do to help with both our time/energy as well as money. We were already giving in a few different ways, but wanted to do much more.

There are so many needs, and so many different organizations out there (which is great) but it's sometimes hard to know who's really helping and who's not helping as much or maybe even creating more problems.

It got overwhelming and we kind of decided we'd just wait until we traveled to Ethiopia and scope out some opportunities then.

But, in the last 6 months God has shown us two different initiatives where we could help. Two projects we are very excited about, clearly see the importance of, are confident in the people leading up the efforts, and are grateful for the opportunity to partner with them! I also love that they focus on different sides of the needs. One will help orphans in Ethiopia (the children we will visit in the orphanages but leave behind when we return to the U.S. with our new child) and the other will hopefully, prayerfully, help address issues causing the children to become orphans in the first place. We love adoption, but the best case scenario is for the children to be able to stay in their birth families if they can be properly cared for and loved.

We'll get to see the work with our own eyes when we travel and imagine these two adoption-related required trips to Ethiopia will not be our last, but that our family will return as often as we can in future years.

Find more Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

Her name is written on the fabric of our family

Friday afternoon we got an email about some more changes regarding Ethiopian adoptions that may further delay us being able to bring home our little girl. We've gotten several of these bad news emails in the nearly 2 years we've been working towards this adoption, and you'd think we'd be immune by now, but the amount of panic and fear that one email can elicit really does amaze me! I think I'm a pretty positive, optimistic person typically, but something about these adoption emails just send me into a funk that lasts several hours.

This past Friday was no different, the fear and worry crept in. What if it takes a really long time before we can bring her home? What if something else changes and we never get to bring her home?

I tried to suppress the thoughts and go about everyday life, but it was really hard to keep from being distracted and depressed. We went out to dinner and it was the worst dining-out experience we've had in a long time. The restaurant was terrible, one child started feeling sick part-way through the meal, so I sat in the car with her, not wanting to risk her throwing up in the restaurant (She was fine by the time we got home, though, eagerly inquiring about what was for dessert!). Another child fell out of the bar stool type chair he was sitting in and the third child choked and gagged so bad on some food that the med students one table over were at attention ready to assist with a rescue if needed. He was fine and no Heimlich needed, very thankfully. The evening, however, was rather miserable.

My husband and I managed to get home and get the kids in bed, and I have to admit we were irritated with each other by this point. Probably in an unconscious attempt to put order to the few feet of this world I could control, I set about the cathartic task of cleaning out my craft/project closet (our under-the-stairs closet). I had let it get too messy and began pulling things out so I could purge and better organize it all. I got towards the back and then I saw them. The two Christmas stockings I'd bought off Ebay last summer.

We have matching Pottery Barn Christmas stockings for our 3 biological children, monogrammed with their names. They no longer sell the same style in the store, so to get a matching one for the child we are adopting I had to buy it off Ebay. The only ones I could find were a set of 2 already monogrammed. I bought them anyway because I knew I could remove the old name and get it monogrammed with a new one. When I got the stockings in the mail, I'd attempted to remove the old names myself but it was pretty hard, so I decided to just get the names removed by the monogrammer whenever we knew who our new child would be and could get the new name put on. So, the stockings got stuck pretty far back in that closet.
Until Friday night, nearly one year later, and now as I pulled them out of the closet the name on one of the stockings froze me!

Our Ethiopian daughter, who we were matched with 2 months ago (9 months after buying the stockings), has a rather long Ethiopian name (5 syllables). The first part of her name can be incorporated into a more commonly heard American name, which we plan to do, and then the last half of her name we are planning to use as her middle name, it makes up a very, very uncommon name here in the U.S. But guess what name was monogrammed on that stocking? The 2nd half of her Ethiopian name! Her American middle name!

What are the chances?!!!

I can't tell you the names right now because we haven't passed court, yet, but if I could you'd say zero chance. It is not a common name/spelling at all!!! Without God the chances of that stocking being monogrammed with that particular name has to be 0.00009% or something like that.

But, with God?

Matt 19:26, "Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

What a sweet reminder, just when we needed it so much, that God is all over this adoption, in even the tiniest detail. He wrote this particular little girl into the very fabric of our family long ago!

It's quite the nail and hair salon around here!

This week my 5 year old daughter and I painted our toenails. I always hand her my bucket of nail polish and let her pick which color she wants, only this time she picked 10 colors! One color for each toe! She lined the little nail polish bottles up in the order she wanted them on her toes! Perhaps a bit high maintenance, that girl?


Last Sunday late afternoon I ran out for a quick errand to the fabric store. I left my husband filling up the backyard baby pool for the kids to play in. About 20 minutes later while in the aisle at Joann's Fabric, my husband sends this picture to my phone:


Our dog with, of all things, her head completely covered in mud!

Apparently she'd had a fine time playing in the pool and then running to the dirt and rubbing her head in it!

Needless to say, I wasn't in too big of a hurry to get home at that point, I mean who wants to deal with that!!! Kidding! But, I was glad by the time I got home my husband and the kids had managed to get her clean, and all I had to do was blow her dry!

Because I have by default fallen into the position as resident doggy hairstylist. The only one willing to blow out and brush all that long fur!

Happy Friday!

Find more Finer Things Friday and Friday Fragments.

Terrific Summer Reading

In the past 6 months I've read two of my favorite books that happen to be by the same author. They are rather long books, but they were so good I was actually able to finish them in a reasonable amount of time. It helps that the chapters are short so it's easy to sneak in a chapter here and there as your children are occupied. However the books are so enjoyable you'll find yourself neglecting chores to read just a little more!

The first book I read by Melissa Fay Greene was There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Country's Children. It is a true story about an Ethiopian lady named Haregewoin Teferra who took in many, many orphans during the height of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Melissa is a journalist who spent a lot of time in Ethiopia getting to know Haregewoin.

The book does a great job sharing some of the fascinating history of Ethiopia! And, I loved the mesmerizing detail the author uses to describe the sights, sounds, scenes, and people of Ethiopia. I was truly sad when I finished the book because while reading it I could almost imagine I was there, on the same continent, in the same city, even, as my little girl!

There will be tears when you read the stories of how many of the children became orphans in need of Haregewoin's care, but the anguish later turns to rejoicing as the children are eventually adopted by loving families and you get to "see" them in their new lives with plenty of food and doting parents.

But, probably the biggest thing I took away from the book was the power one individual can have to bring light to the darkest of situations. And it almost didn't happen at all! When Haregewoin takes in the first orphan she was at an extremely low point in her life. She'd tragically lost her husband and a daughter within just a few years of each other, and she'd decided to leave the real world, to present herself to the Orthodox priest and ask to be taken into seclusion. However, God had other plans for her life! And thankfully Haregewoin agreed when approached about taking in an orphan, because that one decision snowballed into the saving of many lives!

It is a great reminder that God has a purpose for each of us and as long as we are still here on this earth we should be actively looking for ways to be used by Him, even when our immediate life circumstances are sad and seem hopeless.

The other Melissa Fay Greene book I read is her newest, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet. This one is about Melissa's own family. She and her husband had four biological children and then adopted five children, one from Bulgaria and four from Ethiopia. That makes a grand total of nine kids!! The book is hilarious, heart-warming, and extremely entertaining! It is a must-read for parents adopting internationally because she honestly shares the challenges and joys.

Be warned the book may leave you not only thinking it's not so strange to have nine children but that it's actually fun! Seriously, I have so many stories I loved from this book, I think I completely ruined the book for my husband because several times I had to read him passages out loud after I'd read them because they were just that good!




Find more Thankful Thursday here and Things I Love Thursday here.

****I was not compensated in any way or asked to write these book reviews, however I am an Amazon.com affliate and will receive a very small portion of the price should you purchase one of these books through the links in my blog.****

When You Don't Want the Newest Thing!

Do you remember the game Battleship?

My husband and I both have memories of loving the game as children and we knew our kids, especially our oldest child, would love it, but the modern version just isn't the same and to me the modernizing made it much worse, so I didn't buy it.

But, then I decided to look on Ebay. There are tons of old versions of Battleship out there from pretty much any year over the past few decades!!

For not much more money than the current version sold in stores, I got a 1998 edition of the game in excellent condition and without the annoying modern twists. It's perfect! And there's been a lot of this going on around here:

So fun!!

Ebay also didn't fail me a couple years ago when I was looking for the more classic Strawberry Shortcake dolls that I remembered from my childhood, not the souped up versions they sell today! I got some super sweet, gently used dolls made in the 1980s!

Because really sometimes I just don't want the newest thing, sometimes the older models were better!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

One Window at a Time

How much do I love seeing my boy with some Windex and a rag?


A lot!

And I'm also loving the fact that he's wearing his Ordinary Hero "I'm Gonna Change the World" t-shirt while doing it!

Changing our world one window at a time!

Find more Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

Doggy Tooth Brushing

I want to share one of our recent big laughs. Here's our dog Madeline brushing her teeth:

Madeline's a huge fan of the vanilla mint flavored dog toothpaste (Totally not kidding that is the kind of dog toothpaste we got at the vet! I haven't tried it, but it smells awesome!)

No dog breath here!

It's important to get those back teeth really good!

All done!!

Find more Wordful Wednesday, Wordless Wednesday, & Not So Wordless Wednesday.