5 Months DTE!

One more month down! And finally, thank the Lord finally, there has been more movement in regards to referrals with our agency. So now we are officially in the top 10 for a baby girl!! BUT, we have 20 above us waiting so that means that with every 3-4 referrals, we may only move 1 or 2 up our list, but hey, I'll take that! We celebrate each DTE-versary as our agencies official estimate is the receival of a referral at 7-11 months post DTE for an infant girl. So we're getting closer!!

At this pace, we are still hoping (fingers crossed) that we might be able to see her sweet face in March, travel for court maybe in late April, and go get her early June?? Maybe. We get so many ask - "so do you know who she is yet?" Nope. Not until we get that call that tells us all about our referral angel child.

So without further ado, the pic you have been waiting on.....

5 MONTHS SINCE DOSSIER TO ETHIOPIA (DTE)!!!!!

And I also know you have been waiting all month just to find out the flavor of the month. This month we celebrated with the fan favorite :

Cherry GarciaChosen for its accompanying option of "FroYo" for mommy and daddy who are Weight Watching. Except for that night. Cause geez, it was our DTE-versary!!!! And for inquiring minds, yes the frozen yogurt version was still pretty good. Although not much lower in points. So we might as well have just gone full octane.

And just for fun, some pics of the kiddos, fast forward about 15 years to their future careers:

Doctor of Veterinary Medicine

And Professional Baseball Player extraordinaire

And...... spunky Brewster. Or Miley Cyrus. Or Madonna. Heaven help us.

26,000 Today

There is a new hit in the bloggy world named Dan. He quit his job to start a blog called "Single Dad Laughing". And while some of his posts are pretty hysterical - Dan also can get into some deep posts that make you really think. Like yesterday's post regarding the Holocaust murders. Startling. Humbling. And def. worth the read.

But as I was scrolling through the images, I couldn't help but think about the other images that we never see.

In Richard Stearns' book "The Hole in Our Gospel" (if you are a Christian, or an atheist, you pick; you really need to read this book) - he speaks of the pandemonium that would ensue if we were to wake up to the headlines "One Hundred Jetliners Crash, Killing 26,500". Think about the implications -- airports shut down, non-stop media coverage, world-wide task forces to investigate the causes. We would hear about who had died, and the memorials to the victims, young and old. And that's just in one day. What if we woke up the next morning to the same news? We would think the world must surely be coming to an end.

ONE DAY = 26,000 DEAD.
TIME WOULD STAND STILL.

To compare visually, I found a photo of the recent Arizona memorial service at the University of Arizona in which the President spoke. You can't even see the entire arena but it is a huge crowd of 26,000 come to mourn the shooting victims.
Now image that that arena were full of children. With toothless grins, skinned knees, wide eyes. Imagine your little boy or girl in the front seat - smiling and waving. Surrounded by your nieces and nephews. Their whole elementary school.

That image is how many children die every day from preventable causes. The number of deaths per day. And not number of people who die from AIDS.... number of people killed by cigarette smoking... but the number of children, just children, who die from preventable causes - every day.

Because of malnutrition. Diarrhea. Poor water. Basic childhood illnesses.

Today.
Tomorrow.
And again the next day.
And the next.

And yet, what have you read in the news about it? Where are the memorial services? Where are the documentaries? Where is the outrage?

People love to point out the bad in the world. How 'bout the good? Be the change. Pick one child to start with. One child that you will take out of that arena. One child that you will provide vaccines, healthy food, preventative medicines, and clean water. An education. The saving grace of Jesus Christ. Just one.

But it's a start. One may just be a number, but to that child, it's a pretty important one.

Beauty Bravery

For those of you who have met my youngest -- you would agree, she is strong-willed, assertive, prissy, and very much in charge of our household (or so she thinks). She is mommy's sidekick and loves to shop, even if it is just for groceries. And she has Daddy wrapped around her bejeweled little finger, turning on the big fat tears if he should so much as raise a voice to her.. So when she gave me the "why don't I have my ears pierced Mommy??" "Lauren has her ears pierced... Christina has her ears pierced... why don't I have my ears pierced????" It starts this young????? So we took a trip to Claires. And she watched another 4 year old get their ears punched. And shook her head no as we made our way to the clip-on section. Fast forward a couple more months and out of no-where - while putting the boys to bed I hear a little voice from her room -- "pssst Mommy. Mommy! I was scared before, but now I'm not. I weally, weally want to have my ears pierced" So we had planned to go on Monday, but it snowed. Then Tuesday after a drs appt, but they canceled, the wednesday, but it was still icy. Sooooo, on Thursday after four days of "when can we goooooooo?" we escaped this trap of a house and headed to Claires again... I'm expecting a dramatic performance. Before -- all smiles. She picked out Hello Kitty earrings but low and behold, Hello Kitty is the newest "in" fashion and Claires had none to be found. So we go for pink rhinestone flowers. Still smiling...Pop!........ Pop!...... No tears!!!! I am in complete shock. Sometimes a girl just has to put her foot down and suck it up to show themselves worthy of being a big girl. I am one proud mommy. Now if only we could do the 4 Africa immunizations just as easily..

Why are we adopting from Ethiopia??

A new AWAA friend posted the following video that she and her husband made regarding Ethiopian adoption. You can read her blog here. It is beautiful and does an excellent job of explaining why those of us who love Ethiopia are drawn there vs. other countries. Enjoy!!

Brownie Points

For Christmas we always go 'home' to my parent's house in N.C. They live on a beautiful little country farm with relatives dotting the gravel road to their house.

This year, we were excited at the chance a White Christmas. As most of you know, South Carolina is not snow central. We did get a couple inches last February but by noon the next day, it was mostly gone and the boys were in short sleeves. We let them play outside at 11 pm the night of the snow as we knew it had precious few hours of life left..

So when it started with flurries on Christmas around lunchtime, the kids were pumped. By sunset is was so deep, and so cold, that driving home from great grandmas was becoming scary. The kids were still begging to go outside and crying "but it will be gone in the morning!!!" The next day however was a winter wonderland. Mommy was pumped. It didn't snow often when we were little but my favorite memories are of suiting up in 4 layers thick, putting sandwich bags on under mittens, and pulling on the rubber boots. And sledding. I love sledding. Which our 1 inch last February really didn't afford. And since the roads are usually bad when NC gets snow - I can't drive the kids to play in it. So for us to be there, with them out of school.... yeah!!! Don't worry, he has sandwich bags under those high tech gloves.. "you know you're from South Carolina when....."
So after approximately 2 hours of outside play, the men folk decided that with the 17 degrees it would getting to that evening, and the drive home we were 'suppose' to do the next day - it might be better if we left early so that we drove on the cleared roads vs. the iced over roads. What??? And leave now??? But Tony needed to be at work on Tuesday. I wanted to cry, seriously..

So we left. And came home. The kids pouting. Mommy pouting. Addison told me the next morning that "she was weally mad at me". Not MY fault!!! We came home to large patches of yard already showing in our front lawn... Not funny at all. All I could think of was how we had cheated my kids out of a humongous childhood memory. It was Christmas. It snowed. We played once. Mom and Dad made us go home.

So I wake up the next morning and check the roads for both states - clear and moving well. I pack about a zillion more layers of clothes in a laundry basket and back out on the road we go. 3 1/2 more hours, $75 more in gas, and we are back in wonderland!!!!

So we sled, and sled some more, and then make tracks with Papaw's 4 wheeler to sled some more the next day. So the NEXT day - we sled on the iced paths (the boys thinking it was funny to make paths to run me into trees at the bottom of the hill), and then sled some more, and then realize we are pooped from trudging up those heels so go on a four wheeler ride back into the fields where we go over and around hills and trees and come upon deer tracks. Which the boys and I then track about 14 miles into the woods (maybe an exaggeration... maybe). But none the less, a really fun hike. (If I could have gotten images of hungry coyote or a misplaced bear jumping out onto the path in front of us to go away, it would have been much more fun for mom.)

So now I earned my 'good mommy of the year' badge. And had a wonderful winterland time doing it. But I also was extremely irresponsible and skipped out on 3 appointments I had scheduled the last day we were there .... oh well, brownie points are more valuable than Medicaid payments any old day. But especially on snow days.

#11 for 2011

Finally, we are movin' on up again. Albeit verrrrry slowly. The last few weeks had a couple referrals and a couple is sure better than none. So now we have 10 people waiting ahead of us for baby girls. Overall, we have 25 people ahead of us total. The good news is that people have started passing court and going to embassy appointments to bring their children home. The bad news is that the agency that 'recommends' parents to the court feels like they are bogged down and have caused the court to not schedule any dates in February. So courts closed all of Aug/Sept which caused a back-up. And courts closed again in February to alleviate a back-up. Oh well.... I'm just excited knowing that with the calendar moving to 2011, that this WILL be the year we bring home our 4th child. Better be anyway!!! On to sweeter things, this month I took the mommy liberty of choosing our flavor of the month:

Cinnamon Buns

And I must say, I think this is our favorite. Yummm. Caramel ice cream with cinnamon bun dough & cinnamon streusel swirl. Yum X 5 with everyone liking it. Which is a very hard thing to accomplish! Addison exclaimed it was the best ever.