What started as Michelle and Betula having a nice quiet walk to the lake, ended up with Michelle and her followers (one of which was super spoiled and suckered Michelle into carrying her):

Not only does a certain little girl love Michelle. She also loves Betula (and Lyla for that matter):

This one is a little blurry but you can't tell when it's this small:

What a sweet little helper... she did great at trying to get Bethany (aka miss priss) to get in a picture with her:

We've mostly just lived life here the last 24 hours or so. Nothing fancy-schmancy that you take a ton of pictures of. Mostly eating, dishes, cleaning up toys, etc. But today's little walk to the lake was a great time to take the camera along.

It's always such a joy to hang out with these friends. Who would have imagined that we'd stay connected with those we travelled with.

PS Don't forget to put 4th of July on your calendar for hanging out at our place - whether you were in our travel group or not!

hangin' with our travel buddies

Living life with your travel buddies is wonderful, amazing. It was great to connect a couple of our families. We at supper, snuggled kids to bed and then stayed up way to late talking about adoption. Our time has been perfect.

One problem though. I didn't sleep well and decided that we can no longer talk about various adoption related topics. I stressfully dreamt about trying to frantically come up with money for future adoptions. Then I woke up and lay there thinking about adoptions and enduring a cold with a kleenex in hand. Do we adopt again? Where would we get the money? Do I really trust God to provide? At some point I fell back asleep on my halfway aired up mattress and when I woke back up, I decided that tonights conversations needed to be mindless.

Meanwhile on another floor of the house, my dear friend wasn't sleeping either. Multiple family members were sick. I think when Shonda wrote here about her raw deal, she thought this was a single puking incident. Apparently that wasn't so.

I went upstairs to two amazing guys who had taken over. Ryan was making baked oatmeal for breakfast and Travis was entertaining guests, taking care of kids and being on call for his wife. Sadly, we had to cancel our little KC Ethiopia family get together which is a major bummer.

But now, several hours later and a quiet house while kids pretend to nap upstairs, our gracious hostess is chilling on the couch while I got distracted from my 90-day bible on blog updates.

Guess I better get back to my reading so when the kids are awake I can chase them around some more. Rather than a Ganna celebration tonight, we'll be having home-made pizza on the grill. It's one of our favorites to eat. And hopefully that camera sitting on top of the tv stand will get some action tonight!

with much love from a snot-nosed, no longer puking bunch of friends!

tamara b

Kisses

I love stay-at-home days. I love being home with my family playing games, preparing meals, sleeping in. There’s no doubt that extra time with my kids usually brings an interesting new story. Because I’m still 10 days behind on my 90-day reading, I’ll share a quick story:

After meals, if the kids have done a good job of eating, we allow them to get a candy out of the jar-o-sugar. Judah was still at the table so I grabbed him a Hershey kiss and set it before him on the table and turned around back to finish cleaning the spaghetti off of Bethany’s mouth and hands. A few moments later when I went back to Judah to get him cleaned up, he was still sitting at the table. When I pulled his chair out to get him down, he pointed to his mouth and said “food”. How can the child still be chewing a hershey kiss? My kids waste no time eating candy. As I peeked into his mouth, I found what he was chewing on. Poor kid, no one had told him to unwrap the kiss first so he’d put the whole thing in his mouth! Judah was chewing on tinfoil and trying to finish that candy. I wonder what he was thinking? Was he thinking it was good, or horrible or hard to chew? Good thing he doesn’t have fillings! I scraped the candy wrapping out of his teeth and off his tongue the best I could all while laughing at the situation. Sure, Judah has been home almost 8 months and has adjusted really well, but he certainly doesn’t understand everything yet!

Almost 8 months

Almost 8 months home now and in no time flat, Judah figured out in no time flat how to open Christmas presents!

He's an amazing and precious little boy. What joy he brings to our family!

Seven Months Home

We're all here and accounted for in the frozen sledding slopes of northeast Iowa. Seven months home came and went. I think I was busy trying to get a court date (which still hasn't happened) and who knows what else.



In our spare time, when it's not below zero or a blizzard, we've been out playing in the snow. Judah is a little trooper. He makes his way up the snow covered hill without complaining. With his short little legs the snow is knee deep. He seems to love the snow. Then again, who wouldn't when it's 32, snowing beautifully, your layered in flannel lined jeans, snow bibs, a sweatshirt, coat and mittens and know hot chocolate is waiting inside for you.



The photo is of me and the kids a week or so ago (before we had a blizzard and another 12 inches of snow). The two littles are being towed back to the house while big brother is digging in the snow ahead of us. We love warm winter weather. Not sure what Judah thought of it this morning when it was minus 13 leaving the house!!!

conversation

Just had an interesting conversation with one of my clients.  He asked a few questions about Judah and Ethiopia, etc.  Then as he was leaving I asked if they had kids and he said that they weren't able to so they talked about adoption which is why he asked the questions.  So we chatted a little more about domestic and international adoption options.  I told him that we'd love to sit down and visit with him and his wife some time if they'd like to hear more about it.  How cool would that be!?!?!?

Tax Credit

The tax credit, as I understand it, is on the chopping block (and I'm not well versed in this at all). But, our adoption has not been finalized in the states so I should really, really pay attention to that. I just left the lawyers office today where we talked about finalizing in court. He told me it would take 30-45 days to get a court date. Do you think the tax refund will still be available for us? I'm tempted to find out who sets the court appointments and then beg them to squeeze us in this month. In addition to that, I'm certainly calling on the King of the universe to act in our behalf cause I'm sure He wants us to get the tax refund... so we can do another adoption!