Winter Wishes

Has it really been so long since I last posted?! I didn't post at all in December. Ugh, where has the time gone? It seems the more I try to do the faster time flies. Despite my failing to post, I do truly hope that your Christmas season and New Year's were enjoyable, safe and filled with family and friends. We had a fun holiday season and have some great news to share.

On December 16th, we received a call from our adoption agency letting us know that they had a three year old boy they'd like to tell us about. I was at work when Jason called to tell me this, he was the one they got ahold of first. I could not contain my joy at this news. I started to cry with tears of joy and excitement and my boss let me step out of the OR so that I could find a quiet place in order to call the agency back and find out more information.

I got on the phone with our case worker and she three way called in Jason so that we could both listen about this precious little boy. Here is some of what we were told.....

His name is Masamo (we don't know how to pronounce it, we just have a spelling). His birth date is stated as October 16, 2006. His father relinquished him to an orphanage in southern Ethiopia after his mother disappeared. Masamo has three biological siblings, aged 12, 8 , and 3 years old. He appears very healthy and his labs all came back negative for any serious blood transmitted diseases (HIV, Hepatitis, etc). All this information is very basic and have no detail beyond what we have in the papers sent to us. We do however have four color photos of Masamo.

We were told that he was grumpy when they were taking the photos and so gave him a lollipop to cheer him up!

Jason and I discussed and quickly came to the decision that we were interested in pursuing the referral of Masamo. Once this was communicated to our agency we were sent another round of paperwork to complete specific to Masamo. We had ten business days (starting December18th) to get it all done. Mission accomplished! We are very, very blessed to have an International Adoption Clinic here in town at one of the local hospitals. They and their staff were very invaluable in their help to us and answering questions we had about these types of adoptions.

We had another call with our agency tonight (Jan. 5th) and were told that our case to adopt Masamo has been given a court date in Ethiopia! Our case will go before a judge there on January 26th. There are multiple variables involved in order for this case to move forward including Masamo's birth father showing up for the court date, the paperwork all being in order, etc. After this point (if all goes well) the judge will decide on whether or not to give custody to Jason and I of Masamo. Once this happens there will be more paperwork to get in order for Masamo to travel and a TB test to be performed on Masamo. We will be given tentative travel dates and will not confirm them until the results of Masamo's TB test are determined to be OK for him to travel. We are required to attend an US Embassy appointment and for our agency they only happen twice a month. This is what our travel will be planned around.

There are still so many unknowns at this point. I'm becoming anxious about Masamo's grieving and attachment issues that he will face and is probably already facing at this moment. We would appreciate your prayers. The first several months or more at home will be intense and we won't be leaving the house very much. We were told this is called the "cocooning" process where we will try and establish ourselves as Masamo's forever parents and family.

The day after we got our phone call about Masamo in December, David was (in his words) very busy "practicing to be a good big brother". He had his favorite stuffed bear on this pillow with a blanket on it. He was carefully carrying it around and asking him what he wanted to do next. It was just so sweet. David is really excited to be a big brother!

Phew! Now that I've explained all that I'll let you know what our holiday season looked like. It included.............

Cookie Baking and Decorating at Mimi and Boppy's house

The final yummy result!

Decorating the Christmas tree

I'm not quite sure what they were doing under there. Hmmmmm......

Going to see the downtown train display

Multiple Christmas Celebrations with family

** See the slide show at the top of the page! **

New Year's Eve Party

Thom and Katherine's Visit and Bridal Shower

Unfortunately this time was overshadowed by the fact that Katherine caught the stubborn stomach bug that has been being passed around our family for the past couple of weeks. This is not the type of present we intended to give her! The shower was very pleasant and it was nice to be surrounded by people who are all truly wishing this young couple a promising future. We are now counting down until their wedding on February 20th!!!!

Throughout this entire season we were playing mouse trap. We were not playing the board game but the actual thing! It started in mid December and we think (knock on wood) that we have caught all of the little rodents who decided to make our kitchen their home. I lost track of how many critters we actually caught but know that we caught not just mice but also shrews (Jason and I both though that we were catching baby moles). We were proved wrong during a trip at the museum center where they had rodents from our area in a display case.

There is a story that comes with this adventure. Because we are parents to an avid animal lover (Ella) we were trying to be humane in our attempts at catching these pests. We were successful in our first attempt when Jason just happened to catch sight of a mouse one morning. We were able to trap it, I'll spare you the details, after a half hour of effort. David and Ella quickly named her (yes we looked under her tail) Mary and we were doomed. We had an extra 10 gallon aquarium in the basement and since Ella has a gerbil we already had the makings for a cage. Mary, who is very tiny, is needless to say very wild and is not shy about biting anyone who tries to hold her. We told the kids that we would keep her in the 10 gallon only until the weather warms up and she won't freeze to death outside. Fortunately they were agreeable to this solution.

I guess that's enough of an update. Hopefully I will update again before another month comes and goes. Until then we plan on doing a lot of rearranging and painting at our house. I'll also be busy reading up on what we need to be doing to help Masamo transition into our family more smoothly. So long for now!

The past few weeks have flown by! Our biggest activity is represented by the slide show at the top of the screen. We spent a week at Disney World in celebration of David's 5th birthday. Although David's birthday is in March we decided to wait to go to on this vacation until a slower time of year at the park. This turned out to be one of the best decisions as we were told that we visited the park during the slowest week of the year!

Some of the highlights from our trip included the following....

1. A lot of pleasant together time as a family (even our teenager had a good time)!

2. David got to meet his two favorite Disney characters.....

Ariel (from the Little Mermaid)

June (from Playhouse Disney's Little Einsteins)

3. Celebrating David's birthday at dinner every night (and for one breakfast)!

4. The weather, it was in the low 80's and sunny every day.

5. Meeting up with friends on our second to last day.

Emily and her good friend Jordan, whose family came down the day before we left.

6. The rides!!

7. The way Disney does everything down to the smallest details!

Signs found by where Mike and Sulley (from Monster's Inc.) were signing autographs

On another note, Ella and I both came down with strep throat almost as soon as we got home. We were thankful that this did not happen on our trip and that it's easily treatable.

The next bit of excitement for us was hosting Thanksgiving dinner! This is always a good time. We did miss having Thom & Katherine, Jennifer & Joe (and kids), and Scott's sister Julie. Our evening started out early by a group effort of searching the shopping ads for the best deals on Black Friday. Once lists were made we put the finishing touches on the food and chowed down!

Talking on the phone with Thom

Food prep

As I promised last year we did serve dinner buffet style. It made things a lot easier and people were able to enjoy their food and not worry about having to pass the potatoes, etc!

I don't know how many of you were up early on Black Friday but I was up and out the door by 3:40am in order to get in line at Kohl's. I got Emily up with me, as requested, but she backed out on going shopping with me, no surprise there! Please note that I did not get in line that early for myself but to get some deals asked for by my mother, do I get daughter of the year award for this?! I was in and out of the door quickly and in line at Target by 4:20.

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While waiting in the freezing weather outside Target, I met a woman who lives just down the street from me (I found this out by conversing with her and her daughter). She and her family have lived there for 35 years and it was fun to hear them talk about our house and the farm it used to include "back in the day". Apparently our house used to be painted white wood on the outside and the farmer who lived here would pay the neighborhood children $5 for a black rat snake because he didn't want to deal with cats to control the mice in his barns.

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I got in and out of Target quickly and headed to Meijer and bought a few things there and was home and back in bed by 6:00am. I slept in till 8:30 and then got Emily up (for the second time) and we went shopping for some deals on clothes for her wardrobe.

Later on that evening we had our friends the Apthorpe's over for dinner and an evening of good times and friends. We exchanged Christmas gifts and let the kids play while we chatted and caught up on life.

While they were over an unexpected even occurred, David lost his first tooth! We're not really sure when this happened during the evening's events but when the kids were getting some ice cream and hot cocoa I looked at David wondering what was wrong with his mouth and realized that he has a tooth missing! The thing is that he also had one coming up right behind where his baby tooth had fallen out, much like Ella did when she lost her first tooth.

That night David wrote the tooth fairy a note letting her know that he had quite literally "lost" his tooth. We couldn't find it anywhere. David woke up the next morning with the note still under his pillow and a very long face when waking me up to tell me that the tooth fairy had not come. Big oops! A little bit later he went back upstairs to get his tooth fairy note so that we could email her (yes, you can do that) and he found that she must have been "pulling" (pardon the pun) a late shift and had left David a new webkinz as a present for losing his first tooth. All long faces were forgotten and naming the new dragon webkinz was now top priority.

Jason had a teaching moment with David and Ella this past Sunday afternoon. I had purchased a new toaster at Target on Friday and was throwing out our old one when Jason decided to take it apart. David helped Jason unscrew the outside and the lesson in mechanics and circuit electricity began. I'm not sure how much they picked up but they had a good time taking apart something so familiar and seeing how it worked. They also had a good time just being kids.

Adoption Update:

There is not much to tell right now. We are still awaiting a referal from our agency but were emailed last week that our paperwork passed inspection here and is officially on it's way to Addis Ababa, the capital in Ethiopia. It's a step in the right direction!

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I'm sure December will fly by even faster than November. So until our next post please stop, remember and praise God that Jesus Christ is THE reason for this CHRISTmas season.