Plans and Preparation

This last month has flown by! We've had our nose to the grindstone getting ready and preparing for the expansion of our family by one very adorable three year old boy!

I guess first I should take a step back and let you know what we've been up to this past month.

Soon after my last post we had a little bit of snow, well it was enough to cover the seemingly dead grass and that in my opinion is a "good" snow. The kids were off of school for a few days and David was the only one to venture out with Jason to play in it. They had a wonderful time sledding, and here's the proof!

Next we decided it would be prudent to get moving on switching the kid's bedrooms (Ella and David's) in preparation for Masamo's pending arrival. We started by emptying out David's smaller room, which by the way all his things went into the upstairs hallway and bathroom, and changed it from an olive green to a cheery yellow for Ella! Jason and I decided that since we were hard at work with the room that we would play Jason's favorite home improvement game of "What's Under the Carpet?" David's room was the only room in our house to remain carpeted and we were told that the wooden floor underneath sloped into the middle of the room and so another floor was built on top and carpeted.

David helping to paint his old bedroom yellow for Ella!

Jason playing "What's Under the Carpet?"

Having that challenge in front of him, Jason proceeded to pry the carpet, padding, and subfloor up to see what the original wooden floors looked like. We were happy to find that the slope we had been told was so drastic really wasn't that bad. Once we had everything up and out of the room it was certainly apparently that the slope was there but as a couple decided the floor was worth resanding, finishing and leaving original to match the rest of the house. Jason spend the whole next day (a Sunday) sanding the floor, which needless to say made a very dusty mess.

The room (almost) finished, just needed the polyurethane!

Our home improvement projects were put on hold over the next weekend as we as a family were gone from home. Jason did sneak in putting down a couple coats of polyurethane on the bare wooden floors in David's old/Ella's new room before we all left. Jason and Emily went on a ski retreat in Pennsylvania with our church's youth group. I went to NY to visit my best friend and her family to help out after the birth of their fourth child. Ella and David spent a fun filled weekend with Mimi and Boppy watching movies and going to Build-a-Bear!

Me with the newest member of the Apthorpe family!

Emily on the ski trip (photos taken from Facebook, so the quality isn't that great)

The next weekend we were back at painting. We emptied Ella's room into her new yellow room to make room for painting. It was a challenge to cram all of her things from the larger room into the now smaller room but with some creativity we did it! Ella's old purple and lavender room was soon transformed into a nice blue room for David and Masamo. It was a nice surprise to find that it only took one coat of paint for this room unlike the three coats of paint we needed to make Ella's new room yellow! Just a FYI, it turns out that the shade of blue that we chose for the boy's room was the exact shade of blue we painted our upstairs bathroom two years ago (a fact we did not discover until we had already started painting).

Sorry no photos of this room yet!

David and Masamo's room was halfway put together the next day with David's things put into place. I am in the process of getting a bunk bed and all other necessary items together for Masamo so that it's ready for his arrival.

Speaking of Masamo's arrival we were informed on Tuesday January 26th that we passed our Ethiopian court date and that we were officially granted custody of Masamo! His birthfather obviously made it to court and all paperwork was in order for the judge to be able to make his decision! This absolutely wonderful news was also delivered with the dark cloud that Jason and I would have to be in the country of Ethiopia on Febuary 20th (as long as Masamo tests negative for TB). This is the exact day that my brother Thom is getting married to his wonderful fiance Katherine.

It took me some time to process all of the information coming at us and for me to deal with the grief of missing my little brother's wedding but after talking to him, getting his and Katherine's blessing and working out a few details I am feeling much better about the whole situation! Plus, it will be a day to celebrate for years to come, gaining two family members on the same day!!! I can honestly say that the days are passing in a flurry as Jason and I try and make all types of arrangements and packing for this exciting, life-altering trip. There are so many things to anticipate and plan around it's almost overwhelming!

We also had another fun event in the last month, the annual Pinewood Derby at our church. We had both Ella and David participating this year. Normally with David being in kindergarten he would not be qualified to join in the derby but because he attends the Wednesday night boys activities with Jason he was allowed to enter!

Ella decided to make a mouse car this year! Here it is below!

She ended up getting sixth place in craftsmanship for the girls (getting a certificate) and I'm not even sure where she placed in speed!

David and Jason also decided to design a car centered around craftsmanship and so made David's car into a wrench! Here's his car!

David ended up in second place in craftsmanship for the boys and was thrilled to get a trophy in his first Pinewood Derby! I'm also not sure where David placed in speed but I do know that both of them did not end up in last place in that category!

I'm sure that my next post will not be until we arrive home from Ethiopia with Masamo. I apologize now for the delay that the next post will probably be but I'll make it as intersting as possible once I do post it! Here's praying for safe travel for us all! Until next time!

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.

...

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.

...

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!

...

...
...

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.