Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful year and I hope that 2008 will be a great one! I doubt that it could be any better than this year though! I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for us. Hopefully another trip to Ethiopia! I will post some pictures and video of the babies soon.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Psalm 68:6

God sets the lonely in families ~ Psalm 68:6

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Day 2 ( Finally!! )

Today we met the girls and they are absolutely gorgeous!! I love them to pieces! We told Josiah that we were going to go get Selam and Fikir and he jumped and said in his squeaky little voice " Selam-Fikir???" (one word to him :) He then ran to get his little backpack and tried to open the hotel door to go get them. It was precious. We drove up to the foster house and they made us wait about 15 minutes to meet them because they were still eating upstairs. Josiah had fallen asleep on the sofa in the 'waiting room' and was very excited to see his sisters when he woke up. Keren acted as if she'd known us forever but Keziah, sheesh. It was pretty funny because we thought she was smiling at us. Turns out it was a 'pre-cry smile' followed by a wail. The caregiver took her back for a minute and calmed her down for us, ever since then she has been the happiest, smiliest little girl you ever did see. After the meeting, we got to go upstairs and see all of the precious babies!! Oh my goodness, they are all soooooo cute!! I wish I could move to Ethiopia and just work in the baby house, or in any of the orphanages for that matter... in fact, maybe I will :) It was awesome and I got to hold tons of precious little ones that I hope will be referred to you all soon! Afterwards, we went to this Italian place and had some weird pizza (pita bread with salami) and headed back to the hotel to rest and hang out with the new babies! A few hours later we went to the older kids foster house and what an emotional time that was! Josiah best friend, Nati, came running up to us and hugged Josiah and they walked around with their arms around each other. After a few minutes of being there, Josiah decide he did not want to be there anymore. I think he thought we were going to leave him so he burst into tears. Poor baby! If only you knew how much we went through to get you! There is NO way we are gonna leave you anywhere :) We then went to Layla House to see the Falchooks kids! It was an amazing time. We were absolutely exhausted so we ate at he Hilton and went to bed early...or late for us. I actually adjusted to the time really well going there and coming home. I just got really sick. I think my immune system freaked. My first time out of the country except Canada AND Texas :) which don't exactly count, I go to Africa. It definitely freaked. We are all healthy now though, for a while hopefully. That is one of the pains of big families. You start the cold and get healthy while it goes around to everyone and then you get it again!! The never ending circle of sickness. Ahh, oh well, there are more joys than pains so we shall continue to be sick... its worth it! Merry CHRISTmas to all!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Congrats to the Falchooks!!

Go over and congratulate our friends at injera hot dog. They FINALLY passed court and will soon be able to bring home their 3 precious new children!!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Referrals Galore!!!!

Congrats to the Breedlove family , The Rooney family and Fairy Good Baby and The Beelers on their referrals!! Day 2 really is coming soon, we've just been a little busy around here for some odd reason :)

Monday, December 17, 2007

Whose baby?

We received an email from someone asking for pictures of their little boy but we lost the email somehow. I think your last name was Hinojosa, so, if you are reading this, please email me so I can send you those pictures! We tried sending them from Ethiopia but we don't think it went through. Thanks! (elliemestas@gmail.com) Here is one.

Kolfe video

Friday, December 14, 2007

Hooray for the Martins!!

They got a referral for a little girl!!! Felicity Yehualeshet Martin is soon to be the twinettes best friend! I am so excited that they will have a friend from the same little room, in the same little house in Ethiopia and come across the world together and live in the same little town in NC!! We were saying, "How cool it would be if they got 'the dancing baby' that we met in Ethiopia"...and guess what! It was her!! We are so excited for you guys and can not wait for you to bring her home!!! It was so neat to be able to share this experience with you guys, thanks for letting me tag along with Mel!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Hooray for Jocelyn!!

Jocelyn got her referral for a precious baby girl!! We are all so excited for you Jocelyn and can not wait until Pacey is in your arms!

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Just for laughs :)

Ok, I just had to post this. Day 2 coming soon! Was that hilarious? Yes.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Day 1

Ok, I wrote everything down in a journal while I was there so I am going to post what I wrote :) On My Way to Ethiopia!!! We are almost there!! (The pictures above were taken with our video camera because we lost our camera :( ) Today we arrived in Addis Ababa at 8:30 am Ethiopian time. The airport was kind of chaotic to say the least. We had to fill out our immigration cards and put them in this box thing along with a million other cards.(they probably won't know we were there until next year!) Next, we headed off to get our visas. The people were all very nice and Papa almost killed the man with his huge hikers backpack :) (not really, he just turned and smacked him, poor guy :) It was fairly calm inside the airport compared to when you get outside. Gracious!! We said that they should give you a Birr 101 class right after you exchange your money because you have to use it right away! (The men helping us with our luggage kind of ripped us off but at least we helped them out.) We got outside the doors and found Ryan and Tafesse waiting for us. It would have been just Tafesse but They had to use 2 cars to take all of our luggage! They took us to the Hilton and we washed up and rested for a little while before lunch. We ate at 'Bier Garden', it was a really good German restaurant. There we met Abby, Ryan's wife, Belay, Travis, Joanna, Silas and Avery. (Travis and Joanna are the new Gladney Reps in Ethiopia and Silas and Avery are their kids.) Of course everyone adopting from Ethiopia through Gladney knows who Belay is! After lunch, we went to the Gladney office and met Josiah!!!! It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life! We walked into the office and waited outside the first door as Belay woke him up. (poor baby, he had been inside by himself so he just went to sleep :( As we walked in and saw him for the first time we all burst into tears! My first thought was 'Oh my goodness he is real!' he stood up and looked at us and then he burst into tears! (I think we scared him because even some of the staff were crying!) I mean, what a way to wake the poor kid! Bring in a bunch of crazy, crying, white people with cameras! He is just so cute you can not put it into words. The pictures do not do any of the children justice. We then went back to the hotel. Josiah did not do very well at first. As you can see from the picture above ^ (I can't blame him) He was afraid and he kept trying to walk out of the hotel room. He was crying and was kind of unresponsive. I started to play with him though and he warmed up in about an hour and has been happy and an absolute joy ever since. His first english word was 'Ellie'! How cute is that! He is no longer afraid of us and has been rattling off to us in amharic. Tafesse took us to a great little Italian place in an alley way. Josiah LOVES pasta! He ate an adult sized portion. No, he inhaled an adult sized portion of pasta and even ate some of Tafesse's lamb! He literally ate himself to sleep! He took a bite and then leaned over onto my mom and fell asleep with lamb still in his mouth. We got back to the hotel and crashed. Today was one of the coolest most wonderfully amazing days of my life. I was thinking about it and I told Mom, "He talks to us like we know amharic!" and then I realized, wait, we talk to him like he knows english! We have learned quite a bit of amharic because of him though. On our last day, we were talking to Josiah in amharic and our driver laughed and told us a story. There was a man that wanted more then anything for his son to speak english so he sent him to school. The son still did not learn english, he did not want to learn english, he liked amharic. So he hired an english teacher from Europe to teach his son english. In the end the english teacher ended up learning amharic!

Sunday, December 2, 2007

I hope it is good!

Ok, I am really excited to see how the second one is going to turn out. I loved these books, I hope the movie is as good!

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Kezzie is home!

Keziah was admitted to the hospital and just got home this afternoon. I never got a chance to post about it because I had the other 4 little kids which kind of took up a little bit of my time :) We are still waiting for the results from the lab but she has some kind of bacterial infection. They loaded her up on antibiotics though so she should be better soon. Poor baby :( Thank you for your prayers!