Thursday, January 28, 2010

"Everybody's got a water buffalo."

Sometimes we like to play random games like "what noise does this animal make?" with the girls. We start out with regular animals and work our way up to Ring Tailed Lemurs and Kangaroos and such. They are always completely confident with their answers. My personal favorite is this one:

"Keren, what does a water buffalo say?"
"Swim, swim, swim." (as she walks around swimming through the air.)
Keren: Water Buffalo:

Etaala has a blog!

Check it out here. Some exciting news is coming soon!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

It's 11:53. still wednesday.

Ok so here is my 10 random things of this week:

1. I have a feeling i did something this week but at the moment, absolutely nothing is coming to mind. (does this count as one of the ten? yes. i make the rules here.)
2. We went to a Mexican restaurant after church Sunday and Josiah was being a goober. To keep him busy i told him( i know, i know) that the reason why the waiter didn't take his plate was because he was too busy messing with the sugar packets to tell the waiter he was done. it went down hill from there and suddenly...sugar packets had magical powers that make you invisible to waiters. Then he wanted to eat it, so i let him. he lost his lunch. on me. and him. and the corner. Valuable life lessons here: 1. Josiah gags easy... 2.Ellie shouldn't try this method of entertaining ever again. ever. 3. The Post office is to be alerted of such things. :"Ellie, I'm gonna tell the post office that you made Josiah eat that... " -Jeremiah
3. Keren doesn't like her hair to be in a fro. at all.
4. Today we got to welcome home another little boy from Ethiopia! He is from the same foster house as Kezzie and Rennie and our good friends, The Kicks, brought him HOME today!
5. The littles get special privileges and get to go behind the counter with their airport friends to get "bracelets"(also known as luggage tags.) because of how often we are there.
5. I know just about every word to every Fresh Beat Band song. ( i realize this is weird.) The Littles are fresh-beat-band-a-holics.
6. My family is so nosy that telling anyone anything is like a game of telephone. You tell someone in the kitchen something and someone comes running from the play room repeating what they clearly heard from the playroom which was definitely not what you said, and then somebody else heard the playroom dweller say something else, and then it's a major story before you even reach the living room. (*inhale*)
7. ( hmm..seven, seven, seven...) Well. Let me just say that I am extremely glad to be out of the dark ages time period in History/Literature. it was just so stinkin dark. Who needs it? Canterbury Tales? What did you even say? Were you written in Dutch?
8. A "T-rella Drella" is actually not a creature you would learn about in Biology. It is in fact, a Cinderella Umbrella.
9. This week, James informed me that Michael Jackson can sing better than me. I was eating some breakfast, and he just had to tell me. (Michael Jackson is his favorite singer thanks to Free Willy. I think the boys all secretly wish to be the whale riding boy. I think i secretly wish to be the whale riding boy.)
10. This evening I discovered that I was missing an earring all day. I was a pirate today. a pirate with bangs. (random fact number 11. I am an impulsive hair cutter. I'll vow to grow my hair until i'm seventy three and then decide i like short hair five minutes later.)
P.S. Some exciting Etaala news coming soon.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Manners. ..in Taekwondo.

Just a little discovery today. Manners in Taekwondo can only be used in Taekwondo and not in the real world.

For example:
"Do you want me to punch you first, or do you want punch me first?"

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Hmm.

"Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is." -Amy Carmichael.
It's sooo easy to be hurried and pressed and not quite so easy to refuse to let it get to you. Life is busy. Most days looks a little more like this...
than this...
But I'm so thankful that I can have stillness in my heart when all the earth could be spinning around me. (isn't it, anyway? like literally? umm, hello world. welcome to life.) There are decisions to be made and questions to be answered, when the desire to know God's will for something NOW and not wait is banging on my mind's door.
There is a beautiful stillness that comes only with Jesus' perfect peace that surpasses all logic and reason. Though we may have earthquakes and aftershocks daily in our lives, we can rest in Him if we only trust Him and fix our hearts on Him alone. The one who carries our burdens for us and loves us as His children.
It's a great day.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

My little elves. that stuff envelopes.

I'm raising support for Uganda! I'm so thankful for those of you who have already told me that you will be praying for me and those who have given financially. I'm so thankful for each and every one of you. Anddd, if anyone needs a babysitter...you know where to find me.
Jeremiah, James and Josiah were eager to help me with my support letters. It would've taken me years if they hadn't helped. literally.
Mom and Dad are out this morning/day so the Littles and I have had a busy morning full of cowboy/ pirate/ princess/transformer duals (complete with cap guns) and episodes of Bindi the Jungle Girl. I want to be her.
I have two and half down for naps and the other two are going to endure watching Wives and Daughters with me....(like pride and prejudice but different. you should watch it.) it's for school. definitely. of course. So that's our Saturday afternoon today. Our first quiet-ish one in about 7 years i'd say. Maybe more like a couple weeks actually.

A little note to myself on a thursday.

Dear Ellie,

Do not dance on the stairs. You will surely fall. I repeat myself. Do not dance on the stairs.
(sometimes we pretend to be homeschooled. oh wait... we are homeschooled.)
P.S. Kolfe Mamas, please pray that Solomon's computer will start working again so that we can continue to talk to the boys! The new battery did not fix it but Jesus can fix it for sure!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

10 random facts for a rainy day.

When you have nothing to say, say something random. I have tons of things i could say but this seems like a quicker idea than my other blog post options.

1. I love Jesus sooo very much.
2 .I am kind of obsessed with Fox News lately.
3. I use this accent in every day language about as much as my regular voice. my sister started it and it's basically an addiction. don't try it, it will take over your life.
4. I don't go by my real name. Ellie is not the full name. It's like I'm incognito. (except i talk so much it would never work. people know who i am.)
5. I set my alarm for 30 minutes before the girls wake up so that they won't come in and destroy my room like thieves in the night while i sleep.
6. in my mind, when the Bible talks about Manna, i picture cucumbers. they are the only food heavenly enough for the angels to have eaten all the time.
7. I have recently taken up Taekwondo and I actually really like it. I will be a ninja one day.
8. I want to be a hippie. One that is clean, but eats only organic things and has a garden and dresses really cool and has a bunch of little brown children and preferably this would all be happening in Africa.
9. I have no favorite color. But if I did, it would either be a rusty orange or teal... or both of them sitting next to each other.
10. I am a tea drinker. I drink tea like a British person.
Those are my random facts of the day. From now on, on Wednesdays, i will post ten random facts about my week with the littles. that way i will post on this blog even if i can't think of anything funny or interesting to say. unless i forget. which would bring us to random fact number 11. I never get jet lag because i have zero concept of time. don't ask me what day it is, i don't know.

mehh.

Maybe the fact that my blog has a new look will make it less boring when I don't post. probably not. maybe i should just post.

Update on life.

Hello blog.If there were a "social services" for blogs, they'd be calling my phone to accuse me of extreme neglect. Luckily, there is no such ridiculous thing so i can go on living without feeling guilty. The truth is, life is crazy. And another truth is, just about everyone has facebook.

I'm excited about 2010. This year is going to be crazy, full of life lessons, cool experiences and hopefully in 2011, I'll be able to say I lived my all for Jesus in 2010 more than any other year before. There's my New Year's resolutions in a big fat nutshell.
For those of you who read my mom's blog and know about my brother Solomon, we are just waiting for him to take his TOEFL Exam (March 5th) and send it to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa for approval. After they approve him (which they will.) for a student visa, he will be coming to NC for four years on a FULL SCHOLARSHIP to attend The College at Southeastern, a school under Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So that should be April-ish. My mom will hopefully be returning to Ethiopia to get him. If you live anywhere near us, come to the airport to welcome him home. It's gonna be a party.
In May, my brother Jonathan and I, along with 10 or so other young people, will be going to Uganda on Etaala's first (but not last) missions trip! We will be spending two weeks spending time with orphans, doing some cool community development projects and much, much, much more. I'm so excited about what God is going to do on this trip. I'll go into more detail on what we will be doing as it get's closer. :)I'm determined to learn Luganda. We'll see how this goes.
The girls will turn 3 on February 15th! Just around the corner. I'm hoping that midnight on the 14th, the terrible two's stage of life will be over. That is my Valentine's Day wish. Because people always make wishes on Valentine's Day. (?) They're precious but crazy and two x terrible two's is...interesting. I wish they didn't have to grow up though. :( I want them to stay babies forever and ever amen. They are also currently obsessed with anything princess or pink or remotely girly. They are the sisters I always dreamed of. except if you leave them alone they will drink out of the milk carton. So, I am content to squeeze them and kiss them and never leave them alone.
Soo, here is my feeble attempt at updating the world on the latest happenings while I really should be reading Great Expectations and studying the Crimean War. and this post looks more like a syllabus then an update. Haha, I'll try harder next time.
P.S. I'm so excited, I've decided what I'm going to go to school for. I'm going to go to Southeastern (where Solomon is going) and double major in Christian Studies and Missions. I can hardly wait to finish high school now...yet it's creepy to think that I will be going to college next year. I was just 12 and now I'm not. weird.
and here is a glimpse of Christmas with us... P.S. again... Pray for Haiti. God has big plans for them in 2010 as well. www.safewaternexus.org

Monday, January 18, 2010

Cheaters never prosper.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Life lesson learned here: If you sneak too many craisins, you will choke and drop them on the floor. Stick with a smaller amount of craisins.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Haiti Relief

In case you haven't heard, Haiti was hit by a 7.0 earthquake yesterday. Haiti is already one of the poorest countries in the world and now what they had is completely destroyed. Please keep the Haitian people in your prayers! Click here to learn more about how you can help.