Drywall, Painting and Welcome Bag

Last week we recieved the official paperwork to accept the referral of E-2. E-1 and I went shopping on Friday to pick up a few items for E-2's welcome bag. Our agency allows us to send a gallon size bag with a few items for the child when a family accepts a referral. I was quite excited to go out and pick up a few things for E-2 (besides, of course, the Taggie blanket that I have had for him for the last 6 months!). E-1 seemed excited as well, that is until I mentioned the items were for E-2 and I was faced with a major meltdown in the local Target store. While I dodged rattles and onezees being flung at me from the shopping cart I tried to assure myself that E-1 was just tired and it had nothing to do with the mention of E-2's name. Friday night I sat down to answer the questions posed by our agency regarding the acceptance of our referral. "How do you plan to deal with challenges of bringing another child into your family? Lack of sleep, jelousy of other children in the family, etc. E-1 has a very easy going personality. I don't know too many families that would confidently take a 2 year old for a 3 week vacation in South America that involved 14 different flights! At the same time, I think we both realize that E-1 pretty much has a choker hold on us (well, me in particular, T would probably argue that point). I can honestly say that we will probably be very challenged in the first few months after E-2 comes home while E-1 learns to share mommy and daddy. His easy going personality is accompanied by a strong will. While establishing a bond with E-2, we will also need to be sure we are spending quality one on one time with E-1 as well as including him as mom and dad's helper with the new baby.

On the home remodeling front, drywall on the second floor is moving forward and the kitchen was painted mood indigo and olivine this weekend. Its Mayan Red for the downstairs bathroom tonight and some sanding of drywall and arches in the next few days. The tile is going to be ordered and will hopefully be in soon so the contractor can get that down before the cabinets are in. Its starting to look like a real house as opposed to the disaster zone it has been looking like the last few weeks! One of these days I imagine our homestudy agency will call and ask to set up an appointment to inspect the house (which is required here every 6 months until the baby comes home). I just hope her reminder doesn't pop up for a few more weeks!

What's your Guardian Angels name?

Have you ever stopped to consider what your Guardian Angels name is? Today was a day that I really thought about that. Why? Because I wanted to shout out a great big THANK YOU! and to give a spiritual hug (if such a thing is possible) to mine.

Today on the way to work I almost became "road kill". Traveling on a two lane road with a posted speed limit of 50 MPG, I looked up to see a car that i thought was awfully close, in the oncoming traffic lane. Too close. There was a thud, it was so quick I didn't know what it was. I checked my side mirror to see if I could see something in the road, but there was no mirror.

Two cars going close to 50 MPH head-on towards each other... Close enough that we clipped mirrors. We are both OK. Thankfully. As if it had been a few more inches, it would have been very bad.

The gentleman admitted fault (he was adjusting the heater or defroster as it was deathly cold at 6:30am this morning, and inadvertently crossed the center line). We got a police report, swapped insurance, and all should work out well enough (except for our mirrors)

I'm not sure if Guardian Angels read blogs, but if my does. THANK YOU! and Thank you for being there to protect me from almost certain tragedy. And to anyone else that reads this.. should you happen to see a black mirror that looks to belong to a Red 2005 Toyota Prius.. Its probably mine, but you can keep it ..smile..

Oh Glorious Day!

We have accepted the referral of a 2 month old boy!!!!! We were caught completly off guard last week when the Director of our agency called to tell us about a little boy that had come to their care center. I was definately not expecting to hear anything for several months! I was in LOVE at first sight when I saw his pictures taken at 7 days old and 1 month old. I imediately determined that the medical information must be fine, because for sure I was looking at the picture of our son. Hubby was a little more hesitant and contacted the adoption doctor we had used for our Guatemalan adoption. The Dr. called last Thursday night with news, based on the limited information he had, that our baby appeared healthy. I sat down after the phone conversation and typed up an e-mail to our agency telling them we would like to proceed with his adoption.

So here is the low down. By law, he must be at our agency's care center for 3 months before his case can be filed for court. Once it is filed for court, the average is 3.5 to 4.5 months from court to travel. We are hoping and praying that it will go faster, but it appears that we will be making our journey half way around the globe to bring him home early summer.

Where are the Pictures? I know, you are all dying to see what he looks like, but we are not allowed to post any pictures until the adoption is final. Even then, we will probably limit any pictures posted to our blog for privacy reasons, but rest assured, there will be pictures on the adotpion announcments we send out.

What about his name? Little guy has a first name but no middle name. It is kind of a weird coincidence that both of our boys were referred with names starting and ending with the same letters. Maybe its fate, but the more I use his first name, the more it seems to be the name he was intended to keep. For now, I think we are going to work on a middle name and keep using his Ethiopian name for his first name.

What's next? Well we have to fill out the official paperwork and settle in for another wait. I have a feeling this one might test our resolve a bit more than the referral wait, give that now everyday we check a day off the calendar, there is a set of big brown eyes looking back at us!

Pinkeye, Thankfulness and Nursery

Being confined to a single room on our first floor finally had a benefit when we found out yesterday that little guy had pinkeye from exposure at daycare last week. At least I only had one room to disinfect! We were very thankful yesterday to receive a very thoughtful care package from a marriage encounter family. Turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberries, veggies and cinnamon cake! What a treat to have a real home cooked dinner after all our frozen microwaved concoctions and grilled pizza over the last few weeks. We devoured every last morsel in a matter of minutes!

On another note, I have been thinking a lot about the nursery for our soon to be Ethiopian baby. Originally I thought I would paint the walls in stripes to match the Ethiopian flag. That drew a lot of negative press from the relatives given that my mother in law and I spent an incredible number of hours decorating our Guatemalan son's room with Guatemalan animals and village scenes. In my defence, it is a lot harder to find time to do that intricate of painting without a toddler and a huge remodel going on. Beside, as soon as he gets to be around 4, he will probably want it painted over with something Disney! Augh! That will break my heart! Well, after some thought, I think I have some ideas....more to come on this subject at a later date.

Man vs Nature

How does the saying go? Neither rain, nor Sleet, nor Snow, or gloom of night...

While not in the Postal Service, I am attempting to at least keep some semblance of consistency in my weekend running. So I put my "winter running" gear to the full test today. With the temperature reading 0 degrees (before wind chill) I hit the payment. It was pretty cold, as evidenced by the icicles that formed on my eyebrows and eye lashes. But once I warmed it, it was not to bad.

So I guess I cant use a temperature of 0 degrees as a reason not to run anymore.
Peace

Plans, Future, Welfare, and Hope

Life can be crazy, with some many things going on, it can be easy to be overwhelmed. Todays reading is an inspiration to those of us that (try to) look to the Lord for our guidance.

Reading of the Day...

Jeremiah 29:11
For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans
for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.

Peace

Its not delivery...

Its not delivery..it is Digiorno. But with a twist. Something I like to call Pizza ala Weber. With the Kitchen still under construction (perhaps up to another month until its completely done) I decided to try something new. At least for our house. With while Mom was hanging insulation, Dad was framing a door and also prepping to run in wall speaker cable, there just wasn't time to run out for a pizza (and we don't do delivery). So without an oven, what does one do? Well I fired up the Weber grill, let it heat up..and turned down the gas until it was 400. Walla.. Digiorno ala Weber. Wonders never cease...

Water? we don't need no stink'in water

Always willing to try new measures to conserve water, we had our water turned off from 7:00 am Monday until 3:30 pm Tuesday. I think we made remarkable use of our one water bucket, at this rate, we should use on average 30 gallons of water a month! What a savings! Ok, for real, our sweet plumber worked his butt off on Monday trying to get our water back on. After I returned home from my meeting at 9:30 pm and found him still working away upstairs we were really sorry we had not thought to let him know earlier that we would be ok without water for the night. So about 10:00 pm after a somewhat awkward conversation on my part, trying to let him know how bad I felt about not saying something earlier, but at the same time trying to explain that we had no idea how much work he had left to gauge the time, he left for the night and hopefully got a good night sleep. We are very lucky to have a plumber who really takes pride in his work and is willing to put in as many hours as needed to not leave a homeowner without water. It was kind of fun using bottled water to brush our teeth, reminding me of all the good memories of Guatemala, Peru and Ecuador. Other bodily functions, well, I will leave those details to your imagination. Being from the back woods myself, it was only later that I started thinking those types of outdoor activities might not be as acceptable in the city!

Merry Christmas...in Ethiopia that is

We were so happy to get a break from microwave food in the dusty basement and head to an Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate Christmas with the local Ethiopian adoption group. It was a huge turnout with about 100 people this year, up from last year of about 50. We took full advantage of the buffet knowing our eating conditions at home are less than ideal. It was great to see some of the families we had met last year when we were only researching adoption, boy have some of the kiddo's grown!

Exciting and sad news greeted us this week from our agency, first, the exciting news is that there are over a dozen babies that will be referred in the next few weeks. I am waiting with great anticipation to see how far those referrals move us up on the wait list. The very tragic news is that one of the careworkers from our agency was killed in a car accident a few days ago. She leaves a husband and 2 children. Please keep her family in your prayers.

I'll close with a little guy funny, at church this Sunday, we brought him up from communion and the cup server traced the sign of the cross on his head and said "Bless you". Little guy looked at her with a somewhat perplexed look on his face and said back to her "ha choo?"

In a Galaxy far far away..

OK perhaps not so far away. Its been an immensely busy time since Christmas. We have started and completed the utter destruction and demolition of our kitchen, dining room, and two of the three bathrooms in the house. All were gutted like a freshly caught Lake Michigan Walleye. Right down to the guts.

The electrician, plumber, and the carpenters all started in earnest on Wednesday January 2nd. Quite a bit of progress has been made on the extensive plumbing and electrical rework. The new ground floor powder room is also framed out.

On another note, we had taken a break from the home remodel to head downtown for the Final Days of the "Star Wars" Experience at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was a pretty cool day (at least for Evans and Dad). Seeing the actual droids and models was cool. Evans of course loved the giant model train exhibit as the museum. It was a fun day.

We will post some more pictures on the remodel in the next day or two. tomorrow the new engineering I-beam is going in, as one of our load bearing wall is being removed.