The Week in Review

Family is a big part of our lives.  This past Friday my mom and I traveled to Goshen to hang out with my Grandpa's sisters and their families.  Although this might not sound like fun to some, we had a blast.  These ladies can outlast me.  They stayed up until 2:30 in the morning.  WOW!  There was a lot of food and laughter all night long.  

In the picture above are the sisters...Claira, Celesta and Martha.  Claira is so funny!  She totally reminds me of my grandmother that passed away a year and a half ago.  She has a way of making people laugh.  It was great to get to know her better.

I ended up leaving at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning to come back home so we could go to choir practice.  Our high school teacher has been teaching at Eastern for 25 years and she invited alumni to come back and sing.  Although the rehearsal was practically all day long on Saturday, we ended up having a lot of fun.  We were able to see old friends and reminisce about the good old days.  I have to say, the choir students are spoiled now with the performing arts center.  I was a bit jealous.

The Colts are having a rough start this year.  I am not quite sure what is wrong with my team, but I hope they come out of this slump.  They are good...it is just taking them awhile to figure out what works...We are going to the Colts versus Patriots game on Sunday.  We will cheer really loud, get a souvenir cup, get to the game early, eat in the food court, wear our jerseys, I will wear my beads - I hope this is a recipe for success!

We have had a friend hanging out with us for a few days.  Chris took some crazy pictures of this creature.  I think they are kinda creepy!

When we were in Ohio we went to the Sauder Outlet store (RTA furniture) and purchased a few cabinets for the garage to help us get organized.  We could not believe this was only $25!  We ended up buying 2 of them.  We were super excited!

On a serious note, the pastor at our church suffered a massive heart attack.  He is currently scheduled to have surgery tomorrow morning.  Please keep Pastor Steve in your prayers.  He is at Methodist hospital in Indianapolis.

Since this weekend is Halloween, I thought I would share this picture.  It made me laugh so hard.  This was on our way up to Goshen.  I had to take a picture.  Who does this?

Powerful Video.

Sarah and I have seen this video a couple times and it really puts things into perspective for me.

World Vision

Christmas in October...

I guess you could say that my family is a bit nuts, but we don't mind.  This past weekend we sang Christmas carols and unwrapped Christmas gifts.  Although there was no snow, we had a wonderful time spending some quality time as a family.  This year we went to Ohio.  We ended up getting there on Friday night.  On Saturday, we attended my cousin's volleyball game at her high school.  Her team won!  It was fun to support her.  I think she had the biggest fan club there.  We also went to my aunt's chocolate shop, Stella Leona.  It is not quite open, but she served us all kinds of warm drinks.  They were delicious.  It was so much fun!  

Brotherly love...

A little football action...

Christmas in action.  Every year the adults do not exchange gifts, instead we donate money to a worthy cause that the host picks.  This year, Greg and Nancy, chose to give it to the orphanage where our son is in Ethiopia.  We were so blessed and we know that the orphanage will definitely use it.

Chris and I crammed into a chair for at least an hour while Greg read the Christmas story and the children opened gifts.  

The colors of fall are so beautiful.  I love this time of year.  I always think of my friend Julie because this is her favorite season.  Julie lives in West Virginia.  I met Jules when I studied abroad in England in 2001.  We have kept in touch over the years and she is married to Adam and in April, they became parents to beautiful Ella.  Here is a shout out to Julie - I miss you and thanks for praying for us every night! I wish you lived closer...

I have been so impressed with Chris's photography skills.  He has a super creative side that I did not know existed until recently.  I give him all the credit for the fall photos.

And in the spirit of the season, I had to post one of my favorite pictures of my nephew.  This picture was not taken during halloween, these are his pajamas.  However, the mask is not part of the outfit.  Anyways, I was trying to take a picture of him and I asked him to put his arms out so I could see the netting under his arms.  He followed my directions and put his arms out - just not the way I wanted.  How adorable!

Finally!

We got some exciting news today.  They have scheduled a court date for us at the end of November!  Our agency will be acting on our behalf in court and once it is complete, he will legally be our child.  All we can do now is wait and pray that everything is approved on the court date.  If everything goes smoothly our embassy appointment will be scheduled 5 weeks afterwards.  We are tentatively planning on traveling the middle of December and returning the first of the year.  

Glasses - Gotta share

My friend Megan introduced me to a very cool website and I think many of you can benefit from it. If you have glasses or need glasses, check out the following link. All you need is your script. It is a legit site because Megan ordered her glasses from here. Check it out...

http://www.zennioptical.com/

She purchased her glasses for $30. This is a deal!

I'm back...

Here is my confession...I love blogs.  I could spend the entire evening on the computer jumping from blog to blog and then surfing the Internet.  In order to finish my class, I gave up the computer in the evenings to watch my class, take a test and write a paper.  I am proud to say that I finished my class this past Saturday and I am back!  Can I tell you, it feels great not to have the pressure to choose between classwork and the computer.  I only have one class left; however, I am taking a 3 month break for several reasons...the most important being that we will be traveling to Ethiopia to pick up our son!  Another reason is that this class would push me over my limit for the year for tuition assistance, just another positive for waiting until January.  

Last weekend on Saturday we went to our nephew's hockey game.  He plays for North Central even though he goes to school at Ben Davis.  He is the goalie and I can say that it was great to watch him play.  NC won the game and this was the first one that I wasn't a nervous wreck for Andrew.  I think it was a pretty easy game for the team and for the most part he had few shots against him.  Every time I see him, he changes.  This time I think he was 3 inches taller than the last time I saw him and that wasn't very long ago.  He is taller than Chris now.  

On Sunday, October 5, several people went in together to throw me a shower(Cousins, aunts, sister-in-laws, mother, mother-in-law).  Here is a shout out to Cari for organizing it!  It was AMAZING!  There were so many people and so much love in the room.  It still amazes me how generous people are for others.  We received so many gifts and could feel the love.  As a recap, our son is set for a year on clothes, has toys to play with, books to read, diapers to do his business, books to scrapbook his life, cocoa butter lotion, DVDs and enough money to purchase our second ticket to Ethiopia!  God is so good!  

Here is a plug for my friend, Andrea, the Pastry Diva.  She made the cake.  I would have shown the other one, but his name is on it and so I rather not post it quite yet since we are using his Ethiopian name.  Let me just tell you about this cake - there were three different flavors: carrot cake with cream cheese icing, chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, and white cake with raspberry filling.  

Look at all of these beautiful ladies!  This is at the end of the shower...I know that I am missing several because they had to leave early.  Thanks to all who came and showered me with love.  It was a special day!

While I was at the shower, Chris had some of our friends at our house watching the Colts football game.  I wore my jersey during the shower and it was a good thing that I did this...the COLTS squeaked by with a victory.  I was able to watch the highlights and I think this game will go down in history.  They came back in the last 2 minutes of the game from being way behind.

Rod and Megan...

Syd and Don...

Katie is playing "the water game" (pool) with Anneliese.   

Liz and Anneliese...

Last week for work I traveled to Rose-Hulman to attend a career fair.  I am also planning to go to the University of Cincinnati this week.  This weekend we had the opportunity to watch out other nephew, Clayton, perform with the Brownsburg marching band at Ben Davis.  It was fun to hang out with family and the weather was beautiful.  Although we didn't get to hang out with Clayton, he is growing up so fast.  He is 16 and is also taller than Chris.  He is probably one of the quickest wit kid I will ever meet.  I love that about him.  We forgot our camera this time around...more pictures to come soon.  Also, Mark and Angie are painting their house.  It looks beautiful.  I am a bit jealous.

Today we went to the COLTS game.  It was a great game.  We dominated.  It was nice to see the team back again.  This is the team that we know.  

As far as the adoption front goes, please pray for the children in Ethiopia.  We recently heard that some children have some high levels of lead.  We trust that God has a plan and we know that our son is in His hands.  We still have not heard about our court date.  We continue to hope that it will be in October.