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.  

It will be October when I wake up!

YAY! Rainy season will officially be over when I wake up in the morning! Praise God that we made it through the two months of waiting. We really do not have any adoption updates other than they will submit our case to the court and we will wait to hear what court date we will be assigned. We are still hoping for a date in October (towards the end of the month) but it is in God's hands.

We had such an amazing weekend. It started off on Friday night just being together. Even though we are often together at any opportunity, we took the time to go out to eat and just hang out. We had a good evening!

On Saturday, we set the alrm to get up and go to Indy to the Corporate Challenge. Chris's work, Wiley, participated in the challenge and he was in the tug-of-war competition. Even though they did not win their event, the company ended up getting 9th in their division. I was impressed!

Right after the challenge, Chris and I headed over to Fort Benjamin Harrison Park to meet other adoptive families that are or have adopted from Ethiopia. It was such a nice way to meet people that have been in our shoes. It makes the world seem so small. We hope to develop friendships with several other couples. It is great. Since children are such an important part of our lives, it is like we have a bond right from the beginning.

After we spent an hour at the picnic, we headed back home because my good friend Jolane was throwing a baby shower for me. It was spectacular! The theme was polka-dots and it was held at the chapel at MC. Some of my dearest college friends and co-workers were there. It always amazes me how generous people are when it comes to giving. Sometimes it overwhelms me because I love to give to others, but to allow others to give to me is somewhat difficult. Why? I guess it is how God wired me.

Our son is going to be spoiled! I love it! The ladies above showered me with love and him with presents. He is going to be a clean baby with more clothes than his mama with books to read, toys to play with, and a beautiful blanket to keep warm (knitted by Ashley). Thanks to all who attended the baby shower. It was so nice to see each of you and be with you for a couple of hours.

The COLTS had a bye week this week and I think it was much needed. Chris and I watched football on Sunday inbetween picking up the house, working outside and cleaning. Man, do I hope they can pull off the game this weekend.

My class is wrapping up and I am trying hard to finish it. I only have one more class to watch, a test to take and a paper to finish. I am so excited! It will be nice to not have to think about it for a few months.

The rest of this week is busy. We are going to take supper over to my parents because my mother had surgery on her shoulder. She is doing great. I stopped by to see her tonight and she made me laugh. I asked her if she was tired. She said, "no, not at all." I looked away for two seconds (literally) and she was out cold. I started laughing and she said..."stop laughing at me, I am so tired."

Please pray really hard that we will hear about our court date sooner than later. We know it is in God's hands...we are just getting really excited!

Loving Life

Well, another week has passed.  I had a good time in Louisiana at Southern University.  I have to say that I do love the southern hospitality.  Everything is "yes ma-am, no ma-am."  I have to say it kind of catches me off guard.  Am I old enough to be called ma-am?  I took the students that were in the student program out to eat.  I loved it, it was bbq family style!  Afterwards, we went to this place called Coffee Call and had beignets.  Mmmm, good.

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to meet up with our friends, Don and Liz, at the Irish Festival.  It was at Military Park in Indy.  It was a lot of fun hanging out with them, like always.  We also had the opportunity to be with their beautiful daughters Anneleise and Emmeline.  

Chris and I have been in a bit of pain recently.  A tree fell in our yard and Chris was removing it from our yard earlier this week.  While he was doing this, I thought I would mow.  Well, everything seemed okay until about Wednesday.  Both of us starting itching like crazy.  Below is a picture of Chris and his allergic reaction to something he touched...

If you can't tell from the picture below, I have poison ivy again.  This time it is on my neck.  Somewhat uncomfortable, but it could be worse.  We ended up stopping at Med One in Kokomo to get a prescription for Chris.  I guess this means we can't be outside unless we are covered from head to toe.

Here we are trying on our back porch.  I am so excited for the fall!  We actually bought some apple cider at the store.  This is a sign that fall is almost here!  I am excited for the fall festivities.

On a sad note, I am not sure what is happening to my Colt's team.  I am still cheering them on loud and proud, just a hard loss today.  I think they need the bye this upcoming week to regroup and heal some of the injured players.  GO COLTS!

Flyin' on a Jet Plane.....

I do know when I will be back again... That is all I know to that song. (I do realize that I swiched the words to apply to my situation) For those of you who know me well, I could listen to the same song 100 times and still not know all of the words. On the other hand, Chris can listen to it twice and know the entire song. I find that simply amazing. I also am not one to know song titles, artists, actors, actresses, or movies. The good thing about this is everything always appears new to me. For example, we can buy DVDs because I never remember the story line. It is like watching a new movie everytime. You gotta love it!

Anyways, I am at the airport waiting for my flight to go to Louisiana for business. More updates later...

Blast from the Past

This post is late.  Time got away from me and so I have to recap what has happened over the past week and a half.  Last weekend, my friend Ashley and I went with our moms to a big garage sale in Wakarusa on Saturday morning.  Although we didn't find a ton of items, we had fun looking and trying to find the deals of the century!  I ended up purchasing a 2T tux for our little boy.   In order to make sure that he gets its use, I figure he can use it for halloween next year and be a groom or a preacher.  After looking at all of the sale items, we decided to go out to eat in Goshen.  We had a great time catching up.  After brunch, my mom and I went to The Old Bag Factory.  It was a neat place.  I which I could afford some of the furniture and pottery.  The time together with my mother was invaluable.  I really enjoyed spending time with her.

On Sunday, we had the opportunity to tailgate with some of our friends.  We had a great time although we had 4 Bear fans at our tailgate party.  It was great to reconnect with Kevin (our friend from college) and his wife Jen.  We also were able to spend some time with Syd, Katie, Greg and Cari.  Although the game did not turn out how we would have hoped, we had a great day!  

Last week was busy.  We were both sick at one point, but after we started feeling better we were out and about.  Chris's birthday was on Monday!  Although I was sick, I think he had a good week.  On Wednesday, he went to the Journey concert with his sister and her family.  It sounded like he had a great time.  On Friday, we ran into Kokomo and then we headed into Greentown to watch the Eastern football game.  Amazingly, the football team won!  This is their first win in 24 games.  We weren't sure if they would know that the tradition was to ring the bell.  Luckily, they didn't forget and it continued to ring for awhile.

On Saturday morning, Chris and I participated in the Tour de Carmel.  This is a 20 mile bicycle ride throughout Carmel.  We completed it and then decided to go to Trader Joe's.  After doing a little bit of grocery shopping, we decided to eat and When Harry met Salad.  It was pretty good.  In the afternoon, I went to my cousin's baby shower.  She looks adorable and received so many nice things.  

Around 4:30 we found ourselves and Indiana Wesleyan to watch our friend, Andrew ref a soccer game.  It was fun to see him in action; however, I think I did more talking than watching.  Andrew and Ashley came over to our house and we continued to keep the sports theme in mind.  We had pizza and wings for supper and watched the Ohio State and USC game.  It ended up being a blow out.  We had a great time hanging out with them.  It is crazy - I have seen Ashley more this past month than I have seen her all year.  

In the picture below, Andrew is the ref in blue.  

Today we went to church and then came home to get ready for the Colts game.  At Chris's 10 year high school reunion we made plans with Rod and Megan to come over and watch the game since it was away.  I have to confess, this is the first game that we have watched with anyone else other than our families.  It went really well.  They didn't mind me cleaning up the kitchen when I got nervous.  We invited them back for all the other games and I think that we might make it a tradition.  It is always fun to hang out with them and it is nice that they live close to us so no one has to drive very far to see each other.

God has blessed us with so many friendships.  Often times we forget how neat it is that we have people to hang out with, share our lives with, learn with, laugh with, cry with...  On that note, have a wonderful week.

It is that time...

GO COLTS!  

Enough said.

Is it okay to wish time away?

Chris and I have been doing everything possible to make the time go by fast and we are excited to say that it is already September!  We have had a great summer and we are truly looking forward to the fall months.  One month of rainy season has passed and we only have one more month to go – what a blessing!  For those of you wishing that we had an adoption update, there is no such luck.  We haven’t heard anything, but I can honestly say that we think about our little boy almost all of the time.  We love him so much already and we constantly make comments about him being around so he can enjoy his cousins, or the sunset, or camping, or the pool, or sports, or just being hugged and cuddled.  I think we both have our days, some harder than others.  We find it best if we talk about it, otherwise we hold in the emotion and find that it hurts.  We knew the waiting would be difficult; it is just hard to prepare for something that would be like this experience. 

So, what have we been doing to pass the time?  I think we are doing a little bit of everything these days.  My family rented a lake cottage on Lake Tippecanoe last week.  Since Chris and I are saving all of our vacation days to go to Ethiopia, we decided to go up on both weekends to be with everyone.  We had a wonderful time!  We were able to be out on the water and hang out with the family.  What a great combination!  Both of us were successful with skiing; however, we were successful getting up on the wakeboard, just not riding it for a long period of time.  We went sailing with my dad and we also took out the wave runner.  Man do I love those things…I managed to turn it so fast that I did a flip off of it.  Chris saw me do it and I think he was literally impressed that I tried to gun it and turn at the same time.  The boys are as cute as ever.  We have enjoyed watching them grow and become little boys. 

We also became members at our church here in Kokomo, Grace United Methodist.  We are excited to be a part of a church family and consider it our home.  We look forward to going every Sunday and the fellowship has been amazing!  God is good!

This past Sunday we were excited to meet up with Chris’s side of the family for dinner; however, our plans changed pretty fast.  Before meeting up with them, we thought we would ride our bikes on the Monon trail.  Unfortunately, Chris wiped out and was a little to sore to continue with our plans.  Instead, we came back home and I helped my dad gather some landscaping material to redo my grandmother’s house in Ohio.  I was able to spend some quality time with him as we went to Burlington and ate at Mike’s Pizza. 

On Labor Day, we decided that we wanted to add some lights to our landscaping because it is really dark around our house and we thought it would look nice.  It took some work, but the lights are in and we really like the finished product.  Chris’s mother came over and helped us throughout the day.  It was a good day!

This upcoming week starts regular season football games.  Go COLTS!  We always look forward to our games and spending that time together.  I am also planning to spend some girl time with Ashley on Saturday!  I have a test tomorrow and I can’t wait till this class is over.  I will only have one more left and then I will have my master’s degree!!!  YAY!  I can’t wait to be finished for awhile. 

We can’t thank you enough for all of the prayers our blog readers have prayed.  Please continue to be prayer warriors for our little boy.  I am positive that he is feeling God’s presence each and every day.  Blessings to you and your family.

Olympics

Over the past couple of weeks, Chris and I have developed a routine that is based off of the Olympics.  We simply cannot get enough of the crazy events.  We have planned our evenings around watching the events.  The routine consists of working for 8+ hours, eating supper, either riding our bikes or working out on the elliptical and staying up way to late...and then it starts all over again.

Some of my favorite events throughout the Beijing Olympics include swimming, beach volleyball, men's 10m platform diving (I know David Boudia's father), gymnastics, basketball and track and field.  I was also impressed by the opening ceremonies.  I work with quite a few people from China and they have been so proud of it.  It has been neat to talk to them about something that we have in common.  

My company has been in the news quite  bit lately.  As most people know, the automotive sector has been hit hard recently because people are changing their buying habits because they are fed up with the cost of gas.  This past week my company has decided to make a business decision to separate 600 salaried employees.  This has been a difficult time and my heart goes out to the employees that have lost their job.  My hope is that they will be optimistic and that they can find a position that fits their needs.

This weekend we are going to the lake to spend some time with my family.  We usually go on vacation with them sometime throughout the year; however, we are saving all of our time for our trip to ETHIOPIA!  

Colts football is back in season!  We are super excited to go to the games again this year.  The first pre-season game is Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium.  It should be a good time.  We actually had the opportunity to tour the stadium last Saturday with some of our friends - shout out to Syd, Katie, Don, Liz, Anneliese and Emmeline.  Chis and I have also been riding our bikes recently so we also had the opportunity to ride the monon for 18 miles.  It was a nice ride.  

No news on the adoption front.  We continue to think about out little guys often.  We are so glad that August is about over.  We really don't want to wish our lives away, but we can't wait to hold him.  We love him so much already!

The Weekend

We had a great weekend. It got off to a great start because Chris came home from Florida. It is one of those things...I really enjoy my personal time, but I am always so glad when he is home and we can spend time together doing the things that we love. Recently, we picked up bicycling. We try to go at least 5 times a week. The past two Saturdays we have taken some long rides. This past Saturday we rode 23 miles. We have really enjoyed it for several reasons...the time together is invaluable, it is good for us, Chris's knee doesn't hurt (he has had surgery twice), it gives us time to think and see God's creation and it is the GREEN thing to do.





On Friday evening, I was able to meet up with some of my girlfriends from Manchester. I have been able to stay current due to all of them having blogs; however, it was nice to laugh and cry with them. We ended up eating supper at the Mexican place and then we went to Dairy Queen for dessert. I was able to show the girls the pictures of our little boy. I loved their reaction. It means so much when you have the support of friends. I am excited about seeing these ladies again in the near future.



My family was here this weekend from Ohio. I have always thought that photography would be a fun hobby so all my cousins joined in on the fun!

Here is Jordan hanging from a tree.







And Carly, who was wondering why I made her sit on the floor for a picture.





Aaron, loving every bit of laying on the grass in the sun so he couldn't open his eyes.





Ashlyn, sitting in the corner with me standing over her on a rocking chair.


And finally, Lauren, sitting on a blue ball.


Man do I love these kids. I have been able to watch all of them grow up and it has been so rewarding. All of them have different personalities and I always look forward to spending time with them. Family means a lot to me and I am so fortunate to have a close family on both my side and Chris's side. We are blessed.