So we are home, and the girls are amazing. I will post more. But for now, we are trying to pull ourselves out of a brutal stomach flu that started yesterday with me, and then G.J. and M.C. Chris is fighting a bad virus of some sort that started our first day in Ethiopia. He is miserable too, but for now has evaded the stomach part.
I'll post about our trip and adjustments as soon as I can see straight. For now, I'm so exhausted I can barely do what needs to be done - like laundry, food, diapers, and appointments (6 health ones scheduled so far this week).
We are in love with the girls. They are more amazing than we could have hoped.
Thank you for all the prayers, well wishes, the gifts in the mail, and the party that met us at the airport! The girls definitely felt welcomed and cherished! More to come...
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
On Our Way!!
We are sitting in SeaTac waiting for our flight that boards in a half hour. Super excited. G.J. and M.C. got their first cameras this morning. So far G.J. has taken pictures of every body part available, and is experimenting with settings. He's currently videoing himself - the eternal actor. His world just changed forever, and we haven't even left the west coast.
M.C. was pretty anxious, but is dong better now. Thank goodness for Calvin and Hobbes books.
We are taking a friend with us, our friend's high school daughter, and we are excited to have her.
We heard from another family that got home last night that our girls are excited and ready for us to get there.
We are on our way!!
M.C. was pretty anxious, but is dong better now. Thank goodness for Calvin and Hobbes books.
We are taking a friend with us, our friend's high school daughter, and we are excited to have her.
We heard from another family that got home last night that our girls are excited and ready for us to get there.
We are on our way!!
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Oh Yeah! It's Official...We are a LARGE family.
We know many large families through our adoption agency. And I mean LARGE. A friend of mine has 11 kids, and rumor has it is working on another one. Then there are other families who probably can't remember a family that small. They have up over 20 kids. These are all adoptive families, and many of them also have a few birth kids too.
But in our community of 1-2 kids per family, we already felt very out-of-place with 4. When people hear we are about to have 6, the look of shock is usually the same. And "speechless" is really the only word to describe their response. I try to smile to myself, and reflect on the email I just got from an amazing lady who was getting her 16 kids still at home, ready for school, while starting a new job. I'm sure her grandchildren could populate a small school. I breathe in and out, and realize that I have nothing to fear. Six should be a piece of cake.
We still fit in a normal size, (now) 4 bedroom home, and we can all fit at our (already large) dining room table. But the one thing that will set apart the "large" family from the LARGE family is their vehicle size. Chris and I spent months researching our options. I am a small car person. My first car was a Sprint, and my second was an Aspire. I know I'll never be able to afford a real sportscar, but the little cars make me feel like I can. Chris likes vans and would still be driving a Vanagon if we could keep one running. But he always swore we would never drive a group home van again (we met working in a group home driving a big diesel van full of people). We looked at every possibility for an 8-9 passenger SUV or van. But with the combination of need for car seats, and space for high school bodies, we realized that those days of "normal" size vehicles are over for us. We tried desperately to find a 12 passenger van we could afford. But it wasn't to be. We kept coming back to the car lot down the street from our house, where they had a 15 (no, that wasn't a typo) passenger Chevy in our least favorite color. White is great for a car, and we had a white Mazda MPV we loved. But the big vans in white just scream "GOVERNMENT COMMUTER"!
But it has a good engine, and Chris likes the sliding door since it slides open to reveal a space big enough for 3 of us to move in and out at the same time. It has running boards to help us heft little ones into car seats, and after looking at what felt like hundreds of options, I'm trying to convince Chris that it actually looks sporty.
So we will now cruise into the school, church, and our local Dairy Queen in a BIG van. But to be honest, I actually really like driving it. It has lots of power, lots of room, and I swear - drives kinda sporty! We'll never be able to afford a boat or a trailer, but if we could, we'd now be able to tow it...
We broke it in by taking it for a road trip up to Bellingham and Blaine, WA, and we all fell in love with it. It's like having our own apartment to take with us wherever we go. The main drawback so far is that it is so wide that when we are driving in it, Chris and I are so far apart, it's hard to actually see him.
But in our community of 1-2 kids per family, we already felt very out-of-place with 4. When people hear we are about to have 6, the look of shock is usually the same. And "speechless" is really the only word to describe their response. I try to smile to myself, and reflect on the email I just got from an amazing lady who was getting her 16 kids still at home, ready for school, while starting a new job. I'm sure her grandchildren could populate a small school. I breathe in and out, and realize that I have nothing to fear. Six should be a piece of cake.
We still fit in a normal size, (now) 4 bedroom home, and we can all fit at our (already large) dining room table. But the one thing that will set apart the "large" family from the LARGE family is their vehicle size. Chris and I spent months researching our options. I am a small car person. My first car was a Sprint, and my second was an Aspire. I know I'll never be able to afford a real sportscar, but the little cars make me feel like I can. Chris likes vans and would still be driving a Vanagon if we could keep one running. But he always swore we would never drive a group home van again (we met working in a group home driving a big diesel van full of people). We looked at every possibility for an 8-9 passenger SUV or van. But with the combination of need for car seats, and space for high school bodies, we realized that those days of "normal" size vehicles are over for us. We tried desperately to find a 12 passenger van we could afford. But it wasn't to be. We kept coming back to the car lot down the street from our house, where they had a 15 (no, that wasn't a typo) passenger Chevy in our least favorite color. White is great for a car, and we had a white Mazda MPV we loved. But the big vans in white just scream "GOVERNMENT COMMUTER"!
But it has a good engine, and Chris likes the sliding door since it slides open to reveal a space big enough for 3 of us to move in and out at the same time. It has running boards to help us heft little ones into car seats, and after looking at what felt like hundreds of options, I'm trying to convince Chris that it actually looks sporty.
So we will now cruise into the school, church, and our local Dairy Queen in a BIG van. But to be honest, I actually really like driving it. It has lots of power, lots of room, and I swear - drives kinda sporty! We'll never be able to afford a boat or a trailer, but if we could, we'd now be able to tow it...
We broke it in by taking it for a road trip up to Bellingham and Blaine, WA, and we all fell in love with it. It's like having our own apartment to take with us wherever we go. The main drawback so far is that it is so wide that when we are driving in it, Chris and I are so far apart, it's hard to actually see him.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Trip Change
Fortunately I took today off to take E.R. into Shriners to have her leg adjusted. It was lengthened, but the prosthetists also decided it is time for her second leg! So she was casted for it, and will probably get the new one in late October.
When we got home, we found out that our embassy date in Ethiopia had been moved up 2 days! This meant that our flights needed to change. So today I worked on all the arrangements necessary to make the change.
SO - now we are leaving from Seattle on Thursday September 16. The other change is that we now plan to leave Ethiopia one day earlier than originally planned, which will give us a day and night in Washington DC on the way back. None of us have been there, and we think it will be an amazing ending to our trip. It will also let us ease into America and slowly cope with jetlag before we get home and jump back into our crazy life.
So now I have to wrap things up at work faster than I had planned, but otherwise it looks like the change will work out well. The other cool thing is that we will get there on Saturday morning and have the whole weekend with the girls. We get to be with them 2 days sooner!
When we got home, we found out that our embassy date in Ethiopia had been moved up 2 days! This meant that our flights needed to change. So today I worked on all the arrangements necessary to make the change.
SO - now we are leaving from Seattle on Thursday September 16. The other change is that we now plan to leave Ethiopia one day earlier than originally planned, which will give us a day and night in Washington DC on the way back. None of us have been there, and we think it will be an amazing ending to our trip. It will also let us ease into America and slowly cope with jetlag before we get home and jump back into our crazy life.
So now I have to wrap things up at work faster than I had planned, but otherwise it looks like the change will work out well. The other cool thing is that we will get there on Saturday morning and have the whole weekend with the girls. We get to be with them 2 days sooner!
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