Our Summer Part 1

Our Summer 2010 started off with a great trip to California. We got to go to Disneyland with a lot of family. Unfortunately all I had was my old cell phone there to take photos the entire trip.
Here are our kids with the Butlers just getting in Disneyland.
The Jungle Cruise.
We rode Space Mountain a few times. Fun ride! We got quite a few rides in that day.
We left as the fireworks show was going and were pretty impressed from the parking lot.
We went to the beach I think it was the next day. Charity was sick and I remember not enjoying this day too much, but the kids did.
Becca in the sand.
Eden

More info on Andualem/Andrew

What a crazy last couple of weeks! I want to blog about it, but, well, I actually don't. But I will, I think, later.

I want to tell you what we've learned more about our Andrew. He got this psychological exam done on him at our request. During that, they asked him extensive questions and got a lot more information about him and his life. It was heart-wrenching to read this to say the least.

So some of the original information they gave us on him was not correct. Here's a little bit more about him. Very interesting and very very sad!I think I'll just take parts of his report as it is written for you to see.

_________

"Andualem has one sister and two brothers. He is the last born in his
family. They all used to live together as a family. This life got disrupted at
the dreadful experience the family faced at the death of their beloved
mother. Later, to make the matter worse, their father died. To this day, he
remembers the scene of their parent's sickness and death, especially his
mother's. She used to vomit and cough a lot. Andualem knows that his
parents died of HIV/AIDS.
His elder brother works at cement factory and used to help his parents
financially. Subsequent to his parents death he continued to pay school fees
of his brothers and sister and also took care of other expenses. However, his
income hardly covers their basic needs. For this reason, not before long he
gave up on keeping his youngest brother. As a result, he gave him away to
an orphanage center. The day he brought Andualem to the center, he
convinced him as if he is taking him to the Lion's Cage, a Zoo found in the
city.
It has almost been two years since he joined the center. Since that day he
never saw or heard from any of his family. This always breaks his heart. He
wishes to see his family, especially his sister.
Here at this center, he got shoes, clothes and eats three times a day.
Moreover, they bought him the learning materials he needed in his
schooling. Now he is in grade one. The beddings are clean and he sleeps
comfortably. He added the home is good: it has electricity and water for
bathing.
In the future, he hopes to get a parent who can adopt him. He wants to get
educated and help his sister and his two brothers. He said, “He wants to be
„አገር ገዢ‟ or „AGER GEzji‟”, which could be interpreted as country leader so that
he can help his family....

Likes and dislikes
He likes to watch movies, play football. One thing he doesn't like is fighting
and when people hit him.
Wishes and dreams
He wants to be a country leader to help his brothers and sister in the future.
Happy times:
He is very grateful to be hosted in such an orphanage. Compare to what he
used to have, back home with his family, this is incomparable. He had to pay
to get shower and there were times he used to skip meals"...

_________

Yeah, if that doesn't make you cry, you're dead inside.

Exciting Stuff

I am sitting in my sister Emily's family room in Tennessee. We have had a fantastic time!
The kids and I flew to Huntsville Alabama on Wednesday. We stayed the night there. The next morning we drove to Atlanta and met up with Emily and her kids. The drive was gorgeous. I loved Alabama. I kept saying over and over again how pretty it was.
The day before our trip, I called up our adoption agency in Atlanta and asked to visit with them since Emily and I would be there. They were cool with that. So when we arrived Emily took the kids to a park while I went to the agency across the street. When I walked in, I was immediately greeted by the Ethiopia Program Director and handed a referral! The "referral" is the child they recommend to you based on what you have asked for. I was so excited! We've waited so long for this and I had kind of resigned myself to thinking it would be another very long wait till we got that referral. The information on that referral included several photos, all of his medical information and what history they had on him. It even included all of his lab results. All of this information was then emailed to us. So Steve has been able to see him and review the information too. We are feeling pretty good about accepting the referral.
His name is Andualem.
Keeping careful track of birthdays for records is not common practice in Ethiopia. This boy was put down as 6 years old, but after an examination from the doctor, testing his bone age and teeth and so forth, she said he's between 7-8 years old. His mother died and he was taken to the orphanage in April by his father who said he cannot care for him. We have the choice to put his birthday and age at whatever we want; as well as his name once this adoption is finalized. We will probably put him at 7. Since his name is different and anyone in the states would not know how to pronounce it, we will probably give him the name of Andrew since it is kind of close and it's also a good name, (my brothers.) We'll probably have Andualem as his middle name.
We sent all of his medical information to our pediatrician who was pleased to tell us he was a pretty healthy child with just some cavities and some kind of cousin to a mole on his head. Otherwise, all his labs and exams came back good. That was great!
As far as when we go to Ethiopia to meet him and go adopt him through the courts there, it could be as early as October or November. Of course it could be later too. We will then have to go home and wait another 3-6 weeks for the Embassy date in Ethiopia when he will be allowed to come home with us.
All pretty exciting! I'm anxious to see how the rest of this all plays out.
That's on top of the excellent time we've had here with Emily and her family. What a week!

Camping Nightmares

I really like liked camping. Our kids do did too. I planned this camping trip for this past weekend with hopes this would be our favorite trip yet.
First off, just getting ready to go was difficult. The plan was to go without Steve and he would meet up with us that night after he got off work and drove up the canyon. I had to pack up all our gear. It was my first day of vomiting from this pregnancy, so it was hard to get out the door. {Bad omen number 1} But we got on our way eventually.

Finding a spot to camp was really difficult. When I did find us a spot and started unloading the kids and our stuff, some man came over and insisted that he needed that place more than I did. That forced me to load up our things again, and do some more hunting and hiking around to find a place for us. I finally found us a spot which was very out of the way and you had to hike into it, cross a creek, and walk a ways in to get to it. It was far from any form of civilization and up on a rocky little hill. No water, no toilets/latrines, no real fire pits. {Bad omen number 2} I went ahead and quickly set up camp. While getting our tents up, I cut my thumb, and Charity hit her head on the ground. {Bad omen number 3}

I then got the kids back in the car and quickly drove back out of the canyon so I could call Anna & Dana & Steve (who were all going to camp with us.) I let them know that this was gonna be pretty rugged camping so they probably were not gonna like it. Anna and Dana readily backed-out. I wanted to talk Steve out of coming up because he's not into camping and I didn't want him to come and be terribly uncomfortable. But he was cool and said he would still come. Which I'm glad he did because I really needed him later.

We then drove back up the Canyon to our campsite and had a few hours of fun.

Eden enjoyed gathering a bouquet of wildflowers. All of the kids enjoyed gathering firewood.
Charity enjoyed eating dirt.
Becca enjoyed peeing in the wild.
Jonah and I got a lot of Webelos Scouts things passed off together. He built this fire and was pretty proud of it. We cooked our dinner over this campfire too. It turned out good.
The kids enjoyed playing in the little creek.
Jonah actually took this photo of a watercrawler.
But that night, things took a turn for the worse. Around 8:30 Steve showed up. Thank goodness. When it was time to sleep, we put the 4 oldest kids in one tent next to us, and had Charity in our tent with us. Charity is a very sweet, easy going baby. But that night, she was screaming. This at the time truly felt like the {omen-est omen of all}. It took quite a bit to finally get her to calm down. The other kids were having too much fun to calm down too. Finally around 10:30 pm, we had everyone asleep. Then a storm hit. There was rain, thunder, and lightning. We were high up on that hill in the canyon. We felt somewhat exposed. The lightning and thunder were coming closer. Steve was getting pretty nervous. He finally made an executive decision and told us we all needed to get in the car and get the heck out of there. So we hurried and grabbed all the kids and rushed them to the car. Then Steve and I hiked back and forth multiple times in the storm to pack up all our things. We just kind of threw it all in the car. By 11:30, we were driving away.
So yeah, it wasn't the greatest camping trip.
Several lessons learned from that one...

****

On an entirely different tone and topic:
This morning my YW and fellow leaders had a member of the General YW Board come visit us. It was pretty cool. She told us a few interesting things. One of which was they are redoing the "For Strength of Youth" pamphlet. (Which I do think is pretty outdated with those cheesy 90's images.) She showed us samples of the new one they are working and asked our input and criticism and advice on it. That was neat to be a part of. Super nice lady. Great experience.

Tales of teeth, testimony, peeing and climbing

Becca came in my room this morning to tell me that last night Eden pulled her tooth out for her. She then proceeded to say:
"You know how you find out if the Tooth Fairy is real? You lose a tooth, put it under your pillow, don't tell your Mom and Dad that you lost it, then in the morning you look under your pillow and see if you got any money. That's how I found out. I did^ and my tooth was still there." Something tells me an older sibling gave her this idea. Oh well, I was sick of playing Tooth Fairy anyhow.

***

On Sunday during Fast and Testimony Meeting Celeste and Becca wanted to share their testimonies. Eden has gone up several times, Celeste maybe a couple before, but never Becca. She's only 6 and I wondered if she was really capable of going up there on her own and do anything but giggle and breathe like Darth Vader in the microphone. But I wasn't about to go up there with her. So we just let her go up and held our breath.

This is exactly what she said:
"I love to bear my testimony. I know this Church is true"...(Breathing in microphone, awkward pause...) "When I choose the right I feel the Spirit"....(more breathing and nervous pause, desperate glance at the Bishopric. Ask them for a quick reminder on how to finish this... Then in a big rush-) "Jesus Christ Amen."

We were relieved and proud. It was cute. She's a fun kid and we've really really enjoyed having her around.

***

On Saturday we went up the Canyon with Steve's family. We had a good time. We took a little hike up to the falls. Jonah and Steve took it a lot further than I was willing to risk with the girls.
So that^ was a close-up of them, very zoomed in on the camera. Here's another photo I took standing from the same spot, and they are standing in the same spot too, right in front of that water falling.
Becca peeing in the water. (No potty's around.) It's really no different than a public pool, but this time we had a better excuse than merely being too lazy to use the toilet.
Steve wore his pants like this until we got home and a little after btw.

February's gonna be a busy month

7th- Steve turns the big FOUR-O
14th- Valentines Day
16th- Jonah turns 11
18th- Celeste turns 12
Sometime in that month another baby joins the Bishop ranks.
(If all goes well that is.)
Pretty exciting!

Mormons are weirdos

Steve and I got back from "Trek" on Saturday night. It was 4 days of walking, pushing, pulling, sweating, getting incredibly dirty, and learning and growing tremendously.
Mormons are weird because many of them like to dress up like pioneers, travel hours away on buses, and pull around their stuff for many miles in the Wyoming wilderness in handcarts. The point? To kind of do a wannabe reenactment of what our pioneer ancestors did back in the mid 1800's in the name of their faith. These amazing people left their homes and most of their possessions behind and traveled hundreds, some people, thousands of miles to Utah to be free from religious persecution and live together in strength and peace.

These people traveled on foot. Some bare foot for hundreds of miles. Some of these people did so in the snow and many perished. The stories we were told were tragic, and moving. Some so inspiring. They've made my life look pretty darn easy! We felt like wimps when we compared ourselves to them.

We had such an incredible experience!!! Steve and I were "Ma" and "Pa" to these awesome kids. We love these kids so very much now and were so impressed with how well they did! It wasn't easy. We trekked 6.5 miles the first day with these handcarts. We were told we did 11 miles the second day. And we weren't told how far the third, but I think it was about 8 miles.

They all worked hard and had a good attitude. We all really grew from the experience. I have to say the hardest part was being so dirty though and not being able to get clean. No showers, no running water that we could wash ourselves or our dishes with. But it was worth it.

makeovers

I know lame, I'm posting photos of these rather than our trip. Problem is, I only have trip photos on my cell phone which takes bad photos and is hard to download on the computer. That's why. These ones are from the camera. (People with good cameras that took photos at the reunions, email them to me please!)
***
The kids love playing in this closet under the stairs. Celeste wanted to paint it. I said "Sure, if you clean and organize our linen closet, the family room and our garage." She did! What a deal! So here's how it looked before as we were taping it up to paint: And after:

They love their new closet/play area!

***

I also started coloring my hair a couple of months ago (professionally). Too many grays :(

But a couple of weeks ago, I actually colored it myself for the first time. It's funny, I figured it would turn out horrible. I planned to color it myself to prove to Steve that we needed to fork over the cash monthly to get it done professionally, or I would look awful. I imagined him seeing it and hating and saying "Ok, you're right, you should only trust this to the professionals..." But he came home and loved it. So there you go.

Yadayadayada

Man I don't feel like blogging much anymore! Just not feeling it.

To make matters worse, I'm not even gonna bother to add photos again for this post. BORING.

We got to go to California for a couple of reunions and got back just over a week ago. It was a really good trip. I liked all of it except for *making the trip to the beach with my sick baby who felt miserable, and then being stuck in traffic forever to get home from said beach, and *worrying about our van biting the dust at any given moment. Otherwise, the rest of the trip was splendid. We did Disneyland one day and had a lot of relatives there and it was a blast. Even our little Becca was brave enough to ride all the roller coasters with us. Space Mountain was the best!
We got to see a lot of family and hang out a lot. Good, good times.

Today is Eden's Birthday! (And Father's Day too of course.) It was a bit tricky trying to make the day feel special for not only Steve but for Eden who felt a bit jipped for having to share her day with Father's Day. But she ended up being fine. She's 9! I'll gush over her on her birthday on the private blog I keep for my kids and spare ya.

This week Steve and I are going on Trek with the teenagers at church. 4 days trekking in the Wyoming wilderness, pulling handcarts. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the whole thing as we have been anxiously making all the preparations. My very generous big sis Anna will be watching the kids and I'm feeling super guilty over that. (Not so much for leaving the kids admittedly, but for Anna having to take care of another 5 kids for that long.) She and Trent are good sports!

That's all I've got this time. Later

Adoption & Education Update

Here's a bit of an update on a couple things I hear people ask me about most often.

Our Adoption

Well, we've submitted our Home Study and Dossier to our agency and are kind of waiting to see how fast they can do their part. Getting our Home Study done took 7 months! Totally not what we expected. The Home Study wasn't that much trouble for us. We got the agency the list of documents they wanted then waited around for them forever to get it done. Getting the Dossier completed was much more of a struggle for us though. There were so many documents to obtain or create and a few had such particular specifications that it took a few tries to get them right and weeks to get them complete. So glad it's over! We still need our approval from the US Government via some form thingy. Our agency is supposed to be getting our documents authenticated through Ethiopia's Embassy here in the US, then they are supposed to send them all over to their office in Ethiopia for further translating and authentication. Then we are supposed to get a "referral" of our child soon thereafter. After referral, I've recently heard to expect 5-7 months. So it seems it's gonna be a long wait. I honestly have no idea of what to expect though because there is always something happening over there with the government to add some speedbumps into the process. Recently the government has added a couple of laws to the adoption process to make it a bit trickier, as well as de-license many orphanages to halt the process in some cases. So who knows...

Any questions? :)

Homeschool Decision

I wrote about this a couple months ago. I didn't know if I should homeschool next year or not. After much thought and worry over that decision, I finally decided I would homeschool all the kids next year. However, after making that decision, I felt sick. For one reason or another we decided it wasn't the way to go for now. So I then began investigating other options and ended up signing all the kids up at a local Charter School. It felt right and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out. I still would like to go back to homeschooling some day I think, but not at this time. The kids have taken the decision fine. Jonah was the most disappointed. Jonah I worry about the most because he was doing so well at homeschooling, but he has accepted it and I hope he will be happy at his new school.
I was surprised to find on the last day of homeschool I was feeling sad about it! But we are homeschooling each day this Summer for just an hour and so far so good.