Soccer -Week 1

BRRRRRRRRRRR! Jeremy's game was at 8:30 AM. Those who know us well know that we're off to a bad start there! According to the news station, it was 50 degrees the morning; however, out of the field it was *really* windy -blustery, in fact!! It felt like we had a -20 degree wind chill! (It was around 80 here yesterday!)

I wish that I had the camera. Jeremy wore my scarf tied around his ears, and one dad lent him his adult-sized wind breaker and donned a blanket instead. I ended up taking the girls to the van after half time. Poor Annika reminded me of Piglet blowing away!

The referee didn't move around the field very much, didn't call anything, and he had them play two 40-minute halves rather than the 2 30-minute halves they were supposed to play making it a 1 1/2 hour affair rather than the hour it was supposed to be! OY!

Jeremy took a ball to the chin but is OK.

Dynamo 3: Rapids 6

We were all glad that the Lady Penguins, Marissa's team, didn't have a game today!

Activity in Ethiopia

This was an eventful week for the Ethiopian program! I think that seven families received referrals for a total of 9 children! *~*~CONGRATULATIONS!*~*~ We had heard that these 9 children were moved about 3 weeks ago, and the knowledge has made many families (mostly the moms!) crazy with anticipation!

• 2 infant girls
• 2 infant boys
• sibling group of 5 & 7 years
• sibling group of 6 & 9 years
• mystery child

Today, we received the wonderful news that instead of a 90-day wait to release a child for adoption, it is now 60 days! This means that when a child is relinquished or found, he or she will be in orphan care for 2 months rather than 3 before they can be with their forever family!

America World has also signed with another orphanage in Ethiopia! Kingdom Vision International. (KVI) is more than just an orphanage. It does much to help families escape poverty and helps to keep them together! They have a child sponsorship program! The orphanage is located in town of Nazareth.

The other orphanage with which America World has been working is Kids Care in Addis Ababa. People who have been there speak about how loving the staff there is! Kids Care does much to help its community also.

I wonder where our son is???

Easter Weekend!

We began our weekend by renting two movies from redbox. (We love redbox!) The whole family enjoyed "Enchanted" although there were a couple of moments that thankfully, the kids didn't catch. Overall, it was a cute movie. "No Country for Old Men" is another story. We tend to like the dark humor of the Coen brothers' movies like "Raising Arizona" and "Fargo," but this didn't have any humor (and no music). I don't know why it won anything. Lots of killing, and not very interesting.

Saturday, was a good day to dye! I spent the day dying another 6 sets of play silks to raise money for our adoption fund. We're going to try eBay to see how we do there. Our kids love them, and I have received lots of comments about how other children love them and do very creative things with them!

I worked in the nursery at our Saturday service this week, so we decided that the whole family would go to make room for others on Sunday morning. Good thing we did since our church had record attendance!

After church, we dyed our eggs, and the kids decorated them with stickers. Ten of the twelve eggs survived the evening. All three children made it!

Sunday, before William needed to get to church to work his children's registration post, we took a moment as a family to remember what Easter is about by opening our resurrection eggs. Annika opened the one with a rock and explained in detail the reason that there was a rock in her egg. It was in front of the tomb where Jesus was buried, and it rolled away.

After William got home from church, we played the "ham" game. He likes to ask if you know what we're having for dinner, and it is "Ham, ham, ham!" as he squeezed your thigh to tickle you. I hate it, and he knows it!

We went to my mom, Barbara's, for Easter dinner where we had.... HAM! (Both kinds.) Dinner was delicious. The kids got sand buckets full of goodies from Mema, and they got to see what we put in their baskets.

After that was the most fun part -the egg hunt! We hid 54 plastic eggs with either candy or money in them in Mom's front yard.





Each of the children received a DVD in their Easter basket, so after some deliberation, it was decided that we would watch "Night at the Museum." It is great! So, we all snuggled in and watched while William called our family far away to give out happy Easter wishes!

Mary Kay Fundraiser!

Our good friend, Brenda, is launching her Mary Kay business and until April 30, she will give us 25% of the sales that we generate for our adoption! What a blessing!

WWW.MARYKAY.COM/BRENDABILLINGTON

If you are local and interested in hosting a show, please, contact Brenda through her Mary Kay site. That would be awesome!

Thank-you!

One the home front... We found out yesterday that we need a whole new roof on the house. We knew that we had a leak, but the roof was only 10-11 years old, so we didn't expect to have to replace it. However, it was put on improperly. We really don't need this expense right now. Please, pray for God's provision for this and our adoption.

Happy Easter or "Fasika" as it is called in Ethiopia!

Back in the Window!! (and Tagged!)

It is finally been 5 months since our dossier was shipped to Ethiopia!

We can realistically expect our referral within the next two months.

We are not carrying the phone around...yet.

On another note, I was "tagged" by two friends, K.P. and Shari, and now must share 10 things about myself.

Here are the rules: You have to tag 5 people and you can't tag the person that tagged you. You leave them a comment on their blog letting them know you are tagging them and why. Also, direct them to your blog for instructions. It is also asked that you notify the tagger when you post your list so that they can enjoy reading the responses.

Here are the 10 somewhat interesting facts about Susan:

1. I loved driving a forklift when I worked in a factory.
2. Both of my daughters were born in a bath tub -the same one in fact.
3. My favorite color is cobalt blue -like blue glass.
4. I was born on Good Friday.
5. I married my first boyfriend 16 years ago. We met at work when we were still children!
   
6. I nursed virtually non-stop for 9 1/2 years and hope to nurse our new little guy.
7. I have a B.S. in Psychology but have only used it to get a job as a customer service rep in a bank.
8. My favorite TV show is LOST!
9. I like to name my pet fish after "Lord of the Rings" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" characters, but they keep dying. (The fish store guys told me to stop naming them when I brought Sam and Frodo back in a Ziploc bag!)
   
10. When I was young, I went forward for an alter call for those who were willing to go where God wants them to. Now, I'm going to AFRICA!

Now, the lucky ducks who get tagged... Bethany, Abby, Rebecca K., Candy, Jen Mc.
(Although, two people tagged me, I'm just going to tag 5 and not 10 so that I can get something else done today! LOL!)

Dryer Repair by the Numbers

3 -- The number of weeks we went without a dryer

2 -- Number of times the repairman was a "no show"
12 -- The average number of loads of laundry we do in one week.

1/2 (mile) -- The distance to the dryer that Susan's mother graciously let us use whenever we needed.

$175 -- The Original Estimate from the repairman
$450 (or more) -- The Second Estimate
$60 -- The amount I paid the repairman for his trip when I thanked him for not fixing the dryer.
$125 -- The actual cost of the replacement parts
1 -- The number of new tools I bought for this job
$30 --The cost of dinner for 5 at our favorite Mexican restaurant to celebrate the new working dryer.

Satisfaction of fixing the dryer myself -- Priceless

Note from Marissa -- "The fun we had playing with the old dryer drum -- priceless."

Marissa's Baptism, Ethiopian Feast, Defenestration & a Baby!

Marissa took part in believer's baptism last night at church! This is a symbol of her faith is Jesus Christ. (You can't see her, but she is in the tub!) She made a decision to be a Christ-follower last April! We requested our friend Dave, who happens to be the executive pastor, to baptize Marissa. Dave used to watch her in the nursery when she was tiny! (He says that she didn't like him though!) It was wonderful to witness, and our close friends the Hollmans and the Colglaziers came to watch along with Mema, Uncle Scott, Aunt Patti the NC cousins! It turned out to be quite a celebration!

After church, our family came home with us for an Ethiopian Feast! William and I worked all day preparing kik wat (lentils), doro wat (chicken with hard boiled eggs), tibs a'licha (beef), and a yummy cabbage and potato dish. It was our extended family's first experience with Ethiopian food, so we didn't know how it would go. They were a bit surprised at the lack of plates and flatware! All but one of the children ate really well! We were very pleased with how it turned out and stuffed ourselves! YUM!!!!! Now, we need to get some more injera to finish the leftovers!


















William also made the sunflower cake. It was so cute and very tasty also. The petals of the sunflower are Peeps!




Friday, the families with dossiers in Ethiopia had a 2-hour conference call with our African program coordinator. It was a great opportunity to hear the voices of the other families and gather a lot of information about how the Ethiopian program is going. Here are some of the highlights that affect us:

• AWAA is adding 2 more orphanages -hopefully by the end of March.
• The estimated wait times are: infant girl 7-9 months, infant boy 5-7 months, toddler boy or girl 7-9 months, siblings under 5 years 9-12 months, and siblings over 5 years 2-3 months
• The likelihood of getting twins is extremely low since they haven't seen any yet!
• The way that our wait time is calculated has been altered from the way that the previous program coordinator did it. The wait period now begins when the dossier was shipped to Ethiopia. This makes pushes our waiting window back two weeks, so we are no longer "in the window." (Thus the defenestration!) We will re-enter the window on March 19th! (This doesn't really change anything other than help adjust our expectations as to when we will get our referral. It doesn't really make it take any longer!)
  

It was such a blessing to have some direct communication from our agency! We are very grateful to Duni for taking the time to do this and are looking forward to meeting up to do this every 1-2 months! Hey wait, we might not be waiting for that long!

Our great friends in Georgia had their baby, Jason, on Friday morning!! Congratulations Amy & Steve! Welcome to the world, Jason! We can't wait to meet you!

Faith Building

After 3 1/2 months of waiting, we finally got word from Shoahannah's Hope that we did NOT get a grant to help out with our adoption expenses. That is a BIG disappointment; however, William is certain that God is going to take care of the expenses and will keep us from going into debt for this adoption. Sounds good to me. :-) By us not getting the grant, God has a great opportunity to do something even greater!

We are keeping up with the families who are traveling in Ethiopia this week. It is so enjoyable to read their blog entries and see the photos and videos of them meeting their children!

Our friends, the Steigers will be traveling in 10 days to go get their little girl, Jordan! Whew, finally!

Tomorrow, we hit our 5-month wait mark and will be in the time range to expect our referral. I don't expect to hear anything in the next month though.

We received good news that our agency has hired another family coordinator for the Ethiopian program. This program has *EXPLODED*! We are finding several families who are concurrently adopting from China and Ethiopia, and recently, a bunch of families have switched from the El Salvador program because there was no movement there.

I've been waking up in the middle of the night for the last several nights thinking about our little guy, imagining his little hand in mine at the Harris Teeter as we go to get our groceries. Will he have long slender fingers or little chunky nubs? I was thinking about how he'll get rubbed down with shea butter every day to keep him soft and pretty! Will he enjoy it like Annika does, or will he cringe and run like Jeremy? I just can't wait to meet him!