Another day in paradise (heck, I needed a title)

I haven’t posted in a bit and it is a little different posting without any huge events of late.  Geta and Tamene are hardly the new adopted children anymore, they are just two of our children.  The biggest event in my life of late is the ND loss to Michigan, but I am not going to post or even speak of that again.  It hurt, but I am over it, mostly.

 

We celebrated the Ethiopian New Year on Friday.  It gives us a great reason to enjoy and celebrate on such a tragic date for America, September 11^th.  We celebrated with Sagawat (it doesn’t get any better than that).  We are also contemplating a trip to visit with Tumiso and his parents, Jim and Elizabeth Langemo.  It should be fun, but amazingly, our next free weekend is in 2014.  But we are going to pencil them in for early 2015.  We also got back into the very important things in life, yep, tailgating.  It was Geta and Tamene’s first tailgate and they loved it.  What kid wouldn’t love an all you can eat affair with a little extra freedom.  Heck, I claim not to be a kid, but tailgating should be my middle name.  Not great for my waistline, but I am learning to live with being “under tall.”

 

As for other events in our life, Courtney is enjoying soccer, with her father as the assistant coach.  Luckily, the head coach is excellent, so I can just hide in the shadows and put an ill timed joke whenever possible.  Patrick is in football full swing and loves it.  He also is getting good at guitar (acoustic thank goodness) and not getting in as much trouble, knock on wood.  Emily is enjoying life and the full house and Joshua is doing well.  He continues to tell me very elaborate detailed stories.  He loves to have an adult give him time to express himself.  It can occasionally be a long process but worth the wait.  Geta is loving school, and at church, she loves seeing her friends.  On the way to kids church today, she grabbed a friends hand and led her down to church.  Tamene probably knows a couple hundred words, but uses mostly 10-20.  Yet, he talks non-stop with the same words over and over.  Actually recently, the other kids were talking on the phone to Grandma Carlson and Tamene somehow ended up with the second phone.  He yipped and yapped for a good 10 minutes (no one else could get a word in edge-wise) before anyone let me know he had commandeered a phone and I put a painful end to his phone time.

 

Anyway, things are well but busy.  The kids are growing up but we have gotten into a routine.  There is still plenty of excitement, but today, I can’t report of any kids left at church or anything of that sort.  Stayed tuned, if I need to, I will leave one somewhere, just for the laughs that will ensue in my future story-telling.  T-6 until the next ND game.  Go IRISH.  Mike

 

My first ever cornrows...

Geta keeps asking for me to do cornrows in her hair. It is getting pretty long and I feel like I should be able to do it. So I spent my morning looking at YouTube videos and found one that explained what I was doing wrong. So I attempted it again tonight. I was able to braid her whole head! How about that!! To be perfectly honest, anyone who looks at it will know I am a true novice. But, hey, you have to start somewhere. Geta was thrilled and can't wait to show all her friends tomorrow. (Sorry, Amy. I bet Vivian will want cornrows next.) As she hugged me and kissed me before bed, she quietly whispered in my ear, "I knew you could do it, Mommy."

Worth every minute...

Kristen

Happy Birthday Timmy!

Ok, 2 posts in one day, but I forgot to say Happy Birthday to my little brother! Hope you have a great day.

Tomorrow is Geta and Tamene's first ever tailgating experience. I will take pictures and do my best to post before the weekend is over.

Also, I thought I would leave you with a couple short videos of our kids singing some Ethiopian songs. (Geta has actually forgotten the words ) :-( But I still love to hear what she remembers.

Back to School...

Well it has been a whirl wind couple weeks as the 5 older kids all headed back to school. First let me fully confess that with work so hectic, I was way behind the 8 ball with school shopping. So my kids were all lucky to have their supplies and some clothes to where! But they have all done great getting back into a routine. We have had the normal "beginning of year" discipline problems. But so far, no kids have been suspended, sent to the principles office or even gotten a detention. So I would say we are off to a GREAT start!

This school year brings the realization that our older 2 might need more "private" space than what our current situation affords. (did I a mention that I grew up without my own space and I turned out just fine!) But several smart people think my "pre-teens" need more space, so I am trying to heed their wisdom and figure out what this means to our family. I know many kids have their own rooms and cell phones and ipods and lots of gatchets. But I have never tried to be like most people. I search deep into my heart and think through the issue and use my experience and the wisdom of others to determine my course. In the end, I pray and go with my gut. So far, that has worked out pretty well for me. But there are many who are wiser than me and shame on me for not listening to their point of view, so I am reflecting now on what is really best for my oldest 2 as they embark upon these very difficult years. We'll see what happens.

I have to mention the highlight of my week though. I got an urgent voicemail from Patrick this afternoon. The message was "Mom, I need to talk to you right away. Call me as soon as you get this message." Click... This is quite out of character for him and there was such a sense of urgency, I dropped everything and called him back. It turned out his "sense of urgency" was really excitement. He won the election to be class representative for student government. He worked really hard to prepare a speech and outline issues that he saw as important to his class. It has his normal amount of "humor", but it was a very good speech and apparently, it was enough to earn the support of his classmates. Congratulations to Patrick on his great accomplishments. He really made me proud!
Tonight, I remember how blest I am to have such a wonderful family. I will give them all an extra hug and extra kiss before bed! (and I will try hard to not be disappointed when Tamene greets me at 6am!)

Kristen