Sunday, November 29, 2009

Garage Sale Fundraiser

WE'RE HAVING A GARAGE SALE
Saturday December 12th from 8-2 at our home!!

Garage sales are one of my least favorite things (along with fundraising of any kind). However, this cause is well worth the time and effort. Our goal is to help defer the cost of our plane tickets (the next big expense in the process). Our tickets will be a little more than we had originally expected (about $5000) Originally, we thought the kids would probably be under age 2 or at least one of them would, allowing for much cheaper tickets for them. We'll have to purchase two full price tickets for the girls now because they're older (well worth it of course).

So, we're calling for a mass garage/closet/storage building clean out. If you have anything that you'd like to get rid of, we'd love to take it off your hands. Please contact me at jirvin79@gmail.com if you have any items you'd like to donate. We can arrange to pick the stuff up or you can drop it by.

Please feel free to pass this information along to anyone else that may be interested.

Starting the Season










We put the finishing touches on the Christmas Tree this afternoon. Colton had the honor of placing the angel on the tree (we did this first as he was melting and needed a nap). We were planning on putting the lights on last night when the kids were sleeping, but they were all burned out. I just had said how surprised I was that they had lasted 8 years (we got them the year we got married). Spoke too soon. So after church we stopped by Target to get new ones. After I got them all on and the tree decorated, I noticed that the top 2 strands were twinkling and the bottom one wasn't. I had bought one box of stationary lights unintentionally. So, our tree has extra character this year.

I also found something called a Jesse Tree on one of the blogs that I sometimes read (this familiy is also adopting from Ethiopia). It's a count down tree to Christmas that tells the history of the bible all the way up to the birth of Jesus. You can check it out on their site http://www.babeofmyheart.blogspot.com/ . The one she has is $100. Maybe I'll order it next year. This year, I found a site to print off the symbol ornaments www.eriercd.org/pdf/jessetree_4up.pdf and a site that has the bible verses and discussion for each day http://www.jesse-trees.com/ (under the parent devotional section). It takes 29 days to get through all the stories, so we're going to do 3 tonight to catch up.

4 Days Until Court (and this day is almost done)!!!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving








Happy Thanksgiving! We have much to be thankful for this year as always. We are especially thankful for these three reasons above and the two across the world. We can't wait to have all our most precious reasons home together next year.

One week until court!!!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Care Package #2








I just sent the girls these care packages. They will travel first to a family in California that leaves on December 3rd (our court date) to pick up their baby girl, then to our girls. I'm really excited for them to receive the packages as they both have picture albums of our family. Last time, I only had time to grab a family photo that we already had laying around to send. I found a really cool website that had the Amharic words for mommy, daddy, we love you, sister...written in their own language. I don't know if H can read yet, but at least her nannies will be able to tell her what the book says.

We also sent them word books, mini m&ms, socks and hair combs. I had bought a little play dough set, but I couldn't get it to fit--maybe next time (hopefully I'll only have one more month that I'll need to send a care package).

One week and five days until court (12 DAYS!!!!). I really tried not to get excited for this, but I just can't help it. I wake up every morning with butterflies in my stomach and my mind racing. My planning brain has already decided that this would be an ideal time to pass because Nick and I both have time off from work during Christmas, the kids don't have school and our parents all have some time off as well, which will make it a lot easier to get the rooms done . We're planning on switching the boys back to the smaller room to make room for my three little girls, so we have to paint, clean out dressers and closets and buy all the girls new beds...lots to do if we pass. Pray, pray, pray for a successful court date!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Third Little Pig


Here's Caroline all dressed up as the "third little pig" who built her house out of bricks. Her little play was so cute and she did a great job! She was moving all around while I was trying to take her picture and I told her to "hold still and look cute". I guess this is her idea of looking cute.

Good news on the adoption front for our agency. Two families passed through court after many, many court delays-what good news. We also have 9 or 10 families scheduled to travel and be in Ethiopia for Christmas to pick up their kids--doesn't get much better than that.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Video of Girls

Today we got a video of our girls on the day they received their care packages from last month. Our oldest girl is very interested in being in front of the camera. She's clutching the package we sent her and says, "hello mama, hello papa" (we'll have to teach her daddy) and blows a kiss. She is so smiley and full of joy. Our little one does her best to hide from the camera and looks shy/afraid/irritated (I don't know which one) with being videoed. I'm really hoping she is alright and going to do well when we get home. I can't wait to go get them. Hopefully we'll have a successful court date so they don't have to wait too much longer.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

One For His Wife


I'm saving this picture to show Caleb's wife one day. We had a slide show at our wedding and Nick had lots of fun dress up pictures. Like father, like son. Caleb said he liked both the orange spider shorts and the camo pants, so he wore both--makes sense I guess.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

WE HAVE A COURT DATE!!!

I checked my email this morning and had a message from our coordinator stating that our court date has been assigned for December 3rd!! Way earlier than we expected. Lots of things have to come together for us to pass. Good news is that all four families in our agency who had court dates yesterday passed. Five families have court today, so we pray for all of them to have successful dates as well. Even if we don't pass the first time, at least we know that all of our documents have been processed and are at the courts. Please be praying for everything to go smoothly from this point and for all of the details to be worked out. THREE MORE WEEKS UNTIL COURT!!!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Waiting for a Court Date

Our documents have been in Ethiopia for 3 weeks now. We were told that the translation of our dossier could take 2-3 weeks. So, if things are on track, we should be through translation (we won't know when this happens because our agency is not notified when translation is complete). The next step is getting a court date. It is possible that our documents have already been submitted to court. If not, they should be any day. It generally takes about 2 weeks from submission of documents until a court date is assigned. I spoke with our coordinator today and she said to expect to hear about a date in 2-3 weeks. Court dates usually occur about 6 weeks later. I'm hoping to hear something by Thanksgiving week. It is possible that we will be assigned a date before the end of the year (we hope). After we pass (pray we pass the first time), we'll travel about 6-8 weeks later (depending on lots of variables). We hope to travel sometime in February.

I'm planning to start a little scrapbook for each girl with pictures of our family to send with the next travel group. Our agency has a group traveling December 9th, so I have a little time to get this together along with a few other items.

We pray that they are doing well and are being prepared for all the upcoming changes.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Africa Sunday






Her are some pictures from this morning. Our family participated in Nice Serve (our church wide volunteer day). We were gleaning grapefruit to distribute to the hungry. All together, our group picked 10,000 lbs of grapefruit.



Tomorrow is Africa Sunday at our church. It was at this service last year that we decided to adopt from Ethiopia Steadfast Minds: How Did We Get Here?. The focus of the service is to provide information and updates on the missions that our church supports in Africa like Children of the Nations (COTN)and to encourage people to "get educated and go". It should be great and we're really excited to go. We'd love to have anyone that would like to join us meet us there tomorrow. Just let us know it you're interested.

We also have our Ethiopian Adoptive Families playgroup tomorrow which we are really looking forward to. It is always a great learning opportunity.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Ethiopian Dinner

We had a great time Monday night eating at a local Ethiopian restaurant (actually, the only Ethiopian restaurant in town). You can check out the whole experience on our friend's blog www.armstrongfamilyof5.blogspot.com. They are adopting through our same agency and go to our church. It was "Yee Tahf tahl" which means "delicious" in Amharic!