Monday, January 20, 2014

A Good Dream....

"I have a dream that one day, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."  

--Martin Luther King


Can't write that quote without tearing up.  
Can't even imagine a time when the above statement could not have been true.  

When I look at our children, I truly see no difference.  
I just see my kids! 

Thankful to be living out his dream every day and that God has allowed us the priviledge to raise all of these children together.


Saturday, January 18, 2014

Time to Celebrate again, and again, and again......

So our birthdays and celebrations all come in two waves.  Between December 5th and February 4th, 6 of us have birthdays, we have American Christmas and Ethiopian Christmas, New Years and our anniversary.  That's a whole lot of party in 2 months.  We have a smaller wave of birthdays with the three younger girls celebrating their birthdays within 3 weeks of each other in the summer.  It gets a little difficult to make everyone feel special on their day with so many happening at once, but we do our best.


Caleb turned 10 this year......I really don't know how that happened so fast.  He is growing into such a nice young man and we are very proud of him.  He is a great reader, a talented artist and lego designer, a hard working baseball player and`has a thoughtful heart and compassion for others.


My twins.

The day before Caleb's birthday was actually Ethiopian Christmas, but we waited until the weekend to celebrate with friends at our local Ethiopian restaurant. 

Caleb was at practice during the photo shoot.


I made Caleb throw on his Ethiopian shirt over his practice clothes once he arrived.  He was a good sport.


 And, we celebrated Rahel's birthday which fell on the same day as our Genna (Ethiopian Christmas) celebration.  Can't believe in just one more year we'll have a teenager.  Rahel is also growing up to be such a nice young lady.  Her many talents include drawing (can literally copy a picture just by looking at it), cooking, sewing, playing softball and pretty much anything else that she puts her mind to.  She is also a kind and helpful big sister to her six younger siblings (most of the time :-) and is a blessing to our family.


So that gets us started into the new year.  Today is actually my birthday and the day that four years ago we met Hermela and Meron in Ethiopia for the first time.  I hope to post on that soon as well.

Until then, let the good times roll!