2017 In Pictures...and A Few Words

So clearly, this has not been the year of the blog.  I've pretty much missed documenting all major events and I really want to get back to it as I want a record for our kids and because this blog has always served as a record of God's faithfulness.

As 2017 comes to a close, I want to highlight God's goodness.  This has certainly been a year of ups and downs (and some pretty low downs if I'm honest).  But, as I reflect back on it, I can say that Emmanuel, "God with us," has never left us and has been working behind the scenes as he always does.

I'll start with winter birthday season (which actually just restarted...I'm that far behind).

Nick turned 37, Colton 9, Rahel 15, Caleb 13, I turned 38 and Eli turned 5!

Winter birthday season also kicks of "ask mom everyday if it's my birthday" season for Angel.

We also got our first snow on January 7th, Ethiopian Christmas Day, 

so it was a white Christmas after all. 

The Snow!

We joined the YMCA....this is how busy our little town is during the New Year's resolution rush.

We celebrated 7 years together as a family (on my birthday).  Every year we try to recreate one of our first pictures together.

My mom came up for project weekend....I love when she comes for project weekend.

Nick reconnected with some old friends, affectionately known as "The Supper Club"

We found Trader Joes!

 Nick thought we should be pig farmers........we should not.

Happy Valentines Day from my little loves.

The kids got to meet Yordi.

We love you Yordanos!

  

Paw Paw preformed emergency surgery on Louie the Lion

These beauties went to their first ever Daddy Daughter Dance (we missed the boat on these I guess).

Flat Stanley visited our farm.

We celebrated FL Gee Gee's birthday from afar.

Nick came out of retirement and got the only hit on his alumni team! Impressive!

His biggest fans.

We enjoyed our museum passes.

And a slumber party.

Followed by donuts with Grandad to celebrate his birthday (the birthdays never end around here).

Eli learned to ride.

And the Schusters secured their title as our most frequent Florida guests (come back anytime!!)

Our new church joined Children's HopeChest and the Holeta Care Point to sponsor sweet Lomi.

And our family found Desta (read about that here).

The farm continued to grow....

And because Hermela's 13th birthday weekend landed on Mother's Day and her 3 sisters' recital, we kicked off  summer birthday season a little early with a surprise trip to Florida where Hermela was pampered by the talented Ms. Aimee.

And we enjoyed some rare one on one time.

And attended my cousin's wedding.

Our beautiful teenager.

The recital.

Mother's Day with our moms.

The birthday girl on her actual birthday (also Mother's Day)

One lucky mom.  Love all of these crazy kids (and I do mean CRAZY).

Supper Club continues

And these two handsome boys completed a fabulous year of Pre-K

(note the bandaid on Angel's ear.....I cut it while giving him a hair cut minutes before we had to leave for his last day of school performance.

Thanks to these two amazing teachers.

Construction started on the in-law cottage.

And we spent Memorial Day, which was also Caroline's 11th birthday, in Tennessee at Dollywood.

This cool girl turned 11 right behind Caroline and celebrated at the beach.

While we were in Florida, we spent time with great friends.  God's love and faithfulness could not be more evident than in this picture.  Many lives have been touched and paths crossed to bring this group of amazing children into our families.  We are so grateful!

Best Buddies

Celebrated Father's Day a little early with this guy (who likes to remain anonymous on the world wide web, sorry dad.....this is my family record and you must be a part of it).

A date with dad and all his girls.

The farm delivered these delicious blueberries all summer long.

And finally, finally after months of asking if it was his birthday it FINALLY was.

 

Angel turned 5!

He was delighted!

And now has his own spot in Grandad's shop.

Even with all of the joyous pictures above, 

my heart has been heavy 

and this move has been hard.

But God has great plans.

Just when I needed it the most, 

I started working a few hours a week 

with this precious baby boy.

He has healed my heart.

And I am thankful.

A friend recently said he hadn't heard me say anything nice about living here......well, here it is:

4th of July was great.

Our little town put on quite a show.....and there was absolutely no traffic.

The kids had a "Lemons for Lomi" lemonade stand and along with the other kids in the children's ministry raised enough for a whole year of sponsorship!

Then, an event we had waited 5 years for finally happened...

.....when this sweet girl came home from Ethiopia.

We love you Tarik!

We finished our summer up with a visit form dear friends.....they now hold the "2nd Friends from Florida to Visit" award.

We love the Dunns and the kids have nicknamed our families (all 20 of us) 

The Dunvins.

My brother finally made it up for a visit for the Great Solar Eclipse of 2017

He REALLY doesn't do family pictures, so this is the best I could get and it's one of my favorites.

Ms. Daves aka Sandy 

(I met her as a child and just can't bring myself to call her by her first name :-)

also joined us for our Eclipse Party

The eclipse was the day before school started.

Here are all of my sweet school babies.

Rahel-10th

Caleb and Hermela 8th

Caroline and Meron- 6th

Colton-4th

Eli and Angel-Kindergarten

My kindergarten class blasting into a great school year.

I learned to crochet......

It's a pretty big deal and I'm pretty proud of myself.

And finally got my hands on sweet Tarik when we celebrated Ethiopian New Year together.

We soaked up the last few days of warm weather at this beautiful lake in the mountains.

 

Fall kicked off with  Nick leaving to go out of town for 3 weeks.....

I almost didn't make it through.  

Thank goodness my sister-in-law Oleva and mom came up and joined me and Judy for a fun girls night out. 

And my mom was once again here for project weekend!!

The Schusters made their 3rd trip up!

Yordi loves the cat....the cat tolerated the love.

Then off for a fun filled weekend in D.C. with just my big girl and some great friends.

Kaleita was turning 18 and Rahel will be 16 in January, so when we were asked to go meet them in DC, we made it an early birthday trip.

We celebrated with some of Kaleita's Ethiopian relatives.  It was amazing!

The hotel was fabulous

Food was delicious

City was so much fun

My almost sweet 16 beauty queen.

We took a night tour of the monuments......

We will never forget it......there were gale force winds and freezing rain gust.

But, we hit all the highlights.

This pictures just don't do it justice.

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

We brought delicious Ethiopian Food Home

The family was thankful!

Then we followed our trip up with Halloween in Florida with the Hellings (somehow we didn't get a picture together???).

The Minion Crew

and Gru

The Little Cottage now complete with onsite grandparents.

We attended a beautiful outdoor wedding.

Then celebrated SC Gee Gee's birthday.

And took this beautiful hike in the woods......the second nice thing I've said about living here for those of you who are counting (this is 20 minutes from our house.....come visit us :-).

We count this as PE

T is for turtle.....I love kindergarten.

And also Thanksgiving

 When we returned home from Thanksgiving, a special delivery had arrived.

Jingle and Belle had returned and this is what they had to say:

 And so here we are, right back at the winter birthday season..

Nick turns 38

This is the  season we celebrate Emmanuel, "God with us."

And indeed, He has been with us

and we are thankful.

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel” (which means, God with us). 

Matthew 1:23

Christmas 2016

I'm so far behind on updating this thing (because our days are crazy!!!! :-) that its almost been a year since I've posted about our family. I do this mostly as a record for our kids and also because writing my thoughts down seems to help me process life a bit.  It serves as a record of the many ways God has been faithful, even through the hills and valleys.

Last year we experienced our first holiday season in a new state, away from most of our friends and family.  The things that were not the same were painfully obvious.  Not the same house to decorate, not the same Christmas Eve service at church, not the same annual Christmas Eve party at our house (my favorite night of the year), not the same light shows or traditions. Everything seemed different and was different.

We were so happy when my parents came up and we found an amazing light display.

We put lights up on our house and some how bought the new version of white, which looks yellow and even that wasn't the same.  I had a mini meltdown in our driveway when we turned them on because it seemed like even something as simple as Christmas lights had turned against me.  Nick said to me, "we'll just have to get use to them" and that's when the tears started, because I was already weary of "getting use to" everything being new.

Of course we had each other.... 

....and that was the same. 

It was also our first Christmas that Angel was offficially ours.  The year prior we had just met him and he was so stressed and overwhelmed that he couldn't even open his presents. It was so fun to see his wonder at the season.

This year we introduced Santa to the little boys, a tradition that we had not celebrated much in the past for various reasons after our girls came home from Ethiopia, but one that we had fun with last Christmas.

Of course our focus at Christmas is on Jesus and he is always the same.  We were thankful for that constant truth.

We started a few new Christmas traditions like our first annual Christmas Eve Reindeer Games (one benefit of a big family, you always have enough people to make teams).

It was intense.....and as you can see some of the Green Team members (aka my husband) had some trouble coming to terms with the fact that we got second place....just wait until this year, we're already in training.

The official Red Team winners of the coveted Nutcracker trophy and box of chocolates.

My favorite new tradition was when each of our kids made a gift for their sibling buddy.  They had so much fun picking out supplies and making something on a $10 budget.

A jewelry hanger and make up bags

These guys didn't participate in the "making" part this year.

Caleb made this lego creation for Colton amd them bought him guys to go with it. Colton made a leather knife holder for Caleb.

                              Hair bows and a cute stenciled bag.

The cookies were the same.

And the food....because I can control these things :-)

Christmas 2017 is just 13 weeks away. How crazy is that? We've lived here over a year now and I still say, "We just moved here." This year our new traditions from last Christmas will be repeated and hopefully the things that still aren't the same will start to feel more familiar. 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 

Hebrew 13:8

Life's Little Detours

So it's been almost 5 months since I've posted and I really do need to do an update post because this is the only record I'm keeping of our lives and my kids might want some pictures to look back on one day. 

 But, I must document God's goodness in the lives of our friends first.

Our friends Travis and Robin leave tomorrow for Ethiopia to bring home their long awaited daughter.  They leave in just 3 short hours to board a plane that will take them back to the country they love to meet a sweet little girl that they have longed to hold for over 5 years.

If you've just landed here and don't know their story, you can catch up on this long and winding road they have taken to get to her here:

 http://www.acharityproject.com/f/ALLinWITH10

Today's message in church was from Exodus 13 and 14 and specifically on how God led the Israelites on a detour.  They could have taken the short and easy way, the direct path to the promise land, but God chose to lead them into the wilderness.  

Exodus 13:17-22(NLT)

Israel’s Wilderness Detour

 When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the Promised Land. God said, “If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea. Thus the Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle.

His reasoning was that they may have changed their minds had he led them straight to the promise land where they would have encountered a battle.  He wanted to prepare them first.  There was more they needed to see and do before they were ready to take hold of the promise God had for them.

I remember distinctly when God captured Travis' heart for the orphan, specifically the orphan in Ethiopia.  

Just a moment before this picture was taken, Travis was leading me and Meron around his property on his horse when the horse got spooked and bucked us right off.  Just after this, Meron let "Uncle Travis" hold her and it was a lightning bolt moment.  He knew there was a little girl in Ethiopia who needed a daddy, and he was it.

A couple of years later, they started the process to bring a little girl home from Ethiopia and that's were their detour took over.  Things didn't go as they had planned.  They certainly didn't get to take the short and easy way, but the long and winding road has been a blessing for so many and God showed them, just like he showed the Israelite, what they needed to see and do before they were ready to take hold of his promise, the promise of one day bringing home a little Ethiopian daughter.

Because of their detour 168 kids and their families in Holeta, Ethiopia are sponsored and know they are loved. Whole communities both here in the US and in Ethiopia are being changed.

Because of their detour, 3 foster kids have known the love of a family and awareness has been raised for the foster care crisis in our area through the work they do.

Because of their detour, God's faithfulness has been proclaimed as he provided over $28,000 in just 14 days to fund this adoption.

Because of their detour, God has led them to the exact child that needed them, a child that wasn't even born when they started the adoption process in 2012. 

She was born in 2014, just after their first trip to Ethiopia, when they were wandering in the wilderness, unsure of where God was taking them.  One thing they were sure of is that not for a moment did God forsake them.

We sang this song today and I couldn't help but think of them:

After all, God is constant, he is only good, he is sovereign and not for a moment 

did he leave them alone.  

I literally can not wait to see them together.  I can't wait to wake up in 72 hours to the news that they have passed court and are officially the parents of this sweet girl:

And I really can't wait to see them walk off the plane that brings them all home.  We are praying for a miraculously smooth and speedy process and we are praising God for his faithfulness.

UPDATE: SHE'S HOME!!!!

Waiting at the airport!

There she is!

First family photo!

God's way is perfect. All the LORD's promises prove true. He is a shield 

for all who look to him for protection. 

Psalm 18:30