Snow Day

Santa

Firsts

Could I be a worse blogger? Seth has had a lot of firsts since I last posted.

First Birthday

First Halloween

First haircut

First tooth

School

I posted earlier that Dalton and Gillian were going to Family School, and even though we loved it, we decided it was best if they went back to our neighborhood school. Family School was going really well, but I was having a hard time keeping up with homeschool and Seth's Dr. appts. and therapy. They are both doing well back at their new, old school.

New photos

Here are some new photos from Dalton's soccer game on Saturday. I couldn't decide which one was the cutest of Seth, so I just put all of them.

He can crawl!

1st Day of School

This year Dalton and Gillian are going to Family School. They go to school for 3 hours and 15 minutes 4 day a week. At school they learn reading, writing, and math and also have P.E., art, music, and library. At home they learn science, social studies, and spelling. So far it is going well and we are excited about all the fun stuff we are going to learn this year. They are home significantly more than they were last year, so I am learning how to balance everything with homeschool, new baby, etc.

1st Family Vacation

The first weekend in August we took our first family vacation since Seth came home. We went to San Diego and it was a great, much needed break for all of us before school started. We went to the San Diego Zoo, Legoland, the beach, and Sea World.

Rice Cereal

This is Seth's first experience with rice cereal. He was more interested in eating the spoon!

Life with baby #4

When I had Gillian I thought for sure she would be a hard baby because Dalton had been so easy. Well, she was just as happy and delightful as Dalton was. Then when I had Asher I thought surely this will be my hard baby because the other two were so easy, and again he was just as pleasant and easy going as the first two. Well, with Seth I thought definitely this has to be my hard baby. Statistically if you have 4 infants, one of them is bound to be grumpy. Yet again, I have been blessed with such a happy child. Seth is so anxious to smile and loves attention, luckily there are 5 of us eager and willing to give him all the attention he can handle.

Sunday 6/29/08

Home sweet home! I have never been so happy to be home and to see my other kids in my life! We traveled for a total of 35 hours. We survived, but it was touch and go there a few times.

Day #10, Saturday 6/28/08

We were scheduled to go swimming this day, but we decided not to go and went shopping at a place called Haileselassie Alemayehu thanks to a tip from my neighbor. It wasn't on our itinerary, but Sami didn't mind taking us. (Well, he said he didn't mind.) The prices there are fixed, so you don't have to worry about haggling. The prices were as good if not better than we had seen in other shopping areas.

We pretty much just spent the afternoon hanging out and anticipating our flight. We were mostly all packed up because we took all of our stuff over to Teri and Attila's room so that we could just split the cost of one room for that day. Check out is at noon and we didn't go to the airport until six. The hotel gave us a ride to the airport and we were off.

Day #9, Friday 6/27/08

Friday we got a babysitter and went to the Merkato. The Merkato is the largest open air market in Africa (not Ethiopia, Africa). I was expecting it to look like a really big swap meet, but it isn't. It is multiple city blocks of aisles and aisles of vendors in their stalls that are crammed packed with stuff. There is everything imaginable for sale from scarves to saddles to rebar. You don't go to the Merkato to shop however. This is not a place to buy souvenirs. Sami arranged for some guards to follow us, or lead us rather, around and we walked quickly through a few aisles and then we drove around some of the rest of it.

After the Merkato we went the St. George church. Saint George is the patron saint of Ethiopia. We had a really good guide who demonstrated the different kinds of chanting that they do.

Day #8, Thurday 6/26/08

On Thursday we went to Trinity Church and then to the University Museum. We ate lunch at the hotel and then went to the embassy. The embassy is a lot like the DMV. You wait until they call your name and then you go up raise your right hand and swear that you are telling the truth and they ask you some questions. That's it. The next day Alemu brought us the babies' visas and our super secret envelopes.

That night we got a babysitter so we could go to the Crown Hotel and have a traditional dinner and watch traditional singing and dancing. The food was buffet, so there was plenty to eat. The traditional dancing was amazing. They preformed dances and song from different regions of Ethiopia and it was facinating. I really didn't want to leave the baby, being as we just got him and all, but it would have been too loud and too late to take him. We only got a sitter two times, once for this and when we went to the merkato and I am glad we did because neither of these places would be good to take children to. The babysitter was great by the way. She watched both babies and she was extremely competent.

Day #7, Wednesday 6/25/08

On this day we went shopping. Sami took us to a place to buy traditional clothes and then to a place to buy sovieners. We just hung out in the afternoon and enjoyed the baby. In the evening Alemu came and helped us fill out our paperwork. The paperwork had to be turned in to the embassy in the morning so he took it with him and turned it in.

Day #6, Tuesday 6/24/08

Gotcha Day!!!

Such a surreal day! The first step we took on this journey of adoption was filing our I-600a (not everyone starts with this step, but this is where we started). USCIS received our I-600a on 7/23/07 and 11 months and 1 day later we are in Ethiopia collecting our son. There were a few steps in between, some frustrations and hold ups, but it was all so worth it! I am in such awe that we have this amazing little boy and he is ours forever!

This is video of the kids in the orphanage singing goodbye to "Nati" and "Gelmecha"

Before we went to the orphanage to get the babies we went to the National Museum and to the Lion Zoo.

Day #5, Monday 6/23/08

We walked on the beach a little and had breakfast before heading back to Addis. The first 3 days in Ethiopia I put on a brave face, but I have to say this is the day everything really started to get to me. There is extreme poverty in Ethiopia and especially in the country. They are having a drought right now that is making everything so much worse. Most of this day was spent traveling back to Addis. We stopped for drinks one time and stopped for lunch when we were almost back. We also went to the supermarket on the way back and got formula for the babies and donations for the orphanage. We walked over to ShangriLa for dinner after we got back to the hotel.

I am so glad we got to see Alaba. For you Arizonans, the difference between Addis and Alaba is like the difference between Phoenix and Snowflake. Here are some photos from the country side. These pictures don't give the quality of thier dirt credit. Ethiopia has very rich soil with a broad variety of vegitation. (When there is water!) We saw cactus, palm trees, and evergreen trees together all of the time.

Day #4, Sunday 6/22/08

We had breakfast at the hotel, which was probably my favorite breakfast the entire time I was there. I had french toast, which they deep fry in Ethiopia, and some pink syrup that I think was grenadine.

After breakfast we went to Lake Awassa where we saw the aforementioned hippos and other wildlife.

Eagle at Lake Awassa

The coffee farm was very cool. There is a hotel and the rooms are in traditional style houses. We didn't stay there, but I think families will in the future. Coffee is very important in Ethiopia, it is their number one export.

Coffee plant

Room at the coffee farm

Lemur at the coffee farm

After the coffee farm we went to a park that has a bunch of monkeys living there. They ate right our of our hands.

Attila held out a cracker to this monkey with one hand and the monkey swiped the whole bag out of his other hand. So funny.

That night we went to a restaurant that had good pizza. There was also somewhat of a show as a butcher cut up goat meat with great gusto and then a guy fried it in hot oil also with great enthusiasm. It was actually pretty good, very salty.