Recent pictures 2

Emma is returning to Ethiopia in February. She sent out this picture with her support letter.

Sadie has teeth and can eat an entire gingerbread man.

Emma was Candy Giver Outer for part of Halloween.

Zeke was either a pirate or a patriot. After an hour, it didn't matter. He had to put his coat on.

Emma and Grace followed the Button Rules for Costumes: you can be whatever you want (with, you know, the normal sorts of boundaries) as long as you can find whatever you need in our house. Hence, Liz the Princess who also needed a winter coat very early on.

I do have other children who don't seem to ever get fairly represented in pictures. Sorry Eli, Grace and Levi. When it's not almost midnight, I'll look through iphoto a little longer.

Christmas Presents

I've been trying to stay ahead of and out of the Christmas present hysteria. To that end, Joel and I went out on a casual shopping date to Target. We picked out two toys. We put them in our cart. We picked out stocking stuffers. We put them in our cart. We got to the check out. "Are these gloves yours?" I ask Joel. "No, I don't know where those came from." So, we unload the cart, give the cashier the gloves, pay for what is pretty much the last of our shopping and go home.

We unload the bags. There are no toys. I search the bags. I scan the receipt. I read the receipt line by line. There are no toys.

When did we exchange carts with someone who wanted to buy large black gloves?

*Sigh* I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe our cart will just be sitting there waiting for me to come back.

Pictures

I love watching slides/video set to music. Now, after nearly 8 months, I am just about done with pictures from Ethiopia set, yes, to music.

Goal: totally drain my itty bitty reservoir of artistic talent.

Check.

Pictures coming soon.

A Book I Actually Finished

A good friend of mine sent me a book called Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other, by Scott Simon. Simon is the host for NPR's "Weekend Edition." He wrote the book to explain his and his wife's journey to adopt two girls from China.

It is fitting that I finished the book today for on Wednesday, my birthday, we will go to the Washington County Court House to

formally adopt Lizzie and Sadie.

On page 173 (of 178) was this quote: "We wanted a child. We heard you needed parents. We wanted a miracle in our lives. Darlings, it was you."

That's IT!!!

I was, yes, in Walmart. Why? Now I don't know. Oh wait. I do. I had a gift card. I bought diapers and hamburger. I was carrying Sadie; Grace was with me.

At the checkout, I asked Grace to hold Sadie. Sadie turned around, reached for me and whined.

"Ohhhhhh," cooed the Walmart checkout woman. "She wants Grandma."

Hmmm...

I have been casting about, trying to think of a new post. I guess what it comes down to is that while things get funny, things also get....settled. That is good news.

Lizzie is still falling off footstools in the bathroom as she tries to get toothpaste at the EXACT same time Zeke does. She is also spinning out of her crib and hitting the wall as she tries to show me, "Bizzie do it!!" She'll be the one in our Christmas card picture with a helmet.

Sadie can bark. Drool. Eat. Poop. She's made quite the impression on Zeke as he now asks, "Did she make those little ball things come out?" referring to the diaper gel balls that explode out of her pajamas a couple mornings a week.

We cleaned up the yard just before 80% of the leaves fell.

I'm going to try to make my own pita bread tomorrow.

Eli has an American History Project due on Monday. The history of New Jersey. Of all the places. My synopsis of New Jersey's history is that everything interesting happened nearby or while passing through. Apparently even then, no one really wanted to put down stakes or interesting patriots (I've googled) in New Jersey. Thank goodness some of them signed the Declaration of Independence. That gave Eli's Trifold Project Board its necessary content. Oh, and George Washington graciously had a couple battles there. We would have had to talk about the history of gambling otherwise.

I love fall.

I'm running a 10k on Saturday. That's more miles in one morning than I have run in the last 2 months.

Thank you so much for caring about what happens in our family.