From start until now....

I know. I have been a bad blogger. (insert slap to the hand.) For now I have created a photo journey of our adoption. Soon I will do a post on our first time meeting Nevaeh. Until then...

P.S You will have to close the blog page after you click on the link...otherwise you get two songs playing at once, and it sounds crazy!

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Nevi's room

Here is a peek at Nev's room. Just snippets of it, I am still waiting on one item to put up, but thought I'd share a sneak peak of it. Yes......it's true. I had 3 years of waiting to do it.....actually no, I didn't, just a year, because we moved out last year to the farm. But I just couldn't do it. I am not one of those people who can decorate before I knew who she was. I couldn't even decorate while we were waiting to pass court. And in fact I couldn't even decorate it when we were waiting for the visa. I don't know why.....I suppose I had that small doubt that something could still go wrong, and then I would have the reminder.


So now that she is home, I have been busy! Check it out.

A baby gift from my sister. It's so cute.

Night light from Ikea

Okay....now here is the biggie. Wall decals. This took me so long.

And I in fact ordered this from China. I had no idea it was from there. And YES....I had to put EACH one of those on individually. It was a pain. A BIG pain!! But worth it.
FYI: I think I am going to take away the butterflies. I don't know.
I'm just not a butterfly type of girl. Too fru fru....
What do you think?

Peel Monkey Junkie

I love Peel Monkey. I have done it in my bathroom, daughters room.....and love it. My friend is having a give away and a discount for Peel Monkey. Go check it out. Here is the link.


P.S I am so getting the Heart in Africa decal for Nev's room.

And off to Ethiopia we go

Here we are off from Frankfurt to Addis. Getting excited to say the least.

Our first look at African soil from the airplane window. It was stunning.

A section of the Nile

A bad picture I know, but we've touched down on Ethiopian soil!! Our tiredness has turned into excitement

These are our drivers, Mesfin on the left, and Ketema on the right. I will talk more about them in a bunch of my posts I'm sure. They are like brothers to us. Amazing, amazing men.

Our flight from Frankfurt to Addis was good. It seemed to pass really quickly. I think because we were so excited to be on our last leg of the trip, one step closer to seeing Nevaeh. The flight was not full at all, so we each had our own seat row. Was nice to stretch out. Dad was great about pointing out landmarks. Just after we sat down in our seats, a lady leaned over to us and said "I'm not meaning to eavesdrop, but are you guys adopting from Ethiopia?" I of course answered yes. "Us too, we are adopting a little girl named Nyah." Get out...Nevaeh and Nyah! So once the flight took off we introduced ourselves, well Dixie and myself, he hubby was out cold! He was all nestled in with his eye mask on, and not into introductions! (sorry Jim, just couldn't help it!!) Anyhow, Dixie and I got to know each others journey and quite hit it off. She came over and sat with me for a bit when we first could see African soil, and we chatted more. She told me that her hubby was a baker. I didn't ask more right then, but a bit later I asked if he owned his own bake shop. Dixie looked at me pretty weird and said, "no, Why?" to which I replied, "Oh I just thought if he was a baker, he might own his own shop, Adam's grandpa was a baker and ......(blah blah, I babbled on about that for a bit...) "No, no, he's a Banker!" (okay, probably not funny to you, but hey, this is a log of our trip, and that was memorable!)


They were a joy to meet. We shared about our families back home that we were missing and found out we were both fellow believers. This bonded us again more intensely as we talked about our faith in God and how He had a hand in our adoptions. It turned out that they also were going to be on our returning flight, so that was so cool.


Once we landed in Addis we got our visa's and said our farewells to Jim and Dixie. We had a moment and had Dad pray for us all, and we parted ways, excited to reunite on our return.


We went from the airport to the Weygoss Inn where we were staying, and unloaded our luggage and checked in. The receptionist proceeded to tell us we were only booked in for one night.....What? She then said she felt bad that this had happened to us, so we could stay in the lobby, which had a couch and it is also the eating room, but we would have to be out by 6am every morning because people would be showing up for breakfast....ummmmmm, WHAT??


Those of you who know Adam know that he doesn't like to raise a fuss, but he turned around and had a look of.....what do we do now. He said, "are you sure you have no other rooms, or know of any other hotels we could stay at. Our agency should have booked this for us."


At that point the receptionist started to smile. We were confused at why she found this funny. I mean, sleeping in the lobby with a new baby, and she thought it was funny? I then looked at Ketema, and he was laughing hysterically. Mesfin was doubled over laughing. She then told us that Mesfin had told her to tell us this, and she had nothing to do with the idea! It was a good introduction as to how goofy Mesfin (and Ketema) really are! Mesfin came over and put his arm around Adam's shoulder and just laughed and said he wished we could have seen our faces. Mefin, how much we miss you friend! Your humor and laugh are something we will never forget.


After getting our luggage up to our room, we went out for pizza(which was so good) and retired early, as we knew the next day was the day we had been waiting for.......for a long time, and we wanted to be rested.

Help my friends out and sign this petition.....

Hey pals. I need your support to help out this family. They have been waiting since NOV to get their visas issued for their children in Ethiopia. This online petition takes 30 secs to fill out. Lets help them out.

Bare feet no more

I wanted to post some photo's of all the donations that we handed out in Ethiopia. We had over 500 pairs of croc style shoes and I can't even explain how much this meant to these children and adults. I knew there was a need for them...but didn't know exactly HOW much it would touch me to hand these out on behalf of all you who donated. THANK YOU so much for donating. We also took mini sticks and balls to hand out and the Blades donated a lot of washable tattoo's. They loved them..



So enjoy the photo's. Also if you feel touched at how much the shoes benefited these children, when you see them on sale this fall, pick them up! I am starting collecting again, and hope to return sooner than later!

Handing shoes out in the orphanage where Nev was found at.

A little girl who attached to Dad. Or maybe the other way around!!

Playing with the mini sticks. Adam showed them how to hold the sticks and shoot and score!!

A group photo of everyone with shoes, sticks and tattoo's!!

Look at this boys feet. We found him on the roadside working in the fields. No shoes.

Group of school kids on the side of the road, walking home from school...No shoes...

to tie you over...

I thought I left my camera charger in Ethiopia...that's why I haven't posted pics of Nev at home. But I guess in my tiredness of coming home, I put it in it's right place in the cupboard! More to come when I charge my LAPTOP up now!

Start of our trip to Ethiopia

Yes, I know..Its been a real boring blog. No posts. But it's summer, and its a bit busier with two kids now! So I thought I'd start with our journey in Frankfurt....

Here is some pics of the beautiful buildings in Frankfurt. We went on a city tour since...ahem..I made us miss our flight due to being in the ambulance and airport hospital...(I wont retell the story, but here it is in the original post.)We thought we'd make the best of it and catch a bit of the city.

Another cool thing is I got to have a great chat with my buddyJodi, who live in Germany. We couldn't meet, due to it being so last minute, but we were able to have a good chat.

Love this...it's the entrance to the train station

I'm interested in all types of tree's in other countries.

This little girl was watching us while we walked around.

And here we are.... finally getting ready to check in en route to Ethiopia. Going to meet our baby girl.