More Shots

Today Fil and I went to the Travel clinic where they specialize in immunizations for people who will be traveling to different parts of the world. Since we are people that do their research we knew we would be getting yellow fever and typhoid shots. We were not so sure about the yellow fever shot since it can have bad side effects. We are not planing on traveling outside of Addis Ababa but after more research we decided to get the shot. So far so good. We both have sore arms and I have a headache which is from the typhoid shot. Hopefully we will not get any nasty reaction later on. The rest of the shots I got at our doctor office and Fil will get his on Friday. We had to do this for insurance to cover the cost and since each shot is around $75 we were willing to split up where we got the shots.

It is my birthday today. The big 30. So I guess Happy Birthday to me. I can not believe I am out of twenties.

Feeling Blue

It has been a while since I have written anything about our adoption. Well there is nothing, nada, zilch to report. We are still waiting and waiting and WAITING some more. I wish I could write it is going well but I hit a bottom last week. Maybe I have been reading too many blogs.

Anyway it will be 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days on Tuesday since we finished the paper work part. I remember seeing 2m 2w 2d mark and at that point I was hoping we wouldn't see the the 3 3 3 mark. I was also hoping that we would know something by the end of the summer before school started. Here we are in the middle of September and NOTHING. The hard part is that we know there haven't been any referrals for about 2 months. I know that our coordinator was in Ethiopia for 2 weeks and Ethiopia just celebrated their millennium. Until this point the referrals seemed to have been coming regularly.

The hardest part has been not knowing if we will have our little girl for Christmas. I would love to but at this point we are running out of time. Fil believes we would have to get the referral withing next three weeks in order to travel by Christmas since it takes about 10 weeks with the court date and embassy and travel.

It is all in God's hands and I have to believe this is for the best. We are praying for our little girl every day that she is in good hands and has all she needs. We can not wait to hold her in our arms and I can not wait to see all of my children playing together.


On the other hand we started our shots. I got three of them today. OUCH! We also gave the kids Hep A shots since it has been recommended for family members who do not travel. We have an appointment on Monday at the travel clinic for the big shots like yellow fever and typhoid so I am sure I will post about that. We had to split it for the insurance to cover it. At this point the insurance will pay for all of our shot which is a big relief.

1st Tooth Fairy Visit

On Thursday my baby boy lost his first tooth. It seems like yesterday when we were excited about his first tooth and here we are few years later and he is loosing them!!! On his last dentist visit the doctor said that he will loose some this summer and sure enough he did. The tooth has been wiggly for a while but it got very loose in last few days. On Thursday he bit into an apple and came to me with his mouth open and his tooth VERY loose. I just pulled on it and it was out. I believe Fil was more traumatized by this whole experience that Sam (I guess his childhood memories still haunt him till this day).

Here is Emma expecting Sam's mouth.

We had to run out to get some cash for the tooth fairy. The boys have been discussing the whole tooth fairy business. Sam thinks she is a thief how else does she get the money she leaves under the pillows and Nate believes that Sam's tooth is now in heaven since God created everything so it should be back with Him (I flushed Sam's tooth after I left money under Sam's pillow that night).

Sam's 1st Soccer Game

At noon Sam had his first game of the season. We got to play against our pastor who is coaching the other team (his son Jacob is on that team and you can see here on this picture he and Sam were playing hard against each other). It was very hot and humid today in NH so we were trying to keep everybody cool and hydrated.



We were trying to keep them in shade and offering plenty of fluids throughout the game. We also sprayed them with water which was a big hit.
This year Sam is playing on a much bigger field and he also tried the goalie position for a while. I think he is much better on offense.

Good game everyone. I can not believe they played in that heat. We took the boys for pizza after the game. We will be back next week.

Nate's 1st Soccer Game

Today our Soccer season officially started with Nate's first game at 8AM (we have 7 more to go). Nate improved a lot since last year and we are hoping Grandma will came soon to practice with the boys in our back yard. She did such a good job last year.
It was a funny game as all these game are at this age. It was already hot already at 8am.
Here is the team after the game. We are now to two practices and two games every week until end of November. But I am glad the boys have the opportunity to be involved in sports at such a young age (and that there are no game or practices on Sundays).

Sunflowers

HAPPY FALL EVERYBODY !

I wanted to share some pictures of my sunflowers. This year I experimented with some different seeds and grew many seedlings in the spring. After I forgot to water some and after I planted them outside not all of them survived. Actually I only have four at this point. The kids trampled over some and I know some soccer balls took out some other. So I have three in the front and one on the side of the house. I was beginning to worry that they would never bloom but they started last few weeks. Aren't they gorgeous?
The bees are buzzing on them all day long.
Can you believe how tall this one is? I can almost touch it from our bedroom window. The neighbors have been asking what did I feed it with. Nothing special that I can think of. However I did pour few cups of leftover coffee on it. (By the way Sam took this picture. He does a very good job don't you think?)

Is Fall Really Here?

It sure looks and feels like the fall is here. There are some glimpses of fall colors in New England this time of the year.


This is my favorite time of year. Can you see why?