Playoffs

Usually I don't mind too much that we don't have TV. I know that I can be a TV addict and I use to spend way too many mindless hours in front of the tube.

HOWEVER...........this is the one time of year that I really miss having TV. NHL PLAYOFFS. I really miss watching hockey games. Though it's harder than ever to watch hockey on TV now that ESPN no long holds hockey rights and it's now on Outdoor Life Network. Outdoor Life?

I have to be content listening to games online at NHL.com........can you say FREE????

COMING HOME!!!!!!

We just found out. Corban will be arriving at the Pittsburgh airport May 8th at 2:55pm.

We're jumping out of our skins. Praise God! How faithful He's been and what a perfect plan!

Two Weeks!!??!!

Yesterday afternoon I got a call on my cell phone from the head our adoption agency while we were on our afternoon walk. Basically she was telling us that she had just received our paperwork from Ethiopia and she was overnighting it to us, so that we could take it to our local INS office (which is now not INS but USCIS). No problem.

So today all the info arrived. We were particularly interested because included were copies of his birth certificate and descriptions of the adoption etc. His birth certificate says he was born April 8, 2005. The problem with that is that we had pictures of him in mid-March of last year...so he definitely wasn't born in April!

ANYWAY....included in this pile of papers was a letter from the head of our agency to the USCIS agents. At first I just glanced at this, on my way to the other documents, but finally got back around to reading it. The final little section concludes with......if we don't hear from you with problems with this paperwork we will believe that it has your approval and is being forwarded to the Embassy consular section in Ethiopia. Then she adds this line "We have someone going to Ethiopia in two weeks and we would like to be able to bring Meki (he current given name) to his new family at that time.

TWO WEEKS!!! AAAAAHHHH All of a sudden this whole thing became very real. Our guess is that in two weeks someone will travel over there to finish the final technicalities. Then he'll be here. So like in three weeks there will be a little boy crawling around my house. I will be changing diapers. I will be a full on Daddy!

Kiss

Here's a great story.

BACKGROUND: A little while ago (seems like ages ago really) we had to
start thinking about what we were going to do to decorate Corban's room.
The main problem is that we rent our house, so we can exactly paint things on
the wall as we would like. We also weren't entirely keen on Winnie the
Pooh, Disney or other such common children's themes. Since our son is from
Africa we started looking for African themes. After much research on
Marjorie's part, we decided on giraffes. While there aren't a lot of
giraffes in Ethiopia, and none in Addis Ababa where he comes from, it was close
and we loved it. We also fell in love with a picture called first kiss.

Marjorie has a friend through work that is an artist and she specializes in
creating free standing figures and so forth. We commissioned her to create
for us a free standing giraffe. Our giraffe is over 6ft. tall and
currently resides in our living room. He will move upstairs once Corban
gets here. We chose this because if we move someday, he can come with us,
unlike painted walls. If Corban outgrows giraffes, he can be moved back to
our living room or wherever. So for the past year or so we have been collecting and given every imaginable giraffe item. Lots and lots of giraffes.

NOW FOR THE MAIN STORY: A couple weeks ago we were in Arizona for
a week. My grandparents live there and both are celebrating major
birthdays this year (90 and 85). So the whole family flew out there to
have a party for them.

One day we decided to head out to this park called Out
of Africa. It's a really really cool place. Not like a zoo at
all. They take a very natural approach to the animals. And the
owners are Christians so it has to be good right? ANYWAY......

There's an area of the park that they call the SERENGETI.
It's acres and acres of land that certain plant eating animals roam free
in. You can get on these 4 wheel drive vehicles or buses to go into the
Serengeti. Before you leave, they hand everyone these vegetable based
cookie/biscuit things so that you might have an opportunity to feed some of the
animals. We were stoked! We knew there were giraffes in there.
We were hoping we could get close to some, to take some pictures for our son.

After seeing a baby zebra up close and some other
weird goats we finally saw a giraffe a little ways off. Our driver pulled
closer to him and then got out and lured the giraffe to the bus with some
cookies. Marjorie was nearly jumping out of her skin.

So the giraffe comes around the opposite side of the
bus. Our bus driver starts talking about how gentle giraffes are.
They are very cautious about where they step and what they eat etc. To
illustrate this he put a cookie in his mouth and the giraffe bent down and ate
the cookie right out of his mouth.

So the giraffe starts making his way along the
opposite side of the bus eating cookies. Mari wanted to feed him so bad
she got out of our seat and went to the wheelchair exit and leaned out he
window. She was pretty happy. But then the best part of the day
happened. The driver lured the giraffe around to the other side of the
bus....our side. We were going to have the giraffe close enough to touch
him and feed him!!!! We were stoked.

So I feed him one of my cookies. That was
fun. No big deal. My dad (who's sitting in front of us) lures him a
little farther forward. I'm trying to take pictures and talk and laugh all
at the same time......doing none of them very successfully. Before I know
what's going on, Marjorie sticks a cookie in her mouth and puts her head out the
window. The giraffe bends down and takes it right out of her mouth.
Faster than I can blink Mari has (one after the other) put the cookies in her
mouth and had the giraffe eat them. This also means he's been slobbering
all over her face too.

The problem is that I was too slow to react and
didn't get a picture. My dad says he was sure he didn't get a picture
either. We were pretty disappointed, but happy we at least had the
experience. Later that night my dad's going through his photos and guess
what he found? The coolest picture ever! Marjorie kissing a
giraffe.......well feeding him, but it looks like a kiss!

TAXES

up side to doing taxes this year..........I know that next year they'll be WAY too complicated for me to do by myself. Adoption credit, another dependent, etc. etc. I'm definately going to pay someone next year.......Down side to doing taxes this year......i still have to do them.

Something's missing.......

Crib? Check
Car seats? Check
Assorted toys? Check
Butt paste? Check
Special Shea oil lotion? Check
Little boy from Ethiopia? Um.....well....almost

So theoretically we're weeks away from our sons arrival. The last major hurdle was getting his paperwork through the Ethiopian courts.....which has held us up for the last year or so. We got word that we made it through a couple weeks ago. We're now waiting for that paperwork to be couriered to our agency so we can file one final piece of paperwork with the US government that let's us bring him home.

The picture to the right is when we first met our son.....last March. He was cute and tiny and we expected to get him last summer sometime. Unfortunately everything that could go wrong....has gone wrong.

God's been teaching Marjorie and I a lot of things in this past year though. Trust, patience, understanding, etc. It's not been easy. We've struggled a lot. We've cried a lot. We've occassionally been angry with the situation. But we've always been confident that God's plan is going to be good.

And here we are. There's finally a light at the end of the tunnel. There's a belief that our son will soon be in our arms.....or at least running around our floor. He's a lot bigger now. He has a big head. He's still super cute and probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.







So no arrival date yet, but as soon as we get it I'm sure we'll let you know. Your prayers are still a blessing to us.

It's semi-official

So I just talked to the pastor. It looks like I'm going to finally get rid of a ton of stress!!!!

Here's the deal. for the last 5 3/4 years I've been the children and youth director. Basically what that's turned into is Children, Youth and Family ministry. From the time you're born until you don't have kids anymore, you're my responsibility. It's just too much for one person to take care of. Honestly my gifts aren't in Children's ministry or Family ministry. While I can do them, I'm just not great at them.

The new scoop is that I will be let go as the Children and Youth director, and then offered the position of Youth Director. It's not full-time. It'll be part time, but it'll let me pursue a bunch of different options. I could just take a bunch of time and spend with my son when he gets here (another blog entry there). I could spend some time taking some Bible classes I've been meaning to take forever. I could sign on with another church locally part-time OR work for a bunch of churches to be the REVOLUTION director of some sort.

Basically what this all looks like is still to be seen. LOTS of details still to be worked out. We'll see.....

First time at the plate

During the course of my life I've tried very unsuccessfully to keep journals, diaries, etc. The basic problem is that I have great intentions to do it.....but I quickly forget about it or don't have time. Let's see how this experiment goes.

My general assumption is going to be that you know me. I'm not going to go into great detail (at least theoretically) on who people are or why or what.

here goes nothing.........literally