First Day of School

This morning when Samson came downstairs, all the girls started hooting and hollering at him - they were just as excited as he was for his first day of preschool. Samson played right into their screams of excitement and showed us some dance moves, shaking his booty and proclaiming, "Yay! I'm going to preschool!" He is an amazing dancer and fun to watch!

I held back tears this morning when I was preparing him for his first day of preschool.

He was so excited and I was so excited for him that I didn't actually cry when I dropped my baby off.

 What a blessing his two teachers are. It's yellow day today!

He went right to work cutting up straws!

Seeing his beautiful smile at the end of the day was a good sign all went well. I got a little teary eyed watching my big boy come out of his first day of school.

 He couldn't wait to show us and his friends the project he created - a yellow star!

 There's my boy!

Preparing for Haiti

My daughter Lauren and I will be in Haiti on October 16th. We will be going with 14 other adults and teenagers from our community and serving along side Adventures In Missions (AIM).

We will be bringing our own tents and other sleeping devices. Our facilities include one cold shower and one bucket shower available to us for the week. We also have one toilet. The average temperature will be 90 degrees.

Our assignment includes, prayer walking, tent repair, rubble clean up, sports ministry and helping in an orphanage. Serving in an orphanage would be my dream but I'm not setting any expectations because they tell us to remain flexible since our assignment can change daily. I will serve in what ever capacity God leads me to serve.

Two close friends of mine will be making this trip with me and two of Lauren's close friends are also going. I am very excited to travel this journey, serving those in need with my friends. But I'm most looking forward to the mother-daughter time Lauren and I will have together.

When we first signed up to go, Lauren insisted on paying her own way, which we did not want to argue with her about. So, she sold pizzas to raise funds and she also sent out support letters. The main purpose for the support letter is to 1. ask friends and family to cover her in prayer and 2. ask for financial assistance.

God is good because just before we had to turn in our support money, she reached her goal. Thank you to all who are lifting her in prayer and supporting her financially! Thank you for believing in her! You are all a huge blessing!

We just started our malaria meds yesterday. The doctor recommended taking them 2 weeks prior to departing. Shots wise, we didn't have to do anything because we were already immunized from our Ethiopian trip.

Oh yeah, we have already had team bonding times. We have gathered as a team for several training sessions and we held a pancake breakfast fundraiser:

The team worked hard to keep the pancakes replenished in the serving line:

God will use us when we are available - Rick Warren

God's willing servants:

Lauren was our sausage maker.

She stood over the hot stove for 5 hours and did not complain once:

I'm Back!!!

I'm Back to the blogging world. Sorry for the dry spell on my blog. I have too much to share and not enough time to share everything.

The first news I need to share is that Samson starts school on ... Tuesday! Yes - that's right! He is going to preschool. I registered him for school way back in the Spring but he was put on a waiting list because of his age, even though he did make the age cut off. This was a very sore subject for me because I believe we were treated unfairly but those details will probably not make it any further than an UNpublished post. But believe me when I say that I suffered a lot of agony over this whole preschool ordeal.

Anyway, he was on a waiting list and just last week, 1 month after school started, the teacher calls and says that a child dropped out of preschool and Samson is next in line. If we wanted to send him, he could start next week.

After much prayer and discussion, we decided to enroll him.

I promise a blog post on Tuesday with pictures. As excited I am for him and as much as I think he needs this, I can't believe that I will be sending my youngest off to preschool - my last first day of preschool =(

Since the girls started school this fall, Samson and I have had a lot of bonding time together. We go for bike rides, walks, jump on the trampoline, play at the park, play t-ball. During these special times together, he has opened up to me more and more. He asks to look at his special photo album more often and now that he can speak better English, he has many more questions about his past.

It's interesting to watch him piece it all together from the questions that he asks. He has been asking a lot about death. He has been asking some very simple but intelligent questions for his age about economics, like "Why don't we just give poor people money mommy?" He is so smart!

One assumption that he is having a hard time letting go of is the idea that all children come from the care center in Ethiopia. We talk about the care center a lot. He looks at his pictures from his social report of himself and all his care center friends. I have had many conversations with him and told him that he came from his Ethiopian mommy's tummy his sisters came from my tummy.

I can see the confusion and pain in his eyes when he hears about how his story is different. There is no question that some of the truth about his story hurts him.

He continues to ask to see Avery's pictures from when "she was in the care center". He has even searched through her room looking for her photo album. He also thinks that Avery came out of his Ethiopian mommy's tummy. One day he insisted on being the one who came out of my tummy.

We have so much more to share with him about his story - some even harder stuff that we will share when he is older. I have read other's stories about sharing the hard stuff with their adopted child but now that I am sharing with my own son, I have a really difficult time knowing how to word things the way he would understand it at his age. It's like peeling one layer of the onion back at a time, crying more and more each layer.

A few weeks ago, the girls came across their baby pictures. Again, he is so smart because he asked for his baby pictures. I showed him his referral pictures and tried to explain to him that that is how old he was when he joined our family. He still said, "That is not a baby mommy." "Where are my baby pictures?"

We embrace his rich birth culture, his skin tone and differences positively. But he doesn't like being the different family member. So, we work hard at pointing out similarities, such as you look just like your father when you wear your shirt tucked in with your belt or you have the same colored eyes as Olivia and Lauren.

He knows he has different colored skin than us but right now this difference doesn't seem to bother him. I tell him that I am going to nibble on some milk chocolate ears and he tells me that he is going to nibble on some white chocolate ears and we each pretend to munch on each other's ears.

The other day, just out of the blue, he was admiring his legs and said, "Mommy! T____'s legs look like mine!" He was proud of that! T____ is one of his care center friends who we have visited a couple times since we have been home.

But in public places, I have seen other kids stop and stare at him. Some day he will notice this too.

Speaking of public places, isn't it amazing what questions acquaintances or strangers will ask in front of your kids?

Yesterday at a football games, I had a woman tap me on the shoulder, pointed right down at Samson and asked, "Where did you get him?"

On another subject, Lauren and I leave for Haiti in less than 2 weeks. I will post more details about our trip soon but what I have just learned is that part of our trip includes serving in an orphanage. Kind of dangerous, huh?!

Meet Kero!

Isn't she beautiful?!!

Our family has the privilege of helping sponsor Kero through Drawn From Water . We knew DFW was coming out with a new sponsorship program, so when they announced it last week, we jumped on board right away.

Really, all the kids are amazing and beautiful but when I asked our kids whether they wanted to sponsor a girl or a boy, they all agreed a girl and they all wanted the oldest girl. That's how we found Kero. When we pulled up her file, my girls said, "Yes! Her! Let's sponsor her!"

The day after we signed up to sponsor Kero, we received an email confirmation and a little bit more information on her. We learned that she was attending her third day of school. Reading this brought me to tears because she is attending the very same school we toured with our agency in Addis one year ago. The school is Children's Home Academy. We were so impressed with this school and what they had to offer.

I think about all the schools there must in Addis - our sponsored child could be attending one of probably hundreds of schools. But she is sitting in the same classrooms that we walked through just over a year ago.

Not only that, but Kero will learn English at her new school. Eventually, we will be able to write letters back and forth to her.

Friday morning, after we received confirmation that we would be indeed sponsoring Kero, I was wearing my DFW T-shirt and as I was driving the girls to school, I looked down at my T-shirt and there I saw Kero's name. Her name is on the shirt because she was one of the first eight children rescued.

Kero is six years old. In January, 2009, she was rescued from the Hammer tribe in Ethiopia. She was suppose to be killed by the elders because she was "teeth mingi", which means her top teeth came in before her bottom teeth.

Unfortunately, like all the children at the DFW orphanage, Kero is not adoptable, which is why this sponsorship program is so important for these kids.

Would you please consider sponsoring ones of these precious children? You can help sponsor a child for as little as $25 per month. When you sponsor a child, you will get several more pictures and more information about them. DFW will send frequent updates and you may email DFW specific questions about your child any time.

As DFW stated on a recent twitter, "How often can you say that you were able to help a child who would have otherwise been killed by their tribe?"

New Child Sponsorship Program!

Drawn From Water just announced their new Child Sponsorship Program. Go here to read the details and check out these beautiful children!

In less than 5 weeks...

...Lauren and I leave for Haiti. We are going with a team of 14 other people from our community.

Making the decision to go was not an easy one because both Lauren and I have been looking forward to going back to Ethiopia, possibly next summer, possibly our entire family and possibly for more than a short time.

And although we have not let go of our vision to some day return to Ethiopia, the closer we get to next summer, the more unlikely we will be going back that soon for various reasons.

Lauren and I share the same passion and desire - to travel overseas and serve the poor. This will be our first missions trip together and we are excited to see what possibilities are out there for us.

Like I said, this decision did not come easy. In fact, I kind of feel like I'm betraying Ethiopia. Ethiopia is where are hearts are.

But when we saw this opportunity to join a team going to Haiti to serve in tent cities and help clean up rubbish,  among other things, Lauren pleaded with us to let her go. She also has a cool testimony on how she received confirmation from the Lord that she is suppose to do this trip.

Steve and I didn't want her going without one of us and we just couldn't say no to her.

So, we signed up and I asked the Lord to close a door quick if we are not to go and we trusted that He would give me some confirmation along the way.

One week after we turned in our money and registration, we received a packet of information through our leader from AIM (Adventures In Missions), the organization who will be directing us in Haiti.

In this information, it described the location where we will serve in Port au Prince and it is called FON TAMARA.

TAMARA is my birth name!

Isn't that cool?!! I will take that as a confirmation that I should be going on this trip!

Anyway, we will be staying in a compound with fence all around, a locked gate and barbwire. The temperatures will be in the 90s! We will be sleeping in tents. Our family has NEVER camped.

Please pray for our team as we prepare and train for our 1 week trip. Please pray that the Lord is paving the way for us and putting protectors in place before we arrive. Please pray that God prepares each of our hearts to be ready to respond and fulfill great needs. Pray for Steve, Lauren, Avery and Samson, that they find peace in their own hearts over us going.

I am nervous about leaving the family for this length of time, especially Samson. Our attachment is going amazingly well. So, please pray that this time away does not cause a disruption with our attachment progress.

Back to School

The girls returned to school this morning. They were all excited but a little nervous. I was not looking forward to this day because it was so nice to have them home over the summer, so I'm a little sad right now.

At one time in my life, I thrived on routine. I craved routine when school started up each fall.

But now, I am not so thrilled about routine, school, school work, signing permission forms, correcting Math homework (especially not excited about this - Math has never been my strength=-), more events on the calendar, getting all the kids up each morning at the crack of dawn, the rat race of getting ready for the school day, driving them to school, dropping them off, returning home to gather something one of the girls forgot and delivering it to school, and all the other hassles that start with the school year.

No, I was not ready to be thrown into a routine but the start of the school year comes whether we like it or not. So, I learn to adjust to a new mindset and a new schedule. I'll survive but still, this is hard...

We've accomplished it!

Potty Trained!!