Tae Kwon Do

While we wait for news about our little girl, life goes on. I thought I would show a little of what I spend my life doing--or at least a little of why I'm always on the go. For the last several months, I. and A. have been taking Tae Kwon Do. Just tonight they tied on their Tiger Cub blue belts (it's a white belt with a blue stripe in the middle). I only have a picture from when they tied on their green belts, but all the award ceremonies look the same. I think we are about to take a break from Tae Kwon Do, but I had to show they at least once in their totally cute uniforms.

Their new belts are tied on.

Here they are with their certificates.

They always take their old belts and throw them in the air at the end of the award ceremony. Their own little graduation tradition. (Yeah the picture isn't the best, sorry.)

Adoption Update

Here is the latest report--and we only wish we had better news to report. Apparently, our agency's orphanage in Addis Ababa is one of the ones being investigated after some bad press from the Australian BBC a few months ago. The story was about some pretty horrific behavior on the part of a particular adoption agency. Our agency was not listed as an offender on the show, but they must have gotten some of the children in the orphanage from similar areas. I am still working on getting more information from them as to why they are part of this investigation, but getting information from them is like pulling teeth. I really have not been impressed by our agency in the least since we always get our information by looking at other sources, and are only told information long past the fact and only through prodding. I had actually asked my agency if they were involved in this set of investigations over a month ago to which they had replied no. These investigations--at least on other orphanages--began in early Nov, but I was only informed on Dec 8th because I've been pestering them for more information for over a month as to why we do not have a court date scheduled. Their previous response was that the courts were backed up, however, I knew this was incorrect from a friend who is also adopting from Ethiopia. So the moral of the story--be very careful what agency you choose to adopt through. If I could go through another agency, I would, but there is still a very beautiful, innocent little girl that we cannot bear to forget. Hopefully everything will be worked out soon.

The Best Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, we did the funnest thing ever. We went to the Bern Switzerland temple! A short 8 hour drive, makes it a good trip for a long weekend like Thanksgiving. And since it was a planned ward temple trip, there were many people to trade babysitting (I think this was the first time in years D. and I got to go together), and many of our best friends were there to share some fun time together. We were able to stay at the hostel there at the temple and had the funny coincidence of running into the Harris' from Loveland who are serving a mission in southern Italy!

This is a quick picture we took from the road on our way there. Switzerland is such a pretty country, we could have filmed the whole drive nearly. It doesn't represent any of their tall mountains, but some of the beauty of that country.

The temple is so beautiful, don't you think!?

Here is a quick family photo of us outside the temple. We took the children on a night walk around the grounds so we could admire it at night and have a good talk. In the morning of one of the days, all the Primary kids there got to meet with the temple president and talk with him. It was a very neat experience.

The boys were fascinated by this simple Christmas tree on the temple grounds.

Before heading back, we spent half a day in Bern touring the city and checking out their Christmas market. This was a candy store our friends showed us that has a slide into their below street level store. Here I. takes his turn.

And now A!

K. says, "I want to eat it all up! Candy, candy, more candy!"

Our friends next showed us a store with an open elevator that you jump on when it's level with the floor your on and that you can ride full circle (up one side and then down the other) without getting off, so you see all the mechanisms. Neat and creepy at the same time.

We also visited a church known for having an amazing 360 view of the Alps and all the surrounds. D., K., and I didn't go up top, but I. and A. went to the top with our friends and took some photos for me. I thought this was a pretty good representation of the view.

We had this amazing derby race come right through our neighborhood! We knew it came through, but we've never known when. This year, we happened to be outside and saw the signs up and walked literally a little down the street to watch. We happened to be right at one of the sharpest curves, and I kept thinking they would slide into this huge concrete block just on the other side of the curve, but no one did. So much fun! Here is a little video so you can have a taste of it too!

Halloween

I've finally put up Halloween pictures. We had a cute medieval theme going on, but unfortunately we never got the chance to have a family photo. Part of it because D. was gone so much and part because I, being the Primary secretary now, was very busy at the "Family Fall Festival" making sure the party (essentially the Primary activity) was going well. Here is a sampling of the few pictures I was able to take.

Here is D. looking spiffy in his knickers and vest.

You are going to see quite a bit of K. in these photos--he was everywhere, as long as it involved a ride in someone's arms. Here is Mommy in her pretty dress. We initially were going to go for knights and a princess, but it is nearly impossible to find an adult princess costume that doesn't involve involve showing a lot of skin. Thus we settled on lord and lady with our knights to protect us.

Here is knight number in his get-up (although he is missing his shield and sword). We found these great foam shields and swords at Legoland in Germany and they were wonderful! They were fun to play with, but could hardly do damage to the opponent.

I don't know where A. was hiding out at the Primary party so that I never got a picture of him there, but I did get a picture at his Kindergarten parade around the school lot. Behind him is his good friend that just happened to show up in the exact same costume! They were so excited. Here you can see what the sword and shield looked like.Here is K. all on his own! I tried to get him to match his brothers, but I couldn't find a size I thought would fit him, although it probably would have fit him better than this costume. While it was cute, it was too small from day one. It is hard when your only options are to buy online. So K. got to be the Prince elect! He sure thinks he's that already.

"I ate my last Daddy too! Ha ha!"

Last Day in Ethiopia

Our last day in Ethiopia was also jam packed with adventure. After some mis-communication and the manager of the guest house missing church (which she told us later), we arranged to be taken to the Thomas Center one last time before we left that evening, and we planed a trip to Debre Zeyit. We spent the morning packing and generally just hanging around the house. Just before the trip to Debre Zeyit, we went to the Thomas Center. We arrived unannounced but were warmly welcomed by the staff. We went to T's room and romped around with her for a while. It was so much fun. She especially liked A's sunglasses.

We took some pictures and then after about ½ to 1 hour we got ready to leave. It was as hard as we had anticipated, leaving such a wonderful daughter there, not knowing when we would be back to bring her home. For me it was heat breaking. And then T realized that we were leaving and she was not going with us. She began to cry. Not like the first time where she cried some, but this time it was full tears and sobbing. I had some tears in my eyes when I walked down the stairs.

We planned a trip with the help of our Guest House to an area known for their beautiful “crater lakes.” Unlike the day before where we went to a place that seemed interesting to us (the water fall and the baboons), our guest house and tour guide insisted that this was “nice” place. Well, nice apparently meant a place that was developed with resorts, restaurants, and prepared activities such as boating and a swimming pool. While it was a nice place, it seemed to me and Vanessa that is was just another resort type hotel. We have found through our marriage that we prefer to see people how they really are and not how the rich tourists see them. To me the real Ethiopia was in downtown Addis Ababa and in the countryside town and villages. Nonetheless, we had fun canoeing in the lake and eating the resort quality Ethiopian food. Of note, when we ordered the Ethiopian food at the resort they said “Are you sure?! That IS traditional Ethiopian food!” Once we assured our waitress that we knew what we were doing she took our order. I got a lamb stew mixed with this really sour Injera bread and Vanessa got this amazing chicken dish with a side of Injera. We had a lot of fun and then we drove back to Addis Ababa to get ready for our flight home.

The resort

On the lake

We got to the airport at 11pm and had to scan our baggage right when we went in the door going into the building. After checking in we had to go through passport control. We had to fill out these little cards that looked exactly like the cards we filled out to get into the country only they said something like “Leaving” on the bottom. We stood in line for about 30 min and A was so tired that he fell asleep while I was holding him in line. This was a good thing because as I was standing there one of the security personnel saw this and asked our family to step to the VIP / First class passport line (go A, fall asleep on me any time). The funny thing was that he woke up almost the instant we finished at passport desk and did not fall asleep again until a couple hours later. Our plane from Ethiopia to Turkey was delayed an hour (we ended up getting on the airplane at 3am) and our connecting flight was also delayed two hours on the taxi way. Over all we arrived in Venice 2 hours late with Vanessa's sister, Erika, and her husband waiting for us (they landed 30 min before our original land time).

Overall a wonderful trip with some interesting moments and some heart wrenching moments. We cannot wait to go back and make T a permanent part of our family, never to be left behind again.

Ethiopia--Day Three

Poor Dan was sick pretty much this whole day, so I have to write about it instead. This was our greatest adventure day! I convinced the guide our guest house uses to take us to a place called Durba that I had read about in a travel book. I had picked it because it sounded both interesting and somewhat easy to get to. A relative term, as we were to learn. Our guide had never been there, but was willing to try. After driving on a main road out of town—which boasted some great sites because we saw a traditional funeral taking place on the side of the road, and it was “flag day” so we saw a bunch of horses dressed up for what I think was going to be a small parade-type thing—we turned off onto this dirt road.

Just one of the normal sites. So many donkeys!

This is where it got interesting. We would travel for a few minutes, and then our driver, Solomon, or the guide would yell out the window “Durba, Durba” and ask directions. They would keep telling him it was further. Even though it was only an hour out of town, they already spoke enough of a different dialect, that our guide sometimes had a hard time communicating. (I should also mention that the North must be more dangerous because we had to stop twice for police to check the vehicle and ask us where we were going. Our guide had also forgotten to get some vital paperwork from the guest house, so he had to bribe the guards to let us back into the city on our way home.) After doing this for some time, and traveling on a very rough road, we finally made it into Durba where we then found some local willing to show us where the waterfall was—the intended destination. Out of nowhere, we found ourselves driving on the side of a huge ravine. There isn’t much water that flows down the waterfall, but the drop is spectacular.

Also, this was one of those scene from National Geographic because once out of the car, we were surrounded by all the local children who proceeded to follow us everywhere we went. Even more strange was one of the local youths started asking us, in great English, about American politics. Turns out, he is an Ethiopian law student who was home for the summer. At the top of the waterfall, there was a whole family of baboons that we got to get pretty close to and watch for a while—well, as close as I was willing to go.

If you look closely, you can see one of the males, and behind him, many of the village women washing clothes in the river.

By the time we headed back, A had figured out what a novelty American children are (I think they see American tourists every once and awhile, but not American children since both I and A got quite a bit of attention everywhere we went). He would wave at every person we passed through the bus window and revel in how excited people were to wave back at him.

Since Dan was sick—which was not due to the food as I’m sure you are thinking. If it had been the food, we would all have been down, since we all ate the same things, and he didn’t have any of the normal food sickness symptoms—we just went back to the guest house and hung out there. Unfortunately, I don’t think Dan remembers much of this day at all. At the guest house, A, being his normal charming self, got nearly all the workers—a guard, a small boy who must live in the back part of the house, and the driver Solomon—to play different games with him. By the time we left, they were all deeply in love with A. They all gave him hugs and gifts when we left.