Adoption and ESPN?

I saw this great video today on LifeSong for Orphans website.  It is from ESPN College Gameday and is about Georgia Bulldogs head coach, Mark Richt, and his family's journey in adopting two children from Ukraine, one of which has a facial deformity.  Check it out!  Adoption made ESPN.

Click here for video

Photo Albums

Here are some photos from our trip to Ethiopia.  Most of these photos are from Addis Ababa while some others are from The Blue Nile Gorge and the Southern Region.

Here's Album 1 - Click Here

Here's Album 2 - Click Here

Now we're really home

After spending a week at the beach with family this past week(we were home from Ethiopia for about 20 hours before leaving again) we are now officially home and starting to settle back in. My hope was to blog last week from vacation, however I found that its actually easier to find a reliable, low cost internet connection in Addis Ababa than it is in Ocean City, NJ. Hopefully we'll get some things posted this week.

We're home!

After a 17 hour flight, we are home!  We had a good flight - Hanna was a trooper - and we passed through immigration, etc.   We had amazing immigration officers along the way.  They were so kind and helpful.  Its good to be home and ready to settle in to our new family life!

Traveling Home...

This afternoon is a quiet afternoon around the guest house as we pack up and prepare to leave.  This morning we had an Ethiopian cooking lesson where we learned how to make shiro wot and a bunch of other dishes. Joshua even got to try his hand at making injera.   We then followed lunch up with a coffee ceremony.  Its an amazing time of roasting coffee beans over charcoal, grinding the beans and serving them fresh.  It is a relaxing, community building time which is a great honor to be part of.

 

We are all packed up and leave for the airport in a couple of hours and then our 17 hour journey back to The States begins.  We'll be back in DC by 8 am and then pass through immigration, etc.  

 

Please be praying for one of the little children in our travel group who has gotten quite sick. 

 

Catch up with you all Stateside soon!

 

By the way...Hanna is doing amazingly well.  She is definitely part of the family!

Happy New Year!!

Thursday is New Year's Day in Ethiopia, so Happy New Year to you. Because Ethiopia follows a different calendar, their New Year's Day falls on September 11th each year. This also means that they are just entering the year 2001 and this whole past year has been full of Millenium celebrations. So while in the States is might be 09.11.2008, here in Ethiopia today is 01.01.2001 . Just in case you needed the day off, let your boss know today is New Years Day.

a pic from today

here's a pic of Hanna from today.