one less orphan

In case you haven't heard...

2009-05-21T18:41:00.001-04:00

Our family is moving to Ethiopia. I know that's big news...to get the scoop, check out our family blog at www.theshannonfamily.com . Its quite a story. We could be moving to Addis Ababa as early as October, 2009.

She's Got Proof!

2009-05-21T18:37:00.002-04:00

Today Hanna's Certificate of Citizenship arrived! Woo Hoo! This was the last major adoption paper work that we had to do. So, while she has officially been an American citizen since December 11th when we had our court hearing, she now has the proof to show it. Now, we'll head off to Social Security and get her status updated with them and then apply for a US passport for her.

Feet!

2009-03-28T21:37:00.005-04:00

Our dear friend Kate took these photos while she was keeping our kids for a recent trip. I LOVE the one of my 4 kids! The single one is Caia...she asked to have her feet taken alone. Kate was so sweet to oblige!

Hanna - 15 Mos. Old!

2009-03-27T21:46:00.004-04:00

I was trying to get one nice "normal" shot of Hanna for a grant agency that helped us bring her home. I guess I might need to redefine normal. We got everything but. And yes, she is eating Cheerios with a pretend ice cream scoop, just in case you were wondering.

2009-03-06T21:27:00.001-05:00

Caia drew a picture of herself with Hanna on the porch with sidewalk calk today. So here are the sisters sitting by their portrait. And some of Hanna. Apparantly, something was wildly funny...as much of life is to Hanna! :)

He's Got It

2009-02-20T20:00:00.000-05:00

The other day Christy was looking at a video that flashed up that there are currently 5 million orphans in Ethiopia. Joshua read that caption and he said to Christy, "Well, mom, now there's one less than 5 million." I love the fact that he's caught it!

How Could God?

2009-02-18T21:39:00.003-05:00

Below is a video from a campaign called "I Am Second" featuring a young man named Blake and the difference he chose to make in his school by raising money to dig wells rather than everyone buy great costumes for Homecoming. I love the question he asks...one of those "how could God" questions. It is so easy to see the suffering around the world and ask "How could God allow such pain?" However, Blake asks two very courageous questions, "How could we allow ourselves to be so distracted" and "How could God allow us to be so affluent?" What if the very God whom we blame for not fixing the problems of our world has actually blessed us to be a blessing and to make a difference in His Name with the vast resources and affluence he has given us? Check out the video here. What if I could give up those exercises of affluence I take part in, so that someone else could benefit?

Just Like My Big Sis!

2009-02-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

Jerry & I were standing in the kitchen this morning, when Hanna came sheepishly into the room dragging something behind her. She came up to us and looked longingly up into our eyes. She brought the item out from behind her back and held it up to us. It was her big sister's purple dress-up dress. With her other hand, she tapped on her chest, signaling us to put it on her, and the longing in her eyes grew with every moment. When I popped that dress over her head, you would have thought she might explode! She proceeded to strut around the kitchen prouder than a peacock. All to be like Caia!

2009-02-11T20:57:00.001-05:00

So, Hanna's older sister loves to dress Hanna up. And Hanna loves to be dressed up. So here she is sporting a pink skirt over her outfit and was dragging around the purple skirt before she decided to plop down and pull toys out of the cupboard and make a mess...

Meet Alice

2009-02-10T20:27:00.001-05:00

This is Alice. Alice is Caia's current favorite stuffed animal. Alice is also Hanna's favorite thing to steal right now...which probably has something to do with the previous fact about Alice. Hanna is really into stuffed animals and babies. She loves to hold them, feed them, and pat them on the back. A little mother like her big sister...

Sledding after an Ice Storm! WhoooHoooo!

2009-01-29T20:06:00.000-05:00

We finally got snow...and a THICK layer of ice on top of it. Talk about perfect for sledding! We even got to get out the family toboggan...we don't get conditions to use it very often! So, all of us, even Hanna ended up out sledding on the hill between us and the church next door. What fun!

Loving Those Cheerios!

2009-01-25T19:56:00.000-05:00

Apparently, Cheerios are much more amusing than I ever imagined!

The Beauty of Attachment

2009-01-22T20:52:00.000-05:00

Tonight as I was sitting with Hanna, I became overwhelmed at what God has done in this little girl in helping her attach. She nestled her face into my neck and melted in my arms while embracing me for minutes. Its incredible when she does that. I am stunned when I think back to the first encounter with her in the care center in Addis when she seemed so scared of us, but now she seems so comfortable. Thank you God for working in this little girl's heart to enable her bonding to us. You are so good!

Hanna's First Birthday

2009-01-19T21:55:00.001-05:00

Ok, so the pics are going up 2 months late, but here are a couple of shots from Hanna's first birthday.

PA Farm Show

2009-01-15T19:31:00.000-05:00

A big annual tradition for our family is to go to the PA State Farm Show in Harrisburg every January. The kids LOVE going, and were so excited to get to take Hanna there for the first time. This is about as close to being "country" as we get.

More 1st Hairdo

2009-01-14T19:28:00.001-05:00

More shots of the puffs

Hanna's First Hair-do

2009-01-13T19:07:00.000-05:00

Well, it isn't much, but it all she'll let me do- 2 little puffs on top of her head. Even this was a challenge!

Christmas

2008-12-27T22:19:00.000-05:00

A couple of pics from Hanna's first Christmas with us!

Hanna's Dedication

2008-12-14T22:12:00.000-05:00

These photos are from December 14th when we had Hanna dedicated during our worship service at church. It was a beautiful time led by our great friend Rip Wahlberg. It was also very special to have Dave and Darice be part of it as Hanna's godparents and Christy's parents there as grandparents.

Court Day!

2008-12-11T20:50:00.003-05:00

This afternoon we appeared with Hanna in court for our finalization hearing. It was good to have another step behind us, even though this was totally just a formality. Everything was in order and Judge Hoberg is wonderful in these hearings. He just seems to love doing adoption hearings.

The hearing was relatively uneventful except for the fact that Jerry forgot his wedding date in under oath on the witness stand (neither of us can ever remember if it was May 25th or 27...at least we both forget, right). He got it right eventually with a bit of coaxing from our attorney.

The most beautiful thing of all is that Hanna now can have her name back. Its official that she is no longer Hanna Gerald Shannon (which is what her immigration paperwork had to reflect) but now she is Hanna Tessema Shannon. We are so glad to have her father's name back as part of her name (not to mention, Hanna Gerald??? what girl would want to grow up with that name).

On the way out of the courtroom we bumped into folks from Brittany's Hope Foundation who were there finalizing the adoption of a little boy from Vietnam and a girl from Albania. It was great to hear about their foundation which has helped to fund adoptions for over 300 children who were either special needs children or older children. We must have spent an hour sharing stories and getting to know each other. I believe they have adopted 9 children internationally and they started the foundation in memory of their first adopted daughter Brittany who died in a car accident during her senior year in college. They also have numerous humanitarian aid projects they support and work closely with our agency, CHSFS. Check out their website at www.brittanyshope.org . Its an amazing story.

3 month post placement

2008-12-03T13:19:00.002-05:00

Today we had our 3 month post placement meeting with our social worker. Wow, almost 3 months have passed since we brought Hanna into our family - that's so hard to believe. It was a lot of fun to sit around and talk about the developments we've seen in Hanna and especially the miracle of attachment and bonding which we have seen!

It's also fun to think about how much life we've experienced these past 3 months!

Here's a pic of Hanna with Joshua, Micah & Caia and her great grandfather on Thanksgiving weekend. It was a great time watching Hanna's great grandfather get to meet his great granddaughter from Ethiopia. By the way...he's 94!

My love / hate relationship with Starbucks...

2008-12-02T21:44:00.004-05:00

I must confess, I love Starbucks coffee. Ever since my first sip of it 12 years ago, I've been in love. I've been a loyal customer for years. I love the atmosphere of their stores as well as their coffee. I've been one to defend them when friends would refer to them as "Charbucks" or when people would question paying that much for a cup of coffee.

However, over these past couple of years my perspective has changed. And now, this once loyal customer has been trying to avoid buying coffee there for a few months. I've had a couple of meetings that happened there for the sake of convenience, however over all I have bypassed Starbucks for these past few months. It got to the point for me that I was conflicted by their business practices, especially their lack of fair trade coffee.

After having watched Black Gold and experienced first hand the poverty of Ethiopia, I decided that I no longer wanted to support a company that was not doing its part to help farmers by purchasing fair trade certified coffees that were ensuring the farmers could support themselves. I was conflicted to think that farmers in Hanna's region who raise coffee on the side, yet live off of less than $250 per year were not being paid more for the hard work that they put into growing coffee, which we were consuming at $2.00 to $4.00 per cup.

This was further accented to me by Starbucks involvement in humanitarian causes. Take Ethos water for instance. Its a great idea - give a portion of the profits off a bottle of water to help someone in the third world. Think of the millions of people throughout the world without clean water, yet we think nothing of dropping some serious coin for a bottle of water. I love the concept, however last I heard Starbucks was donating 5 cents for every bottle it sold. Now, that bottle of water was probably close to $2, yet the best they can do is donate 5 cents? I find the same confliction in the new Red campaign. Starbucks is donating 5 cents of every premium Red beverage to help fight Aids in Africa. Its a great concept, but 5 cents of a $4.00 latte does not seem super generous to me. That's about 1 percent of the purchase price. It is better than nothing, but it seems so small.

In all of this, I was glad to read a recent article stating that Starbucks is looking to expand their fair trade line and it was also reported that Starbucks paid an average $1.42/pound for green coffee, which is above average. That report is available at http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1975433/ . I find that very promising. I don't want to be too hard on Starbucks, after all they are a business and they are trying to make money. I guess I'm more concerned with how their image at times has been that they are very ethical and fair, but that image does not always seem to have matched reality. To be fairto Starbucks, I have heard from a few folks that work there that they have felt well cared for as employees. Its good to hear about those standards.

About 5 years ago we began to look at the coffee that we were serving at church. At the time we were serving Starbucks, but we then heard about a company called Pura Vida. Their coffees are fair trade, shade grown and organic. As I started to research them I couldn't believe what I found. Their mission is "to Create Good by using business to empower producers, motivate consumers, inspire business leaders, and, ultimately, serve the poor. By utilizing every facet of our company—capital structure, governance, employee recruitment, product sourcing, marketing and sales—to achieve social outcomes, we can demonstrate that the worlds of business and charity can not only co-exist, but can thrive on one another."

A business whose focus is serving the poor and "creating good." They have been focused on paying farmers better wages - they paid on average more than $1.60 per pound for coffee - caring for the environment in which the coffee is grown, and reinvesting their profits back into the villages where their farmers live. They have projects in Guatamala, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Ethiopia. Many of their projects are focused on helping children. The project in Ethiopia provided a lot of aid in the form of emergency food. This is a business with a cause much greater than making money - it is truly to see God's Kingdom move forward.

I love the idea. A company that is not driven by Wall Street needing to make money, but rather a company that is driven by a mission to serve the poor, start missions, plant churches and see cups of coffee that we purchase here really help to create good for someone else in the world. A business model that pushes back against meaningless consumerism and corporate greed. I love it. It is because my money can help support business models like these, that Starbucks is getting virtually no business from me any longer. Our choices have real impacts...may our choices help make life better for someone somewhere by "creating good."

If you'd like more info about Pura Vida, check them out at www.puravidacoffee.com . They are present on tons of college campuses, you can order coffee directly from them...or if you stop by the Vineyard this Sunday you can enjoy a cup on us!

Bathtime!

2008-12-02T21:26:00.003-05:00

I was looking through photos today and came across this one that I didn't realize Christy had shot during a recent bathtime. I love that grin. It simply sums up Hanna's personality so well.

Its especially nice to look at since Hanna is recovering from her last round of vaccinations yesterday. She had to get caught up over the past 3 months - 1 doctor visit per month for 3 months, everyone of them involving shots...Poor little thing...that's a lot of vaccinations!

Thankful

2008-11-27T10:10:00.007-05:00

This year we are realizing how much we have to be thankful for. It is so amazing to think that we have Hanna home with us. Two years ago at Thanksgiving time was a turning point for me in saying I was ready to proceed with an adoption. And now, here we are...2 years later with Hanna in our family. It is so amazing how God takes us on these journeys, calls us to partner with him and then provides what is needed. Here are a couple of pictures of our family. We are so thankful for them!

These photos were taken by our good friend Kate Aldrich who has her own photography business.She and her husband Brad recently adopted a little boy named Micah from Ethiopia.Check her out at www.katealdrichphotography.com/

Hanna's walking!

2008-11-26T10:17:00.000-05:00

She's been practicing a lot over the past few weeks and now she's just about got it down. This week Hanna started really taking off, taking multiple steps at a time and with the greatest laugh and grin along the way. Its the end of the world as we knew it...our baby is walking!