Christmastime was here

So, what have we been up to in the last few weeks? Clearly having too much fun to keep up on the blog! :-) The weeks leading up to Christmas were quite full, and the week after Christmas has been sooo relaxing. It is so nice to have the whole family together...we generally sleep in (even the kids!), laze around for awhile, eat breakfast, work on a puzzle for a bit, then we head down to do a quick workout while the kids play, eat lunch and then do some sort of activity. This is the life - and I'm enjoying every second!

So - the best way to explain what we've been up to is through pictures...here goes:

(Below) We went on the Bethlehem walk. It is an amazing production put on by a local church. They replicate what Bethlehem would have been like at the time Jesus was born. Complete with singing angels from the sky, lots of animals and a market it is a great event.
(Below) The kids learned how to press olives into olive oil, and here Mebira is crushing spices. Mebira said that they used this a lot in Ethiopia. It was amazing how much the "Bethlehem market" looked like any market you would see in Ethiopia and I'm sure it brought back some memories for her.

(Below) We attended a few Christmas parties. This was the Christian Adoption Services party where the kids got to meet Santa. I was just glad that Mebira didn't pull off his beard and yell, "You're not Santa!" like she saw Buddy do in Elf. :-)
(Below) We watched quite a few Christmas specials. Next up? After Christmas specials like the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins!
(Below) We had the girls' favourite supper - "snacky supper around the tree".
(Below) A yearly tradition with Dad - gingerbread house. The gingerbread "mysteriously" disappeared a few days ago and no one noticed!
(Below) The girls had their school Christmas concert and we took a few pictures before we left.
(Below) Still more pics from before the concert. I was thoroughly amazed at how well they all did at the concert. Mebira, especially, could have been totally terrified having only been in Canada for 6 months, but she got up on stage with her class in front of 500ish people, smiled and did all of her actions and sang along. This girl is willing to take anything on!
(Below) Our Advent Pyramid. I bought this in Germany during my year there and the girls enjoy seeing it spin every year.

(Below) We did something new this year. We are not really a singing family...but I thought it would be nice to do some caroling this year so we each picked a song, found it on one of the many Christmas cds I have, cranked it up and sang along. It was actually a nice time.

(Below) Christmas Eve turned out a bit different than we had planned. My mom (the host this year) came down with a brutal stomach flu and had to miss out and we switched locations to K&A's at the last minute. It was so sad not to have Omi (i.e. Mrs. Christmas) there, but we made the most of it. Mebi was sooooo excited for Christmas and it was fun to experience the first Christmas with her.
(Below) Such a cute pic with their wonderful cousins!
(Below) "Wait kids! Just a few more pictures before presents!"
(Below) Opening presents on Christmas Eve! So fun and I'm so glad we don't have to wait for Christmas morning!
(Below) Back at home, Christmas morning, stocking time!
(Below) Christmas Day eve - another cute picture with more wonderful cousins! Although it was sad to have the first Christmas without Arvid's dad, we had some nice talks and were still able to make it a really nice evening.
Well, that sums it up...lots of fun and lots of food! I hope your Christmas was enjoyable as well.

Food

It's interesting to see how food is a huge factor for someone who has gone without. We struggle with our bio girls at every meal but breakfast...they barely eat anything at all and there is usually some amount of negotiation on their part. If I eat this, can I leave that?, etc.

Mebira is a dream when it comes to food. She over-ate when she first came home, and we generally let her at that time. After a while we started scaling her portions back, and now we will sometimes say no to a third portion and will offer veggies or fruit instead. She has taking this completely in stride (the way she handles everything new).

It is such a delight to see her enjoy anything I make. Even if she complains a little bit at first the (and that's only the odd time) she will still devour it like it's the best thing in the world. I honestly don't know what her true favourites are because she just really seems to enjoy everything she eats. There is hardly anything she doesn't like...I think celery and peppers may be about it. :-)

As much as it feels like she has always been here, there are times when her past definitely influences things. At night when she prays, she still thanks God for food...every single time. And it's always the first part of her prayer.

Today (during our ask a question at suppertime conversation), G asked what you would pack if you were going somewhere for three days and could only bring three things along. Answers ranged from a cell phone, to a bible, to a book, to a stuffy. Finally, it was Mebira's turn and she answered that she would bring a snack, breakfast and supper. :-) Clearly food is on her mind a lot, and having gone without it once, she doesn't want to ever have that experience again!

December musings

It seems that I've been so occupied with life in December that the blog is sliding. I've barely been keeping up on reading other people's posts, and just haven't been inspired or thought of anything exciting to post on here. In case anyone is still reading in this crazy season I'll post a few highlights of the past few weeks:

• We've had two Christmas parties so far. One was with Arvid's work, and the kids got gifts (which the parents got to buy and be reimbursed for) and the girls loved it! Our second party was with our adoption agency last Sunday. A few hundred people jammed into a church basement and celebrated adoption and Christmas. It was so nice to be with lots of other families who looked just like ours. The kids got gifts from Santa...needless to say Mebira no longer thinks that Santa is Jesus. :-)
• We've watched a few Christmas shows. Last weekend we watched the What's In the Bible Why Do We Call it Christmas? movie. It was actually quite interesting and showed where traditions like stockings, Christmas trees, Santa all came from. It also explains why December 25th is the day...I think we'll watch it every year. It is a good reminder that we can still enjoy things like gifts, Santa, stockings and trees but that these traditions are meant to point us to God.
• The gifts are wrapped, the menus are planned, and we're just counting down the days until Christmas. We'll spend Christmas Eve with my family, and Christmas Day with Arvid's family. I am so excited for the Christmas Eve candlelight service at our church, and for the family time, watching the kids open their gifts and the excitement of coming down and seeing the stockings, for watching the Nativity Story with them, lighting the Advent Pyramid, etc., etc., etc. I also can't wait for the two weeks off. Arvid will have the first week off and we hope to have lots of time for puzzles, walks, sledding, skating and family Wii tournaments.
• I celebrated my birthday! What a wonderful day - slept in, had a bath, read a book, cought up on email, some (albeit a bit more brief than I intended) quiet time with just me and my bible, delicious lunch out, coffee with a great friend, and a family night! Oh - and the night before, a quiet dinner with Arvid at home with Thai food take-out (YUM!), Christmas music, a warm fire, candles and twinkling lights from the Christmas tree. Really, a perfect day and it's not over yet! :-)

OK, that's all for now. I hope you are all enjoying the season!

Some more hair pics

I am still enjoying playing around with Mebira's hair, and she is still a dream when I do it. Of course she gets to generally watch TV so she's happy as can be, but I think she also likes to have her hair done and look pretty, and it is good for our bonding and attaching as well.

One thing I wish, though, is that I could be faster at it. It pretty much takes me 1.5 -2 hours to do almost any style. (I'll admit I don't often time it, but it's often the equivalent of a full length Disney movie plus a little bit of Veggie Tales. :-) ) I'm not really sure how to speed up the process. Granted, I am incredibly slow at corn rowing...I've looked back at videos from people who did her hair in Ethiopia and I can't even see what they're doing because their fingers are moving so fast. So yes, I could get faster in that department.

It seems like the majority of time is spent in parting it. Then, of course, I either braid or twist which goes fairly fast, but when you're doing 50 of them on a head it does take some time. And I can only imagine as her hair gets longer that detangling will take even longer and so will everything else. If anyone has some fast hair styles to try, I would love some advice.

In the meantime, here are some more styles I've tried:

(Below) I tried corn rowing again. I still end up with some wonky ones, but I'm getting a bit better. I tried doing an angular part at the front (which you'll see on the next picture), and I like it, but I went too far back and should have stopped it a bit further up as it would have made things more symmetrical on both sides.
(Below) The same style from the front. The angular part is actually quite cute - this picture doesn't really do it justice.
(Below) This was a while ago when we took her hair out of a style. I LOVE it and wish we could have put some flower clips in and just left it, but she still refuses to have her hair down. G likes to name all of her hairstyle...this one she has entitled "the rockstar". :-)
(Below) I may have included a picture of this before. I LOVE the look of this, and it wasn't even that hard to do. It's the veil style. HOWEVER, I'm not 100% sure I would do this again. The problem is that it took a good chunk of time to do, and after a few days some of the back got messed up and there was no way to fix it without redoing everything below it as it is all interconnected. I may try it again but will just do the top of her head, and leave the back in twists or braids so that if it gets messed up on the top I won't have to do the whole head again!
(Below) I had purchased some beads and just HAD to try them. This was just a simple box braid style with multicoloured elastics for fun and beads just on the bottom two rows. I think it can look a bit overwhelming when there are so many beads all over this tiny head!
(Below) It's growing! This picture was taking after swimming and you can see how cool her hair is. It totally coils up into these little ringlets. I LOVE this and I hope she will keep it like this when she is older.
(Below) I was just planning on doing puffs on the top and box braids at the back, but this style kind of evolved as I went along.
(Below) This is a picture of the same style from the front. She came down with her Tiana doll and I was struck at how similar they looked - same hair style, same colour dress, same big eyes, same skin shade. So cute! :-)

That's all for now. She has had her hair in cornrows for a few weeks but she wants to have it down so I'll probably go with box braids for the next two weeks and then I need to think of something cute for Christmas. I'm really looking forward to mid January when I'll be doing yarn braids again and then I will have a huge break from hair!!

Winter fun

As I've lamented, it took forever for us to get snow this year, of all years. And, when we finally did get a big dump of snow, it turned to -20 as soon as the snow stopped falling so that we couldn't even enjoy it!

Since then, though, we've had some great days and here are a few pics:

(Below) My mom came over and helped build snowmen with the girls. Mebira's first snowman!
(Below) We took the girls sledding for the first time last weekend. They were so excited!
(Below) Look at the joy on Mebira's face. This was totally up her alley.
And, on a cold winter day, what could be more fun than doing a puzzle? We all contributed this year, and I am not pulling another one out until Christmas because we got so addicted (some of us more than others)!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! (a few pic below)

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE Christmas? The music, the food, the decorations, the smells, the chocolates, the fireplace, the shopping, the coffee, the time with friends...I LOVE IT!

This year is extra special because we FINALLY have Mebira home and FINALLY have our complete family together. During one of the four miscarried pregnancies I bought an extra stocking for our third child. Each year, for four years, as I’ve unpacked our Christmas decorations my heart has ached, seeing that empty stocking remaining in the box. Last week, however, we decorated our house, and it was so amazing to bring that fifth stocking out, show it to Mebira and HANG IT UP!

It is so fun to experience everything again through fresh (Mebira) eyes. We put up our garland, our Christmas village, our nativity scene, the stockings, the wreaths, the candles, the angels and when it was done, Mebira looked around and said, "Our house is beautiful, Mom!" A highlight for me was that our girls were like little elves. They were so excited to decorate that they carried almost all of the boxes from the basement upstairs themselves, and then brought them all back down again!

We've asked her about Christmas in Ethiopia. From what she has told us, there were no celebrations at Christmas there. Not in Wolayta in her birth village, and not at the orphanage - at least not that she can remember. She has said a few times, "No Christmas in Ethiopia".

One of my favourite parts is decorating the tree. We put up candy canes in memory of Arvid's mom, and we have crocheted snowflakes from Arvid's grandma that we put up in memory of her, and this year we had a special new addition. While we were in Ethiopia Mebira picked out some ornaments at the pottery place, and we put those up on our tree in memory of her birth family. We're still looking for something in memory of Arvid's dad but will have to think about that a bit more.

Although we're not huge into the Santa thing - we prefer to focus on Jesus as the reason for the season - we do allow Santa to come and fill up our stockings. Really, from school they pick up so much of the Santa stuff...we don't need to highlight it at home. Although I have to admit that I play the "If you fight too much our elf on the shelf (a really fun gift someone gave us last year) will report it to Santa so you better be good!" card. I am not sure how to handle the conversation yet about why Santa didn't go to Ethiopia. I may spill the beans about Santa right after Christmas just so that she doesn't think that Ethiopians are bad and that's why Santa didn't go there. Honestly, it's things like this that can make adoption a bit more challenging - when things you just take for granted get complicated! :-)

OK, here are a few pics. Unfortunately, the quality isn't the best on some of them:

(Below) Big sis reading a Christmas book to little sis. These two are so cute together. Little sis still has big sis wrapped around her finger. :-)

(Below) We LOVE watching Christmas movies together once a week. Here we rewarded ourselves with a Disney Mickey Mouse Christmas movie after we finished decorating. We also love Elf, Shrek the Halls, Narnia movies and the Sound of Music.

December 4th

Sunday was December 4th and it was a bittersweet day. On one hand, we celebrated that Mebira has been home in our family for six months. Can you believe it? Sometimes it feels like she's been here forever, and other times it feels like she just got here.

December 4th was also the day that Arvid's mom passed away, 16 years ago. I never had a chance to meet her as she passed away the year before Arvid and I became friends, but she seemed like an amazing woman. This summer, while going through some of Arvid's dad's things, we came across a book from her funeral. Someone (thank you to whoever did this!) had friends and family write letters or memories about her and then they put it in a beautiful album. I had the privilege to read through this book and I basically sobbed for an hour straight. I mourned what could have been, I mourned for the family and their loss of not only their mom but their dad as well, and I mourned that she seemed so amazing yet I never had a chance to meet her. One theme that came up a few times was her love for little African babies. How excited she would have been to welcome Mebira into our family!

Our pastor had a sermon on hope this past Sunday. Christmas is a tough time of year for so many people. Again, I was reminded that we have hope! One day we will be reunited with our loved ones and one day there will be no more tears, fears or pain. For those of you struggling this Christmas season, I wish you God's comfort and hope!!