A few London highlights in pictures

The internet connection isn't too bad here but really slow with uploading pictures.  These are mostly from London (no sightseeing yet - that will be on the way home) and a few from Addis.  I'll try to get some pictures of Addis on in the next day or two.

We've given the kids free electronics time on travel days.  Here they are at the London airport, soaking it up!

This is actually in Addis.  We were soooo tired, just trying to make it until 7 so that we could go to bed.  I think M is an elf - she can live on about 15 minutes sleep a night!

We went for a walk in London.  It was sunny and warm and we came across a playground.  The girls loved playing on the tire zip line.

I always love going to stores and seeing the different food and packaginh.  These bottles of pop in London are so different from ours - long and skinny, in the shape of a bullet.

I asked the girls to put their clothes out before we went swimming.

M is reading her favourite archie comics with my mom.  So glad to have my mom around - and extra pair of hands has been great!

No one said we traveled lightly...there ARE 5 girls and only 1 guy.  Actually, most of the 8 suitcases are donations - so happy to get those away and travel lightly on the way back.

Arvid was a nice dad and swam with the girls twice at our hotel in London.  I took one for the team, sat on the lounge chairs and took pictures.  :-)

First one to bite the dust.  Arvid got a cold and zonked out on the couch in Addis.

We made it to Addis!

Wow.  What a tough few days this has been.  We flew through the night last night (I doubled my sleep this time from 30 minutes to 1 hour) and arrived in Addis this morning at 6:40 am Addis time (3:40 am London time, 8:40 pm Edmonton time).  I'm not sure what time it feels like right now to us...all I know is that we are super tired.

We are staying at the GT Guesthouse and it's awesome here.  We have a three bedroom suite, 2 bathrooms, large family and dining area and kitchen.  It's nice to be back in Ethiopia again - the weather is about 20 today.

Arvid and I went to the bank this morning to exchange money - the largest currency you can get here is the 100 birr bill - which is the equivalent of about $5.  So you can imagine the wad of cash we walked out with, stuffed into various pockets. 

We thought of staying up today but it was just too hard so the adults napped this morning.  The kids did well all day but are fading fast right now.  It's just about supper time and I can't wake G from the couch.  She is so out of it!

We went for a walk to Kaldi's coffee this afternoon (an Ethiopian Starbucks knock off) for great coffee and smoothies and snacks, and also got some fresh fruit at a "Supermarket" down the street.

The rest of the day we have zoned out and are just trying to make it to bedtime...hopefully we will wake up happy and refreshed tomorrow for a day of shopping!

I'll try to upload some pictures tomorrow.  The network is really slow right now for some reason.  Tomorrow is a shopping day and then things will start getting interesting as we travel to visit sponsor kids for 2 days and then visit M's birth village.  Until tomorrow...

Arvid has come down with a bad cold now...being sleep deprived doesn't help.  Hopefully we can all sleep well and feel like ourselves again.

Made it to London

Well, after sleeping only 30 minutes through the night on the plane, we made it to London. Although it felt like 2:30 in the morning to us, it was actually 9:30 in the morning London time. Somehow adrenaline carries you through and we made it uneventfully to our hotel, the Marriott Windsor Heathrow. I had booked this on an expedia special back in the summer and it is nice here.

Once we were checked in to our rooms (so thankful they let us check in early!!) it was about 12:30. It was actually sunny in London and about 8 degrees out. Quite pleasant. We then had to decide whether we should nap or power through the day and then hopefully sleep hard at night. We elected to power through and I could not believe how well the kids did. Arvid and I faded at times but they never did. They even swam hard for over an hour in the afternoon. G and E had slept a bit longer on the plane, but I don't know if M slept at all. Or if she did, she moved so constantly that she managed to bump me every 30 seconds in her sleep.

Anyway, we had supper in the hotel and then settled into our rooms. The kids watched a movie while we read for a bit but by 7 we were all exhausted and decided that we would go to sleep.

I slept great for what felt like a long time...I looked at the clock and it was only 10:56. Wow. After tossing and turning I slept again and checked the clock... 12:15. Oh no! I started panicking, tried on my own to sleep, then gave in, took two melatonin and slept like a dream until 8 this morning! G and E sawed logs all night thanks to their colds, and we had to wake them up hard at 8::30.

We had a wonderful breakfast buffet at the hotel...fresh fruit, omelettes made to order, waffles, sausages, pastries, cereals, etc. etc. and will go for a walk (another sunny day!), the kids will swim and we will head to the airport at 4ish for another flight through the night to Addis.

Thanks for those who have indicated you are praying. So far we are mostly healthy, but would appreciate lots of prayers for health. The time change, germs on the planes, exhaustion, and multitude of sick people we left behind in Edmonton don't add up to good odds. Also, please pray for patience and grace for each of us. We are not an adventurous family (except for m) and this is testing each of our limits.

One final comment on M. Although she was incredibly nervous about this trip, she is doing marvellous so far. She is so happy (this airplane food is the best food I've ever had! I love London - I want to live here! This hotel is the best) pretty much sums her up. Hopefully she continues this positive attitude when we hit Ethiopia.

Ok, sorry this wasn't the most exciting update...I'm still not exactly with it but am thankful that all is well. Hopefully we can sleep on the plane tonight and be ready for Addis tomorrow!

A Different Kind of Christmas...but still good

One of the biggest highlights of Christmas for us each year is the lazy, carefree feeling once everything is wrapped and ready.  Christmas usually kicks off another week or two of celebration and we revel in the fact that we don't know what time it is, or even what day it is.  We spend our days doing puzzles, sledding, skating, seeing friends, playing games and just sitting around.

This year, things are way different.  Although we still managed to enjoy our Christmas season, we had a million things going through our heads with our upcoming trip.  There are so many things to think of when you are traveling as a family of five to Africa, when you know you can't just run out to the nearest WalMart if you forgot something.  On top of that, we are trying to fill our suitcases with donations...trying to find the right items for each person, which has required quite a bit of running around.

We did three things this year we've never done - 1) We went to WalMart at nearly one in the morning on December 21st (eerily quiet!) 2) We went to Costco on Christmas Eve at 3:30 pm (busy but no line-ups) and 3) We braved WalMart on Boxing Day in the evening (eerily quiet again!)

Aside from buying last minute things, we did sneak in quite a bit of celebrating...here are a few highlights. I did not do Christmas cards or pictures this year, so from our family to yours - Merry Christmas!!

We started puzzling early this year - we finished about 4 puzzles by December 1 but then lost some steam

We had a really nice visit with Arvid's Aunt and Uncle.  They have really filled in the role of grandparents on Arvid's side of the family and are very dear to us.

Presents...the girls exchanged a few gifts early.  Duct tape was a hit this year!

My favourite service of the year - candlelight.  Loved it!

Christmas Eve at my parents'...complete with musical production by the kids

Playing a xylaphone duet

Yes, my dad's lighting candles on the Christmas Tree, following the German tradition. Yes, it was for a very short time and Yes, we had fire extinguishers ready.  :-)

So glad to still have my grandma celebrating with us

Christmas morning stockings

Mmmm...Christmas morning breakfast...waffles, bacon, tons of fresh fruit, muffins, yogurt, whipping cream, fresh juice...

Christmas Eve turkey at the Matsons...so fun!

The adults are largely outnumbered!

Family pic - so blessed to have such amazing family on both sides!

Fundraiser...Pies, pies and more pies!

Thank you soooo much to those who supported us both by purchasing items and donating money.  

We had a busy fall and were able to make and sell over 50 apple pies and nearly 70 friendship bracelets. Whew! We raised $1,500 and that was matched with another $1,500 so we were thrilled to be able to donate $3,000 to the Soddo Christian Hospital.  We split the donations between the maternal benevolence and ambulance fund. You can view more about these projects here:  http://www.soddo.org/projects/  I know there are many huge needs here in case you would be interested in reading/sponsoring.  Thank you so much!  

We are thrilled to be able to visit the hospital soon and meet some of the amazing people there.  Thanks to others' generosity, we were also able to purchase $500 worth of children's fabric which we will bring them to be sown into children's hospital gowns.

We are in the midst of craziness at our house...excitement for Christmas and the chaos of packing for Ethiopia.  I apologize for not doing Christmas cards or letters or pictures this year...there's only so much chaos I can handle.  :-)

Thanks for reading!  

Hours and Hours of friendship bracelet making!

The girls worked so hard and helped in everything from peeling apples to making pie crust.  Thanks, Mom for doing it all with us!

A small portion of the pies we baked - around 60 in total!

Ethiopia Bound!!

OK, it's not right around the corner, but we DID book our flights and hotels for a trip to Ethiopia this winter.  I am very nervous about it because we are ALL going.  It cost a FORTUNE to buy five plane tickets, especially because we are taking the easy way and stopping in London for a night on the way there and two nights on the way home.

I think it's going to be a total shock for G and E, and it will be interesting to see how Mebira handles it all as well.  Because she came to Canada when she was almost 5, she still has a lot of memories.  However, sometimes things are a little bit different than you remember...especially after living in Canada for two years.

Why did we decide to go back?  Well, Mebira still has some relatives in Ethiopia who we would like to visit.  Who, you may ask?  That is Mebira's story and I will let her tell it when she's ready, to whom she wants to.  In the meantime, I will tell you that we are all five going to travel to the remote village of her birth, and will visit the relatives who are there.  I'm a bit nervous about how this will go...I can imagine it will be incredibly emotional for all of us.

I absolutely loved visiting Ethiopia both times...it is an amazing country.  I know it will have a totally different flavour now that we are bring G and E along, though.  They find it difficult when we camp without sewer hookups!  :-)  It will be very eye opening, though and will give us many teaching moments.

The girls have been very excited about doing some fundraising for organizations in Ethiopia.  We've decided to support the Soddo Christian Hospital http://www.soddo.org/ and are going to have a crazy busy weekend baking apple pies and making friendship bracelets.  If you live in our area and want to order a pie ($10) or friendship bracelet ($2) or would like to donate, we would love it!

I'll update more thoughts on our trip another time...for now thanks for reading.  :-)

Staying at home

I've been slacking a lot in the blogging world.  It feels like there is so much new that I don't really know where to start.

The fall was pretty hard on our family.  I was quite busy with work at the church and some extra projects at GE.  One of our girls struggled with anxiety and it became a nightly stress walking through that with her.  Mebira also struggled with her identity...and became very embarrassed to be seen with us at school or anywhere in public, and although I understood this would happen, I wasn't prepared for it to happen when she was six.  Arvid also had a lot of stress at work and was putting in more hours and effort and I realized that we couldn't keep going the way we had been.  After nearly five years of working at the church, I decided that I would stop at Christmas.

I didn't feel the full effects of being home until the spring as I ended up having quite a few GE projects to keep me busy.  I could already tell a difference in our family life in January, though.  I have extreme flexibility on my GE projects - I can do them wherever and whenever I want, as long as I meet my deadlines.  And, oddly enough, I really like working on these projects...it doesn't really feel like work.  (I had good flexibility working at the church and enjoyed it, too, but, as anyone who has worked at a church knows, there is a lot more emotional involvement than there is in creating AutoCAD drawings.  :-) )  Anyway, our family life went from crazy, rushed, stress-filled, to the kids coming home for lunch every day, I had lots of time for baking, getting healthy groceries and trying out some new recipes.

I'll admit that staying home has been challenging at times.  When I'm not doing GE or helping out on a few things at the church, I sometimes feel unmotivated...and that all I do is clean the same thing over and over.  I also have a real sense of guilt...this is not from Arvid at all - he is very supportive, but if I sit down for any reason (like blogging) I feel like I should be doing something else, because he's working so why should I have fun?

Obviously, I was concerned about the financial impact of staying home.  My GE work isn't consistent - I just help out whenever they need me, so there is no guarantee that I will have work at any given time.  BUT, we had a really cool thing happen.  I stopped working at Christmas, and by the end of January (with only one regular paycheck in between), Arvid got a raise and it covered exactly what I had been making at the church.  I TOTALLY see that as provision from God, and am so thankful that He blessed us in this way. 

I had a meeting with the ministry team last night, and I must admit that I do miss being very involved at church and working with all of those amazing people.  However, I know for right now that this has been the right change for our family.  Mebira is so much more confident now and seems to really have settled in again nicely.  She is no longer shying away from me in public, but now runs and grabs my hand, fights to sit next to me, etc.  Our daughter with anxiety is making huge strides and is surprising me with her strength and ability to tackle things.

So there's an update for any of you who are still following.  :-)  And now I REALLY need to go do those dishes!!