Cookies

Me: Doodle, that's a great looking cookie!"
Doodle: It's Uncle Aaron.
Me: Really?
Doodle: Yes.(Annoyed)Don't you see the glasses?
Me: Oh yeah, now I see it.
Doodle: The other one is his friend. See? They are together.

Family Pictures

Ok, so I've been out of pocket for a while. A personal health issue- not a big deal, Dan being on service, work, kids, many dr appts (checkups and more cross off the list adoption checkups), saying goodbye to Mary Poppins, who has a chance to chase her dream and welcoming Hoosier Girl....all this to say life happened and I am back.

Here's a slideshow from our most recent family photo shoot--two weeks ago. Our first family photo shoot since the airport when we brought the Newbie home. Moo was not in the mood and she's usually our star model, but we did manage to get some awesome pouty shots. I love the shots at the end with all of the girls.
All in all, I think they turned out great. I hope I can get the slideshow to work better this time. I'm putting it in a link and not in the blog itself. Thanks again to Peggy and Frank for working with us.

Here's the slideshow.

Coming Home Slideshow

We have family friends who are photographers. Well, Frank is the photographer and Peggy, his wife, generally makes us look good. Peggy and Frank were at our wedding, they came to the hospital and took the first photos of Moo, they took toddler photos of Doodle and Moo, they take our family photos, etc. So it was only natural to have Frank come to the airport when we came home with the Newbie. We wanted someone to capture the moment of our girls meeting each other for the first time without us worrying about missing the moment or being self conscious. We took some posed shots, but most were in a photo-journalistic style, which is a part of Frank's background. Peggy put some of those photos to music for us. Go ahead and take a look. Seeing us become a family at last makes me tear up. It starts with our girls waiting and waiting.......

ETA: I removed the slideshow since everything got a bit wonky. Here's a link to it. It works better than putting it directly into the blog.

She's Mobile

The Newbie started crawling on August 31st, but things have been busy here. I'll post more later, but this is a short video of her in action.

Happy New Year! Melkam Addis Amet!

Friday, September 11th was the Ethiopian New Year, but we celebrated today (Sunday). I made Alicha Sega Wot (mild beef stew), Misir Wot (yellow lentil stew), Kikel Gommen (cabbage, carrots and potatoes) and Chicken Tibs (fried chicken without breading, except I made it without the onion and peppers for the kids). We used Injera that we brought back from our trip to Minnesota and kept in the freezer.

A quick note, my Kikel Gommen looks purple because we had red cabbage from our farm share. And, yes, I know the beef stew looks like a pile of poop, but I tried and it tastes delicious even though it looks like crap. Ditto for the lentils, except think breastfed baby poop. Hey, I know you are all thinking it, so why not put it out there? Despite the fact that I desperately need a food stylist, I'm proud of the meal. It tasted pretty good and reasonably authentic. My kids and Dan loved it.

If you want to learn more about Ethiopian New Year, click here. Chatty Cathy also has a good link on her blog. I tried to use Cathy's link to no avail.

Oh, and we usually don't have such a loud tablecloth on the table. Nama was here and told the girls it is never too early for Halloween (her favorite holiday). We had to start decorating today because the girl were sooo excited. Thanks, Nama!

In other news, the Newbie started crawling. I also have lots of photos to post-- Uncle A came to visit and we had a great visit with the cousins (until we had to kick them out to go to Disney on Ice, that is a story for another day--Sorry guys, blame Nama!).

Go Irish!

The Newbie's first ND Game (on TV, because taking three kids to the ND game would be a disaster).

Bike Shorts

It started with the lone purchase of a flowered pair for gymnastics last summer. They were perfect--fitted but not too tight, no pockets and they were acceptable per the gymnastics dress code. Then she began to wear them every day. Then it was fall, phew! At the beginning of this summer, I bought a few more pairs because really, who wants to do that much laundry? Suddenly, that was all she would wear. We have them with monkeys, ladybugs, and flowers. We have solid colors and polka dot. We have a few extra long pairs with rhinestone hearts on them. I thought, ok, so I'll buy the matching shirts. It won't be so bad. Except that she refuses to wear the matching shorts and shirts combos. The photo above is one of the more acceptable outfits. Most of the time she looks like some elf who escaped from a whacked out biking race.

The irony is that she can't even ride her bike without training wheels yet.

I didn't care too much at first, since she was going to preschool. But now, it's kindergarten, and I'm afraid she will be made fun of. It's bad enough that she packs the oddest lunch known to man and is a teacher's pet who follows all the rules. Now this? Before I know it, she's going to be that girl--the weird one who eats the paste.

I blame myself, really. I have a fondness for 70's and 80's tunes. I'll bet if you listen to certain Madonna tunes backwards they tell you to buy bike shorts in neon colors, lace gloves, and those jelly bracelets. Truly, even clothes a la Linda Evans in Dynasty would be better.

In the meantime, we've negotiated that she will wear a skirt for picture day. If anyone has any ideas on how I can break this bike shorts habit, I'm all ears. In the meantime, it's all 80's all the time here.