Ethiopian dinner

After church on Saturday evening, Tom had the great idea to go to downtown Omaha for dinner at what appears to be the only Ethiopian restaurant in town. It is called, creatively enough, "Ethiopian Restaurant." (I don't know why, but I thought that was funny.) It is attached to the East African Grocery. Anna was a bit suspicious, as she is the world's pickiest eater, but she actually tried five different things and liked three of them. Anna, Emily and I preferred the vegetarian dishes... lots of lentils. Tom liked the lamb and chicken. Everyone loved the injera bread. What a fun texture! Kenneth was working, so he couldn't join us, but he enjoyed the left-overs the next day.

We enjoyed chatting with the waitress, although she had somewhat limited English. We found out that her name is Selam, just like one of our twins. I also had her pronounce Fikir for Tom and the girls. It sounds so much prettier when spoken by a native Ethiopian.

We'll definitely go back sometime with our new daughters! :)

The end for Emily :(

Some of you probably remember back in early November that Emily sprained both of her ankles, one of them quite severely. She just finished physical therapy a couple of weeks ago, but she is still having some pain and limited mobility. Her meet season is already half over, and there is no guarantee that she will be healed enough or prepared enough for even the last two meets in March. She spends 23-25 hours a week practicing, which leaves virtually no time for other activities. That's a lot of work for the possibility of no competitive season, and this is her senior year. So Emily made the tough decision to hang up her grips. She will keep her part time coaching job; she enjoys that very much and the hours are easy.

She had a wonderful career. She was a very late-starting competitor at 12 years old, but still went on to compete for five years in levels 4-8. She was a state champion in every level she competed at, and qualified and competed in regionals as a level 8. She was a member of two state championship teams, level 6 in 2005 and level 8 in 2008. She was on the top qualifying team for Nebraska for the Region 4 regional meet in 2008.

I think she is absolutely making the right decision. Her stress level is already way down. Now she can focus on school and family before leaving for college in the fall.

But I still feel a bit sad. Gymnastics was a wonderful thing that my two daughters and I shared, and now we are just... done. It feels strange. But life moves on, doesn't it?

A pleasant surprise!

Yesterday we got an unexpected gift... pictures of our twins! These photos are from late December, and we weren't expecting them at all. Emily didn't have school yesterday, and we spent a couple of hours poring over the photos and trying to decide which twin is which. It was very hard. They were dressed alike and if we had any questions about whether they are identical or not, they are gone! Definitely so!

It was good to see that they look happy, healthy and well cared-for. Lots of smiles from both girls! But boy, they are tiny little things!

My mom asked me yesterday if there was a reason I haven't put pictures of the twins on this blog, and the answer is "yes". For the privacy of the children, the Ethiopian government does not want pictures of the children posted on the internet where they can be seen by anyone. (Agency sites are password protected.) Any pictures will have to wait until after we pass court and they are legally ours.

So, counting down the days until court...

News about the twins

We got an email from Grace today with news on our twins! She said "We had a family travel this week and they said that your girls are AMAZING dancers! They can do the 'Ethiopian shoulder dance' better than anyone there. I'm so jealous! How fun!"

How fun, indeed! We are so anxious to meet them and learn all of the great little things there are to know about them. :)

Care packages

Today I mailed off care packages for Candace Selam and Sarah Fikir. First they will go to Michigan, to another family who is travelling soon to Ethiopia to pick up their child. They will take the packages with them to the transitional home to give to our children. Since luggage space is tight, we can only send what will fit in a gallon size Ziploc bag. Anna and I bought each girl a shirt, a pair of socks, a little magnadoodle toy and a photo album. We put pictures of our family in the album, with labels telling who's who. I hope they're happy to see who we are.

Back to normal

The decorations are down, and everything is packed away for next year. The girls have gone back to school. The house always looks a little empty after the holidays are over, but it also seems so uncluttered. Now it's time to settle in for the looooonnnggg winter... looking forward to spring. I've never been much of a winter person.

2009 just got brighter!

We have a court date! In an email this morning, Grace said our court date is February 27, 2009. Thank you, God!

My migraine is gone, too. :)

Ringing in the New Year... ugh.

I'm not feeling especially bright about the shiny New Year right now. Yesterday I developed a migraine, which I thought I had under control by evening. We're not big party people and spent New Year's Eve quietly at home watching movies. Unfortunately, today the monster chose to rear it's ugly head again. I have taken more than my usual dose of my migraine medication and the pain is still lurking. I threw in some ibuprofen for good measure, and I just took some Benadryl so that I might get a bit of sleep this evening. I have no idea what triggered this migraine, which makes it doubly frustrating.

We are still waiting for a court date for our adoption. I read some troubling discussion online about some families who have been waiting for more than 10 weeks and still don't have a court date scheduled. That is definitely not helping with the migraine situation.

I guess I need to remember that in the big scheme of things, we're talking about weeks... although right now it seems like an eternity. We will bring home our daughters in 2009, in God's perfect timing. That will make it a very bright year indeed.

But I still wish my head didn't hurt so much.

Shopping for twins

I took Emily and Anna out today to exchange a couple of things for different sizes and also to spend their gift cards. While we were out, guess what we discovered? Shopping for twins is fun. Really fun! I spent all of my own gift card money plus some extra on clothes for the twins. I can see that I'm going to have to learn to restrain myself. Although, we are building a wardrobe from scratch. We got jackets, undies, jammies and socks as well as shirts, pants and dresses.

Now all we need is a court date.

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone had a beautiful Christmas day! We did... My girls are sporting the traditional "wear your pajamas all day long" look favored by the female members of the family. I wore mine all day too, but as I am the one taking the photos, you don't get to see me in them. The males don't participate in this tradition, alas, even when provided with comfy Christmas jammies.

That is not wine in Anna's glass. Just so we're clear on that.

We spent Christmas eve going to Mass followed by a get together in Omaha with my cousins. We greatly missed my Aunt Pat this year; she passed away in August.

Wishing you Christ's peace and joy throughout the remainder of the year and always.

Baby, it's cold outside...

Here is a picture of my back yard. (I had to take it through the window screen, hence the grid.) I think it looks like some sort of tundra, especially when the snow blows across the frozen lake. Our high temps the last couple of days have been in the single digits... brrrrrrr.

Now, here is a picture of how Harry our cat deals with being cold. Apparently he has totally forgotten the wild ride he took in the dryer when he was a kitten. I didn't see him then and turned the darn thing on. Good thing I heard the thunking.

And finally, here is a picture of Anna when she was home with a migraine a few days ago. Lots of companionship and warm bodies. Cold weather is good for snuggling with some loved ones.

It's been six months!

I noticed today that our adoption ticker turned to six months. When I first made the ticker, I wasn't sure what I wanted to use as a starting date for our adoption process; I ended up using the date our application was accepted by Carolina Hope. We actually made the decision to adopt two or three weeks earlier, while we were on a Disney cruise of western Mexico... good times. :) Anyway, it's both hard to believe that six months have gone by AND hard to believe that only six months have gone by!

How long will we wait before we bring our twins home?

Good-bye to coaching

It was an eventful last three days on the Spears gymnastics front. Saturday was our state meet. We managed to get fourth place, despite missing two of our best gymnasts from earlier in the season. It was a frustrating meet because it was in two sessions, and we only had one girl in session two. And as happens in gymnastics sometimes, the scores escalated a lot in the second session. I think we were really the third best team at state, but that second session hurt us a lot. Anyway, we ended our team season with two first place finishes, two seconds and a fourth. Here we are at the state meet: we definitely get the first place award for cutest team.

In other news, yesterday was my last day coaching. I am quitting to be able to spend as much time as possible with our twins when they get home. Many tears were shed by me, my girls and some of my favorite parents. The girls and parents gave me a little farewell party and I got some very nice cards and presents and these beautiful flowers. Daisies are my favorite! Thank you so much to all of you. I will miss all of the girls so much, as well as my friends on the staff. But I will still be hanging around the gym in my parent capacity, and I'm hoping to test to qualify as a judge for next year.

Good-bye, Premier Gymnastics... I will miss you.

Update on our twins!

First, I got a phone call from a very nice Ethiopian lady on one of the Yahoo boards who helped me with the girls' names. Selam is easy to say, pretty much just the way it looks. Fikir is hard for us English speaking Americans. It's almost like one syllable and a little guttaral. We are going to keep the Ethiopian names for their middle names, so the twins will be Candace Selam and Sarah Fikir. Candace is a biblical name for the queen of Ethiopia and Selam means "peace". Sarah is a Hebrew name that is also sometimes used in Ethiopia and means "princess", while Fikir means "love".

Secondly, we found out today that the twins are currently living in an orphanage compound in the city of Nazret in Ethiopia. This city is also known as Adama. It is a large city with a university and is located at a major crossroads of Ethiopia about 62 miles southeast of Addis Ababa. It is the capital of the Oromia region of Ethiopia.

Grace from Hope Adoptions said that the girls will be moved to Addis soon, and then we will be able to send them photos. She also said that they need to pass through a lower court in Nazret and then the case can be filed in Addis. She expected this to all happen fairly soon. After the case is filed in Addis, we should find out when our court date to approve the adoption will be. As far as the twins' family, she said she thought they had a living grandmother, but she isn't positive and will have to double check. I expect we will find out more about that later.

I just get so excited over every little new detail!

Second place again!

My level 4 team at Premier Gymnastics had their last regular meet of the season on Sunday. We got second place with a respectable 109+ score. Alas, we were way outgunned by the first place team, Solid Rock Gymnastics of Lincoln. Next week is our state meet; my last meet for the foreseeable future! Tears! :(

Shout outs to Jessica H. for finally hitting that beautiful beam routine in a meet for a 9.45, our individual high score of the meet; Jaime C., the most improved all-around gymnast in level 4 and to everyone on bars... most improved event!