Ayana and Moses' Dedication

Here's a picture of Ayana and Moses in their traditional Ethiopian clothes. They're sitting in front of an Ethiopian flag, right before we left for church for their dedication.

Moses' 1st Birthday, and their Dedication.

Moses turned one on January 12th. We didn't do anything fancy, but when he got his presents, he was soo excited. He got 3 extremely loud toys
and a trike. He had no clue what was going on, but it was pretty funny to watch him get all excited over the tissue paper! :) His new obsession is reading books, and watching an Australian group of dancers/singers called the Wiggles. It's on right now, and I can probably say I know every song on those four episodes off by heart. They're on constantly.. 24/7. It's pretty cute.. Jeff is really annoying, but the rest is.... cute. Here are some pictures of Moses getting his new toys on his birthday. We did go out for dinner (Ethiopian food.. what else?) but that was about a week later.

Last week (Sunday) Ayana and Moses got dedicated at church. They were in traditional Ethiopian clothes, and it was really sweet. We made a slide show about the whole adoption journey, and I'd say about 99.9% of the church was crying by the end. It was really nice. I'll put a picture of them in their outfits in another post, because it won't let me do more than 4 pictures at a time.

It's A New Year!

When I posted the one about Christmas, I forgot to write anything about New Year's Eve. It's now 2007! That's so wierd. Our New Year's Eve and Day were nice. Of course, Ayana and Moses went to bed a lot earlier than midnight, so they didn't get to welcome in the new year, but they were obviously with us on New Year's Day, so that's ok. We went over to our friends' house, and ended up staying there until 3:00am! I think that's the latest we've ever stayed there! It was really fun.. just our family, and their family, and it was a lot more relaxed and fun than the huge party we had last year. We played some games, and all of us (except for Ayana, Moses, and their son) stayed up until midnight (and past). We had sparklers, and champaign/sparkling apple juice. :) When midnight finally came we all (even the adults) grabbed pots and pans, ran outside, and made as much noise as we possibly could! We were all screaming, and jumping around, and hugging, and our friend was videoing the whole thing! It was a lot of fun. Then on New Year's Day we just kind of hung out again. Josh went to our friend's house again, and they went swimming, and then in the evening we ordered out (Red Robins!) and then went to Chapters. It wasn't anything extra special, but it was a really nice family day, and we all had lots of fun. Well, that's about it, and I better go now. Happy New Year!

Christmas

Christmas was really good this year. Our Oma came for Christmas Eve, which made it really fun. We always do our stockings on Christmas Eve, and Ayana was so excited about that. After all our Christmas Eve traditions were over, Ayana and Moses had to go to bed (which neither of them were very happy about, while the rest of us watched a new movie from Joshua, my brother's stocking. And none of us wanted to go to bed in the end either(except me--> I was really tired!) But we all finally got to sleep at around 11:00, which is very early for all of us to fally asleep on Christmas Eve, and then woke up at 6:00am, and had to wait another 2 hours, as my parents refuse to get up any earlier than 8. But we survived, and eventually got to go downstairs. When Ayana saw all the presents under the tree, she just kept on saying "Oh!! Konjoi!" (sp?--> means Beautiful in her language) Every time a new present would come out from under the tree for Ayana, she would say "Ayana, AGAIN??"It was so cute! And she wanted to help all of us open our presents (even when it wasn't our turn.. she would just grab a present at random, and start opening it.. which wasn't quite so cute!) She got soo excited.. it was a bit much, since she got too hyper, and didn't know what to do except run around screaming and opening other people's presents.... it ended in a couple tears! But she enjoyed it for the most part. Her very favourite present was a Disney Princess bike. It's a two wheeler (with training wheels), but it's so tiny! She rode it around the house all day. Moses didn't really get any of it, but he liked his new books and toys, and loved the turkey dinner, so he was happy. We had a really nice day, just hanging out, playing games, reading, watching movies etc. It was really nice to relax and have fun like that. And all of us stayed in our pajamas all day! That was nice too! :)