Wonderful Family
I wanted to post this before I forget......I know I need to post about Ethiopia and our homecoming since...I promise I will do that later but this first and maybe you can get an idea of how happy we are with everything.

As I write tonight I have tears in my eyes. I feel such an urgency to get people to think about the joys of older child adoption and consider this as a wonderful option.

Today we went to the Ethiopian church service and followed it with a trip to the Ethiopian grocery store nearby. At the grocery we planned to only pick up injera since our three new children have been asking for it since we all returned from Ethiopia two weeks ago. The oldest of our Ethiopian children Taye soon realized I was looking for any kind of spice that I could make something resembling Ethiopian food for them, I realized I would probably find something with best intentions to make a masterpiece and would years later find the unmarked bag behind my other spices and throw it out. Taye quickling began rambling in Amharic and pacing the store looking for god knows what. I couldn’t imagine what he would find since none of the bags were labeled with anything, not even Amharic. He quickly found what he was looking for and I picked up a couple onions since I knew we would need them for most things I could make.

We arrived home and didn’t even unpack the bags just placed them on the counter all but forgotten. We proceeded outside to finish the endeavor of building a playset that similar to the unmarked spices I expected to give up on someday…hopefully soon. A few good friends came to help and along with them they brought ice cream for the kids. Ice cream has been the big novelty since our arrival back to the states and seems to always be a big hit and bribery tool. We ate our ice cream around dinner time and I halfway hoped that it would be the sustenance of our dinner. I am so tired lately and dinner and dishes is just overwhelming since we doubled our household size.

As most afternoons lately in Colorado we have been having rains storms that are accompanied with thunder and lightning so we eventually had to come in. That was the moment I realized that the kids were expecting injera tonight and topping it with peanut butter and jelly wasn’t going to cut it. I begrudgingly got on the internet and began my search for some quick Ethiopian recipes. Tibs and some lentil dish, that would do if one of them turned out okay since we had the ice cream earlier. I hit print and was on my way to the kitchen.

I am embarrassed to admit now, but I wasn’t really looking forward to my next half hour in the kitchen and when the kids came to help I really wasn’t looking forward to trying to cook with children all around getting in my way and touching everything. However that was not in Taye’s plan. I soon realized his plan was to cook this meal for me and my internet recipes were not to be involved. Hesitantly I stepped slightly back, and watched from a close distance as he went to work. Methodically he made three different dishes timing them just right so that everything would be done at the exact same time. Nothing was measured but it was obvious that there was method to his madness. Still I thought that how good could this turnout and thank goodness for plain injera.

I have always loved Ethiopian food and frequent all the local restaurants; this meal by far was the best I have ever had. With every bite I took I became more and more full. It wasn’t my stomach that was filling however it was my heart. As I sit there crying as I eat and look at all my children both new and old, I quietly ask my self what took so long to get here. As Taye kept looking at me through this process I realized this was a gift he wanted to give me. Not only was there the gift of food but the gift of who he was, who all of them were and where they came from. I believe as he smiled and I cried he realized I accepted his gift.