Wordless Wednesday

Praise

I forgot last night when I posted about our adoption praise that Nathan had a praise from work, too.

The two 206s that he has been working on since we arrived finally recieved permission to fly in Kenya. They are US registered airplanes and AIM AIR had requested permission from the KCAA to fly them in Kenya. I'm not sure of all the reasons why they wanted to keep them US registered, but seem to think that was the best option. Yesterday they got the paperwork for them to fly in Kenya while being US registered. Praise the Lord! This means a lot of pressure to get a couple other planes inspected is much less now since there are two more planes that they can use.

In other news...

Ruth is walking. She's such a cutie! She's taking more and more steps and is standing up on her own. I have noticed a big difference in just one week in her balance. She will now stand up from sitting and just stand there. She's also able to climb up in the kid's small chairs and she can climb the stairs as well. Fun! :)

I woke up this morning not feeling quite 100%. Please pray I can fight off whatever this is...seems like a cold and that no one else gets it.

I'm also feeling quite stressed with getting things ready to go. I've been trying to get some things done this morning and the kids are right there wanting to see everything I'm doing. I guess this is going to be a night time job when they are in bed.

Just Can't Wait

I know tomorrow is supposed to be about the adoption, but I just can't wait to share our good news...

Yesterday, Rebeca, our Ethiopian babysitter, came to stay with the kids while I went to do some more shopping. I was gone for quite a while, but on the way back, I came home a different way than I normally do. I was going to be going right by our home study agency's office so I thought I would drop by and pay them a visit since I had a few minutes before Rebeca had to leave. I had called our social worker yesterday morning before I left. He was in a meeting so I asked for him to return my call. By 3:30pm I still hadn't heard from him. So, I arrived at the office, waited about 10 minutes, and then he came out to get me.

We went into the little room where they do interviews and he told me that because we are doing the I-600 we have to have 3 references instead of just 2. I told him that we have 3 references and so he went to get all our paperwork and found our third reference...not in the right place. :) He then tells me that his supervisor is going to take over, but after talking to her, she apparently wanted him to finish the meeting. He knows we are rushed for time because we leave next week so he mentioned something about CWA reviewing the report and getting it back to them quickly. I told him if he could get it to them yesterday afternoon, he would most likely have it back by today. He then mentioned that he was busy working on several other things. So I reiterated that it would have to be emailed yesterday afternoon in order to get it back today. So, he said he would prioritize and get it done. He then told me he wasn't going to disappoint me several times. I hoped he was right.

I left and came home to happy children. Rebeca is just great with them! We played and read some books then they helped me work on dinner. They really like peeling garlic and breaking up lettuce for salad. In the middle of preparation, I got a phone call from our social worker's supervisor saying she needed the email address for CWA. I was surprised since it was already about 5:30pm. I hoped it was going to be sent out, but didn't set my hopes too high. Then after dinner, I checked email and we had one in our junk mail. It was from his supervisor and it was our home study report!! She had gotten it sent to CWA and copied us in on it!!! I just about fell out of my chair!

I then talked to our social worker at CWA and he said he would look at it yesterday before he left. Whoo hoo!!  We woke up this morning to an email from CWA that said it looked good with one minor correction. PTL! We were a little worried about whether or not it was okay.

So this afternoon I got several calls from Steve. The first time he couldn't find a document I had given him before so I emailed it to him. Then he called to say they had the documents ready and were going to get them notarized tomorrow. Then he called back to tell me we still have a balance and I could pick the documents up at the office tomorrow afternoon. Yes! Wow!! I think I will actually pick them up on Friday just to give them an extra day, but WOW! Praise the Lord! We were really hoping and praying we would be able to take it all back with us knowing it was all done and be able to mail it to CWA from there. Thank you to all who have been praying with us about this!

Tuesday Treats

In addition to washing the dishes on the weekend, Nathan has now started washing them after dinner during the week. I clear the table and he starts washing the dishes. I am one spoiled mama!

He took me over to the Masai Market on Sunday. He walked through and found things for me to look at, carried my bags, and kept me replenished with shillings. He's such a wonderful Hubby!

Several times in the past few weeks, it seems like we've read each other's minds. We can start saying something and the other can finish it or know exactly what the other was thinking or going to say.

I love you, Honey! You are the best!

Prayer and Praise

Prayer~

Nathan's aunt, Cathy Roberts, passed away last week. The Celebration of Life service is today. Please pray that all goes well.

We are getting down to the last few days before we travel. Please pray for us to be diligent in our packing and not to forget anything that's important.

Please join us in praying for our flights home. All the details surrounding each one, the kids sleeping and behaving, our luggage arriving with our flights, and anything else you can think of. We will leave Nairobi around 11:30pm Nairobi time (4:30pm your time), fly to London, have about a 2 or 3 hour layover in London, fly to NY, have about a 2 hour layover, and then fly to Charlotte arriving 3:30pm your time.


Praise~

This is Nathan's last full week of work! Woohoo!

The stock pile for our African Markets is growing. It's been fun making friends with the vendors although I'm sure they prob cringe when they see me coming. If they've seen me (or Lindy) around, they know we don't pay the tourist prices. We are looking forward to seeing lots of friends and sharing what God is doing in our hearts with our adoption.

We had more rain last night! PTL! Our church went to do another famine relief trip on Saturday to the Ukambani region and they brought back reports of rain. This is an area that was in desperate need. Everything is so dry. PTL!

Excited

Soon after we arrived in Kenya, we started talking about things we missed and things we wanted to do when we are back in the US. As the time has gotten closer and closer, we've talked about it more and more. So I thought I'd share a few things we are excited about...

Papa John's
Mexican food
Japanese food
shopping in Wal-Mart and Target
the kids being able to run free
using coupons
shopping the day after Thanksgiving sales
driving on smooth roads
fish other than tilapia
not constantly being cut off by matatus
having a real Christmas tree
Cheez-its
having to wear a sweater and a jacket
our kids enjoying their grandparents and aunt and uncles
Chinese buffets
possibly seeing snow
Milton's in Wake Forest
seeing our kids response and reactions to life in America
Dr. Pepper
speaking in churches
good ice cream
not being bitten by mosquitoes in the night
getting to walk through Home Depot
and last but not least seeing all our wonderful friends and family!

New Hair Do's

This morning I took Dinah and John over to YaYa to get their hair trimmed before our big trip to the US. I usually try to do it myself to save a little money, but thought this time it might be nice to have someone who acutally knows how to cut hair do it. She cut a little more off of both of them than I was expecting, but hey we won't have to go back so soon, huh? :) They both did pretty good. John actually did a better job sitting still than Dinah. Dinah had to get out of the car chair and stand up to get hers finished. They painted her nails while she finished up cutting it. I hate I forgot my camera...sorry!

The Kiddos

Ruth Amelia Mueni~

She is only taking one bottle a day now just before bed.

She is eating a lot of table food. She likes black beans, rice, pasta, veggie dogs, french fries, naan, bhajias, bananas, apples, strawberries, pineapple, melon, zuchini, potatoes, carrots, raisins, crackers, smoothies, and much more I can't think of right now.

She will walk along holding one of my hands. She's almost there!

She can push the bus backwards.

John Culver~

He's riding his tricycle like a pro now. It's so cute to watch him!

He does a great job saying please and thank you. We're evening teaching him in Swahili and he's picking it up. We're also teaching both him and Dinah to count in Swahili and they are doing great!

Dinah and John both talk about their brown baby brother. It will be fun to see their reactions when we finally bring him home.

He is such loving little guy. He loves to give hugs and will share just about anything most of the time.

Dinah Belle~

She is becoming quite the little mommy. She like to dress her babies in Ruth's clothes and feed them and take care of them.

She talks about going to America every day. The other day she was looking at the maps in the back of my Bible and telling John this is the way to Mimi and Papa's house..."you go down the hill, around the round-about, and turn right." It was adorable!

She talks to her babies about all sorts of things. Mostly conversations she's heard between me and Nathan.

She's also pretending more and more. It's fun to watch her imagination becoming more and more active.

Tuesday Treats

Sunday morning, I got to sleep until 8:20. My awesome hubby gets the kids up and lets me sleep in!

He took my turn in the nursery at church on Sunday. He's turning into quite the nursery worker!

Today is a holiday in Kenya...Kenyatta Day. Nathan took us over to a Masai Market this morning and helped me pick out some things for our African Market, bought us lunch at the food court, and then helped me in the kitchen to get things ready for our dinner guests when we got home.

I love you, Honey!

What has your Hubby done for you lately?

Something Different

For about the past 4 or 5 months, we've really been enjoying eating Ethiopian and Indian food. Since we ventured out of our comfort zone, we've found that we really enjoy both of these kinds of food. Angie made some good Indian food about a month ago for us and so I decided I would try it, too. Tonight I made naan, an Indian flat bread and palak paneer, a spinach and cheese dish. I think it was pretty good for the first try. The naan turned out really good, just made a lot more than we needed. The palak paneer was okay. I think I like the tomato based one better than spinach based one. I'll have to find a recipe for that one. Oh, and it does taste much better than it looks. I didn't eat it for the longest time because I thought it looked like baby food. :)

Prayer and Praise

Prayer~

The weeks are flying by as we are trying to prepare to leave. Nathan has a lot to do at work and he only has one full week of work left. Please pray for him to be diligent and get the things done that need to be done before we leave.

Ruth is not sleeping well. She's waking up around 5 or 5:30 and only sleeping a few more minutes after we give her paci.

Please begin praying for an uneventful trip home. We are really excited about coming home, but not so excited about the flights to get there. Please pray for our kids to sleep, safe flights, and luggage to get through customs without any trouble.


Praise~

RAIN! We've had rain for about 5 days now. It's raining off and on all day and the sun will come out in between. Everything is starting to turn green now. What a blessing for Nairobi! We've heard reports of it raining in other places as well.

Tomorrow is a holiday in Kenya. We are thankful for an extra day to spend as a family. Stanley and Sylvia are also coming for dinner so we can see them before we head home for a few months.

We are so blessed to have a house to stay in and a car to use while we are home. A huge praise to the Lord for providing these things in His time!

Rain!

We have had rain for the past few days. Praise the Lord! Our grass and plants are popping back to life and I can only imagine what it is doing for the crops that need it. However, it's not all over Kenya. Out at Camp Lukenya (where we went a couple weekends ago) they still haven't recieved rain. When we were there, we could see the rain off in the distance over Nairobi, but all they got was a tiny sprinkle, hardly even worth mentioning. We are thanking the Lord for the rain here in Nairobi, but continue to pray for rain in other parts of Kenya that desparately need it.

Jewelry Pictures

Here are some pictures of jewelry that I've picked up.

These necklaces are made from coconut shells.

Various earrings. Some are made out of bone, others banana leaves, and other some sort of metal.

John was helping me sort things and take pictures while Ruth and Dinah were asleep. He was so proud of himself for getting all these necklaces on I just had to take his picture.

These are coconut shell earrings.

I'm not sure what these are made of but thought they were pretty.

These are also made from bone. I have several sets with necklace, bracelet, and earrings.

They come in all different designs.

These are earrings from Kazuri Bead store.

These are matching bracelet and earring sets also from Kazuri Beads.

Rewind to Tuesday Treats

Aren't they just too cute?! I love to see my man with our babies. :)

Rewind to Wordless Wednesday

Life has been crazy and I'm sure it's only going to get more crazy the closer we get to traveling. So, please bear with me as I try to keep up.

Amani Items

So I've been working on stuff for the market today and got pics taken of most of the things that we have. A big thanks to Angie for coming over and helping me get organized! Here are the things that I've gotten from Amani Ya Juu.

These are covered with banana leaves with a small animal made from banana leaves dangling from the top.

Medium sized handbags. They are black with this cream colored design in the fabric. They dye their own fabric at Amani. It's pretty neat to see them working.

These are 2 larger handbags. All of their bags are nicely lined with many pockets on the inside.

I'm not sure of the name of this kind of fabric, but it's really popular here. I think these are some of the most popular bags Amani sells.

This is the smallest one I've gotten and it has a short strap.

These 2 are larger bags. Nice and roomy.

These are beaded bracelets with the longer beads being the paperbeads made from magazines.

These are little baby dolls.

A close up of the angel ornaments.

So you can see what they look like.

Hot pads made from scrap fabric.

These are full size aprons. Again, some of the fabric they dye themselves.

These are half aprons made from kangas which ladies use for everything here.

They have a cute ruffle around the bottom with 2 medium pockets.

Progressing

Well, we had another meeting with our social worker today. He actually did a pretty good job making the changes we had made on Friday. We read over it once again and found a few more mistakes. He went to the computer right away, made the changes, and brought the corrected page back to us. We were impressed. He is supposed to show it to his supervisor tomorrow and then email it to CWA for approval. We then have to get it notarized and then we're ready to take it home. Sometimes it seems we are going one very tiny baby step at a time, but at least we are going. :)

I made another trip to the Masai Market today. Here are pics of my purchases...

We now have 4 different styles of nativity sets.

This is the largest of the four.

These are paper bead necklaces. Beads anyone?

The red and green necklaces are made from coconut shells. The other things are some small soapstone bowls, a few ebony keychains, a couple dolls with the watoto (child) on the back, and the long stick looking things are knives.

Prayer and Praise

Prayer~


Church is really hard for us right now. With three small kids and one who doesn't like to stay in the nursery, we have a hard day.

The power has been very sporadic lately. We lost power Sunday night for a few hours, yesterday it was off and on all day. We realize we live in Africa, but it does get annoying after a while.

Nathan is very busy at work trying to get some things done before we leave. We are also busy at home trying to get all the things we need packed.

We have another meeting with our social worker this afternoon.


Praise~

Things are progressing with the adoption even if only slowly.

We are excited about heading home to see everyone! Dinah talks about it every day.

Adoption Update

Yesterday afternoon we went to our meeting with our social worker only to find out that we couldn't review the report because the power was out and the report was on the computer. We did talk with him and got a few more of his questions answered, clarified a few things, and planned another meeting for this afternoon. We headed over to the office this afternoon with another document he needed. Thankfully the power was on. He had the report printed out for us to review and make changes. We were there for about an hour going over it. Nathan and I were both reading it and making changes. Wow...it was interesting. We think he was copying and pasting a lot of it and did a pretty horrible job of it. Our friends, Chris and Lindy, who also had the same social worker, were mentioned in our report. He had forgotten to change the names to "Nathan and Candace." He said that I only have one sibling and I have told him at least twice that I have 2 brothers and one of those times was just yesterday. Anyway...we were going over it with a fine tooth comb. We have another meeting on Tuesday to finalize it. We will see how that goes. Then it's off to CWA to be reviewed. Then we get it notarized and it's ready to go back to the States with us. Hooray! Almost done with one more step.

In other news, Dinah, John, and I along with Kurt and Angie went over to a Masai Market today to try to find some more things to sell in our African Market. It was a fun trip although it's sometimes overwhelming when trying to bargain for a decent price. Here are a few pics of the stuff I got today. I was pretty pleased with what I found.

Tuesday Treats

Monday night, Nathan was up with Ruth way more than I was. He was so sweet to let me sleep while he got her back to sleep. Then got up with her when was up again in three hours. He knows how much I need my sleep!

He offered to take us out to eat for dinner tonight because we had such a rough night last night. Yay for not having to cook! :)

He's such a great help when we are getting ready to go somewhere. I usually get everything packed and he packs it in the car. Then he walks back through the house to make sure we didn't leave anything.

I love you, Honey! Thanks for all you do to help me!

Weekend Getaway

This past weekend, we went out to Camp Lukenya. We stayed at Paul's house, just relaxing and enjoying our kiddos. We had a great time! Here are some of the pics...

We took along the kids pool. They had a blast! They were in it about twice a day.

Ruth wasn't so sure of the pool so we found her a bucket to splash water in and she loved it!

She was splashing all over the place.

Daddy decided she needed to get in the bucket and once she was used to that, he put her in the pool.

Then Mommy got in the pool and so did Ruth. She didn't mind it so much then.

The view from Paul's veranda. It was nice and quiet and we got to watch the animals in the preserve right behind his house. We ate lunch the first day and watched the zebra, giraffe, and ostrich. What fun to wash dishes and watch the animals!

Warming up after playing in the water.

He has a trampoline and when they weren't swimming, they wanted to be jumping.

Daddy took his turn, too. :)

Ruth liked it, too. She likes to bounce on the bed, so when the trampoline bounced her a little more, she really liked it.

I think it was a little cool when they got in on Saturday morning, but that didn't stop them.

This is one of my favorites. What a cutie! Some days she reminds me of her Nana and other days her Mimi. She's a cute combination of the two of them.

This is another favorite. She loves her Daddy so much.

No, she wasn't drinking the water...just blowing bubbles in it. They are pretty good about not drinking the water.

Saturday Ruth got to play without her swimsuit. We figure why waste a swimmie diaper if she was just going to sit in her bucket. :)

She had a blast!

They loved it when Mommy got in. It was a little too cold on Saturday though. So they just splashed Mommy's legs.

Warmin' up again.

John coloring on Sunday morning.