things to love this Christmas....

so many choices.  i must start with a popular song that moves me this season.  love the lyrics.  love how the true Christmas message is captured with such beauty....Laura Daigle sings Light of the World with such giftedness~ someday i'm singing with her in heaven!!  such talent!  if this is your first time hearing about this song, consider it an early Christmas gift, from me!  you're most welcome!

then there is the annual West Jet wonderfulness here...makes me just want to purchase some good ol' plane tickets from this really nice company.  just to show support, you know?!? :)

then, in my own home, and out and about during Christmas functions, among the normal and crazy and mundane and predictable, are certain Christmas wonders that bring me joy each and every year...

a Starbright performance with family...ushering in Christmas in a Christ-centered way...i hope this becomes a new tradition for us.  the picture is a bit dark, but special to me anyway so it's going up! :)

homespun Christmas ornaments that the kids sort of love/hate.  they don't make for the most perfect designer Christmas tree, but man, do i love seeing these every year.  i love looking back at their tiny faces and remembering them that way (this is necessary! :))...such effort was put into creating these ornaments and i'm very happy they continue to find their way onto the tree.

sugar cookie decorating with two sillies...

 Hudson's Haitian nativity set from a sweet friend....love these pieces...

Christmas assembly times two this year...always precious.  Hudson closed off his class song with a one-line solo in a deep male opera-style voice.  so fun and a total surprise to me.  he even kept it a secret! :)

 deliciousness made by the kids with photo credits going to Adam...

wishing you all, dear family and friends, a restful, joyous and meaningful Christmas...love to all from our family to yours!

five

somehow, someway, five years have passed since this boy became ours.  tomorrow marks AJ's fifth Gotcha Day! in the picture below, our first ever of AJ on the day of his adoption referral, he was just a tiny boy on my computer screen.  one whose eyes told a story of deep loss in his short three years of life.  my joy in the moment of laying eyes on him, finally seeing the face of our son after such a long wait....well, i'll never ever ever forget the magnitude of that moment.  the literal miracle that lead us to him in the first place was so vivid still and though the process had been slow and so very uncertain, there he was looking back at me.  the realization of a dream and a prayer and God's plan unfolding there before our eyes....

 

Alemayehu Jeffrey, on the court day when he took on his daddy's name as his middle name, and the first time Jeff declared him to be "AJ"...

finally, in December of 2010 on our way back to Ethiopia for the second time to bring home our son.  needless to say, after the snowstorm of all time and almost missing our flights out of Toronto, we were happy to lay our heads down on our luggage once finally at Heathrow in London....didn't matter that there were no options to stretch out or that we were exhausted mentally and physically, we were picking up AJ and beyond relieved to be nearing the end of a really long journey...

AJ, guarded and unsure of his new daddy....

but not for long....the silly, sweet and spunky side emerged within the day and we got to see his eyes dance and his dimples on full display.  smitten we were....

AJ and I below~ i was completely overjoyed.  no other way to say it.  surreal, surreal...isn't my face almost glowing? :)  it's that beautiful Ethiopian morning sun, but still...

happy 5th Gotcha Day AJ!!! 

 i love being your mom, and am so totally thankful God gave us you!

ecosystems...riveting stuff below

i'll spare you many of the bizarre and complex details.  in short, i'll just explain that Layla's class was assigned a project where each student was charged with the task of creating an ecosystem.  an ecosystem is defined as "a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment." sooo...here it is, $35 dollars in, after two trips to the pet store, this is day one of fish living with snails and rooted plants with floating plants all within a jar filled with "aged" water.  there are lots of flaws to this project, in my opinion, both in the design and execution of a successful ecosystem that has any real potential to last.  perhaps this is why i've dubbed it the "project of death"....but as i said, i won't get into it too much here, cuz hey, the pictures are cute.  all four were entertained for many minutes staring into the jar and watching the fish and snails adapt to their new home, for however long or short :( that may be....ahem...

even since this picture was taken, we are down one member of our "thriving" ecosystem.  we started with five happy little fish, and now there are four hearty ones remaining.  imagine my horror one evening when i walked by the counter, stared into the jar as i often do (i've grown a wee bit attached to these rascals), and had to do a re-count and another re-count to confirm my worst suspicions.  yes, we were down a fish...i scoured the bottom and sure enough, there among the shoots of the rooted plant, lay the poor little fish belly up and perfectly still with a sort of glazed-eye look that oddly seemed to lock gaze with mine.  i dreaded the thought of telling Layla, and then there was the whole process of "retrieving" it from the bottom.  how was i going to do that?  with a serving spoon?  applied suction from a turkey baster?  well, i thought about it for a bit, only to have the decision taken right out of my hands a few hours later when i walked past again to see the large snail consuming the fish slowly and methodically right before my piercing eyes.  i couldn't believe it.  this was the most "real" part of the ecosystem i'd seen so far.  the brutal realities of aquatic life i suppose.  i broke the news gently to Layla the next morning.  she took it well.  

two days later, early on a school day i came out to the kitchen to make coffee.  first things first, right?  i glanced at the jar, as always, and to my horror discovered the large snail was literally MIA, gone from the jar, nowhere to be found.  and this snail is large~ approximately the size of a ping pong ball.  there's no way you wouldn't see it.  i had a moment of brief perplexing panic, wondering why this ecosystem had gotten so twisted, so fast.  i slid the jar over a bit to realize the snail had decided to escape through the night.  there he was, inside his shell, opening facing up, appearing lifeless right there on my kitchen counter.  i repeat, on my kitchen counter...nice....without a second to waste i grabbed a sheet of Bounty and scooped the poor fella up and gently plopped him back into his homemade ecosystem.  i wished him well, but feared the worst.  it's almost as if this snail is super intelligent and knows the future is bleak~ he was making a run for it while there was still time...as i sanitized my counter, i saw small signs that Mr. Snail might be okay after all.  the smaller white snail literally approached, and something that may have been CPR occurred,  and before i even began making breakfast the larger snail was back to exploring the jar, slow but sure as snails seem to do...from that moment on~ we make sure the lid is on!  

good times!!  even still, this will be a project i want to remember a decade from now, or even six months from now at the rate my memory is going.  i suspect Layla will enjoy this memory too one day. 

yonas

so in October we received awesome news about Johnny that i blogged about here,  then November proved to be equally awesome when i woke one day to "Yonas news" from Eyob.  brief refresher~ Yonas is a boy we met in 2010 when we were in Ethiopia picking up sweet AJ. 

 i've blogged many times about Yonas since our first meeting five years ago, but the very first time i mentioned him was here.  Yonas is now somewhere around sixteen years old and living in Addis Ababa.  he has some contact with Eyob, the man who is director of the organization and orphanage where AJ spent time before we were cleared to adopt him.  Eyob has facilitated Yonas' sponsorship by seven Canadian families~ all invested in loving this boy from across the world.  each family heard his story back in 2010 and wanted to be a part of speaking Hope and Love into his life.  pretty nice.  since that time, Yonas has received medical care that has led to a diagnosis of HIV, and he now has regular ARV medications and has regular assessments and treatments that have brought him around to a position of looking and feeling well.  Praising God for this!

so, we've attempted many various forms of communication with him over the years.  this has proved to be daunting, to put it mildly.  the coolest experiences have been when our two sets of friends, on two different occasions during two different years, visited Ethiopia and literally tracked him down, meeting Yonas face to face and delivering tangible love to him from all of us back here at home. chalk that up to amazing friends and impressive logistics and one powerful, loving Heavenly Father who helped to accomplish those precious encounters.  

soooo, one morning last month i woke to a message from Eyob.  gotta love Facebook, at least for this, right?  Yonas had come by his office on that particular day.  they'd taken some pictures and he'd even taken time to write a letter to us. 

the pictures below are the latest.  in the first one he's holding some shoes and clothes he was able to purchase from the sponsorship money sent by the seven families...

these two are pictures of a picture, so you do see a glare, but that's how they came to me...what a handsome young man.  so happy to see his sweet grin...

and this is his letter to us in Amharic...

 see the translation below, again blurry but probably legible if you click on the picture to enlarge it....completely melted me to read his sign off, "your son, Yonas"....so thrilled that he knows there are people in another land, far away, that care for him as surrogate parents.  Yonas hasn't a forever family of his own, and this means so much to see that he understands how much he is loved....

 well, you can imagine my eyes brimming with tears as i stared at his grown up face and his beautiful penmanship.  he looks like a young man now, all handsome and appearing healthy.  Eyob translated the letter for us as well~ super nice of him to do so. 

Yonas and Eyob, at the KVI office. 

 so awesome and wonderful.  i look forward to the day when Yonas has his own Facebook account and we can correspond more regularly.