Christmas pictures

How many tries could it possibly take to get a good Christmas picture? Well with two active little boys something like 30 tries will get you something that is useable but not great. Here are a few of our attempts...Okay let's try again ....Okay Oliver's not looking, one more....Kaden is making a weird face, one more try....

Oliver looks miserable lets try to make this interesting.... Grammy and Aunt Kristin are now dancing in the background and making every face and crazy noise possible.


Okay this is just getting ridiculous!

Take Two... a week later we tried for another picture this time our friend Becky was taking the picture while 3 other friends were dancing around in the background...

Our kids just think these adults have lost their minds!
Again, not amused.We have a winner... sort of. While it is not the best picture I think it is the best we are going to get and at this point I really don't care anymore. So, Merry Christmas from the Matthews!

Fused Glass Jewelry

Thanks to a couple of very creative friends of mine, I have learned how to make fused glass jewelry. I have been making pendants and earrings and it has been so much fun! I have decided to try to set up an online store to try to sell some of the pieces. If you are interested you can visit my etsy shop at SynthWear.etsy.com. Here are a couple of pictures of pieces I have made....

And a special thanks to my very first etsy customer.... Amy Bottomly. I am mailing your earrings today!

A Good Reminder

I found this on my friend Kara's blog and thought I would share it here. Here are some suggestions on how your family can incorporate your child’s culture into your family to help build her/his self-Confidence and self-worth:
· Learn to speak your child’s language (or at least greetings)
· Go to the mall or movies or restaurants frequented by families of your child’s ethnicity (yes that may mean extra driving);
· Include your child’s birth family in your prayers;
· Regularly cook and enjoy foods from your child’s culture;
· Learn and incorporate holiday traditions of your child’s culture;
· Make sure your social life includes frequent activities with people of colour (not just specifically your child’s birth culture);
· Expose your child to varieties of human relationships, to teach them not only to accept others but to accept themselves;
· Join a peer support group where you children can become friends with children from a similar culture and shared experience (reduces isolation feelings);
· Do everything you can to make friends with families who share your child’s heritage;
· Join recreational, religious and educational groups or activities in the closest community you can find with members of your child’s ethnic group;
· Attend special events (exhibits, festivals, musical productions) that attract an audience of your child’s heritage;
· Seek out beauty salons and barber shops located in a community that caters to people of your child’s heritage and become a regular;
· Choose professionals of colour, whenever possible (Dr, dentist, lawyers, teachers…);
· Attend groups that include adoptees from other countries so your child has exposure to children adopted from other countries as well so they don't feel negatively towards their country of birth;
· Change congregations and attend a more ethnically diverse church (yes you may have to drive!);
· Find cultural mentors or guides to help your child to be competently bi-cultural;
· Read books with your child that parallel your child’s experience to help your child discover connections between himself and the world;
· When you incorporate culture like music or literature or food into the family, don’t forget to point out the heritage connection to your child (don’t assume they know);
· Find cultural training classes from (for parents) your child’s birth country;
· When possible maintain all connections to the child’s birth community, extended family and caregivers;
· Adoptees should be provided counselling services, particularly in adolescence when they are going through identity formation because transracially adopted teens face additional complications and crisis during this developmental stage;
· Adoptive families should not perpetuate the saviour notion that the child was rescued or saved;
· Adoptees benefit from the chance to meet one another.

Gratitude

I have been tagged by Amy to write 5 things I am thankful for and then to tag 5 more people, so....

1. I am thankful for my hubbie. I could have never dreamed of being with someone that I love as much as him. I love that he can always make me laugh, he knows everything about me and still loves me, he is such a generous and loving person, he is a great papa, and he is so good looking!

2. I am so thankful for my children. My boys have made me want to be a better person, and they have given me a glimpse into the love of my heavenly father. They brighten every day with their infectious laughter and their loving hearts.

3. I am thankful for this adoption journey that God has brought us on. I never dreamed when I started this journey that God would change my heart in the ways that he has. I am thankful for the passions that he has brought out in me and the passions that he has brought out in Kevin. I have no idea what he has for us on this journey, but it has been so great to trust Him through it.

4. I am thankful for all of my extended family and friends. Ever since my dad has gotten sick I have realized how short life can be and I want to really appreciate all of the wonderful people that God has placed in my life and to not take them for granted. Here are a few of those crazy folks!

5. And since all of the rest of them have been very serious... I am thankful for coffee. I am not sure how I would make it through most days without you, sweet deliciousness. I am thankful for the lift I get every morning and for the delicious seasonal creamers that come out this time of year!

I am going to tag...

Kara, Kellie, Shadley, Melodie, and Demarie. Have fun ladies!

Orphanage Sponsorship

Kevin and I have decided to help an on-line community sponsor an orphanage in Ethiopia through Children's Hope Chest. It is really an awesome thing. Basically there are 98 of us, so far, and we are going to sponsor Kebebtsehay an orphanage of 120 kids. Our sponsorship will help cover our child's basic needs like food, clothing, and education for $34 a month. If you are interested you can find our more here or you can contact Amy at amyde63@hotmail.com. It is a really neat opportunity to stay involved in Ethiopia if you are a fellow adoptive family or just a great way to show love to these children. Imagine the impact you could have on a child just by showing that you care about them by helping them eat, get an education, writing them letters, and praying for them. The on-line group will take a trip every year to visit the orphanage and anyone that is able to make it is invited. On these trips you can meet your sponsored child and see where they are living.

The video below is the Children's Hope Chest video about their new program in Ethiopia and if you watch it you can see a few of the sweet faces at the Kebebtsehay orphanage.

A Little Movement

A couple families from our agency received travel calls and another family received a court date today. It is always nice to have something to celebrate. Now I am hoping that some families receive referrals this week, that would be awesome!

Our New Nephew!

Our new little nephew Jackson was born yesterday at 8:14 in the morning, weighing 8lbs 2oz. He is healthy and adorable and his mommy and daddy are adjusting well.

Here he is with his Uncle Kevin and Aunt Lori, we love him!

Pumpkins and Bob and Larry

We decided to carve pumpkins this year, we figure the boys are old enough to at least help scoop out the middle of the pumpkins. So, we pulled out a pumpkin carving book that I had from teaching and we let the boys pick which pumpkin they wanted. Kaden picked Frankenstein's monster and Oliver picked the one with lollipops sticking out of his head. So here we are in process. Oliver was not a big fan of the pumpkin goo.Kaden pulling out the seeds and Papa in the background working on the lid. Kevin actually hated the inside of the pumpkin more then Oliver.

The finished products... According to Kaden we had Frankenstein's monster and Dracula or Bacteria as he likes to call him.

On Halloween we went to our churches Harvest Party. It is always a lot of fun, there is a lot for the kids to do. The boys had fun as Bob and Larry again. Here they are at the Cake walk, Oliver actually won a cake.Candy, candy, and more candy. Unfortunately I think I ate more candy then the boys.

Here is my cutie little nephew Hunter. He had on a really cute little monkey costume, but he got a little hot in it so this is what he was wearing under it. He is seriously adorable!

This picture really has nothing to do with Halloween, except that he is wearing a wig, but I just thought he looked too cute not to add it.

Our Little Man is 2!

Sunday was Oliver's second birthday. I can't believe our baby is two, it has gone so fast. We started his birthday off at exactly midnight, with throwing up, yes the birthday boy, poor little guy. We were going to cancel his party, but he woke up in the morning acting fine and he ate a huge breakfast and lunch and seemed great all day so we still had his party. We did tell everyone the events of the night and let them know that if they chose not to come to the party we really wouldn't be offended, but everyone still came. We had his party at Fargo's pizza, our favorite pizza place. We had a great time. Here is Oliver and his Elmo cake, it was actually cupcakes put together to make an Elmo head.Here is Oliver getting ready to eat his birthday cupcake. He did not appreciate his birthday song, he just put his head down on the table until we were done singing.
Cupcake face!
Here he is opening his presents, we got him Woody and Buzz from ToyStory. He has been carrying Buzz around all day :)I had to add this one too. This is from our trip to Boo at the Zoo last week. They looked so cute dressed up as Bob and Larry. Kaden is in a really fun picture stage, he is not into them at all. He really doesn't care to waste his time on them... oh well he still looks cute.

Tagged....

I have been tagged by my friend Amy, so here are seven random/weird things about myself.

1. I don't shave my knees, (that was the first thing Kevin thought I should write). I shave my legs below the knee, but I really don't see the importance of shaving my knees. I will shave them every once in a while, for special occasions, but that is maybe a few times a year.
2. Apparently my husband thinks it is weird that I grew up on a farm.
3. I love gardening, I love digging in the dirt, planting things, and then watching it grow, love it!
4. I hate snakes and because of that I let the weeds in my garden grow a little out of control this summer after I had a little encounter. Kaden lovingly named him Bob, I hope Bob is dead.
5. I still have baby teeth. A couple of my molars never fell out, which is good because I never developed the adult teeth to take their place. I also only had one wisdom tooth.
6. I would love to have a really big family. I sometimes dream about having 5 or more little ones running around the house. Then I remember what having 2 little ones running around the house feels like some days...
7. I love my Birkenstocks. I have a pair of clog Birks that I have had for almost 10 years and I wear them almost daily in cooler weather. (I am very stylish!)

I am tagging....
1. Holly
2. Lori
3. Jill
4. Shadley
5. Beth
6. Amy
7. Kellie

Have fun ladies!

Fall...

I absolutely love fall in Colorado, the weather is beautiful and the changing colors are gorgeous. The only problem I have with fall is that I know it is leading to winter. Although Colorado winters really aren't bad compared to other places, and I do enjoy the slower pace of winter, I just love warm weather. This last week we took some family time to enjoy a few of the fun fall activities. First we went to the Happy Apple Farm to pick pumpkins. It was a beautiful day.Here are my boys riding the tractor to the pumpkin patch, love my boys, all three of them. Oliver with his pumpkin.

Kaden and his pumpkin.
Our family in front of the pumpkin patch. We had a lot of fun at the Happy Apple Farm, and we left with some delicious apples also.

The next day we took a drive through the mountains to enjoy the beautiful fall colors. We drove to Cripple Creek and ate lunch there. On the way back we stopped and went for a little hike with the boys. It was so windy that on our way back down the mountain many of the trees had already lost their leaves. I am glad we didn't wait any longer to go or we may have missed the colors.

Cute Shirts

I just ordered this cute shirt at http://store.compassion.com. This shirt says PLEASE in Amharic and the proceeds benefit Compassion's Global Food Crisis Fund. So not only can you have a really cute shirt but you can also help feed families that have been affected by famine. These shirts also come in Bengali (Bangladesh), Creole (Haiti), and Portuguese (Brazil), I got the one in Amharic since that is the language spoken in Ethiopia. Cute, cute!

Zoo and New Friends

Today we spent this beautiful fall day at the zoo, we had a great time. Aunt Kristin met us there, now that she is done working and preparing for Jackson to make his entrance. We also met a new adoption friend there today. Her name is Amy and she is going to adopt from Ethiopia also. It was nice to meet someone else from our agency that is also adopting from Ethiopia, there aren't many of us around. In fact she is the only other person from our agency that I am aware of in this area.

Here are my sweet boys. They had a great time running around and Kaden talked every ones ear off.

Here are the boys walking with their aunt Kristin.

Kaden kayaking.

This is me and my new friend Amy. Amy and her sister met up with us, and they are so sweet. We had a great time with them. We had so much fun and I knew the boys, especially Oliver, were getting tired... this was the scene in the car minutes after we left the zoo.

Love it!

One monthish...

So our agency hasn't given us much info in this waiting stage, they kind leave a lot up to the imagination. I have heard that we are officially waiting when our dossier leaves for Ethiopia, which would mean we have been waiting for 3 weeks and 3 days. I heard today though that the we are officially added to the wait list when our paper work leaves for D.C. to be authenticated. If that is the truth then we have been waiting for 5 weeks and 3 days. So the way I figure it we have been waiting about a monthish.

So, after a month of waiting I can say that I am feeling pretty good. I feel like this wait is more tolerable because it is going to lead to us getting to see our little ones face and hear their name. That is worth waiting for. I also have more hope that our wait isn't going to be as long as originally estimated. Our agency just gave out referrals for four little boys a couple of weeks ago and the family that waited the longest waited around 5 months. Right now I am hoping to see our child's face in the next 4-6 months and then hopefully travel to get them in the next 7-9 months. So at the end of one monthish I am feeling hopeful and starting to feel like this is really going to happen!!

We are officially waiting!!!!

I found out today that our dossier was sent to Ethiopia on August 22nd!!!!! There was some confusion at our agencies office with a switch in job positions so I was never notified that it was sent. I was starting to get really nervous because I felt like they had forgotten about us. I am so happy... we are officially waiting for our little one!!! Yeah!

If you haven't seen my last post take a look at the video, it is pretty inspiring.

Charity Water: Clean water for Ethiopia

I found this on my friend Cindy's blog and just had to help get the word out.


The September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.

For more information go to borninseptember.org or charitywater.org. If you have a September birthday you can start up a page of your own to have people donate instead of give you gifts. If you are not then you can donate money or spread the word.

Nothing

I still haven't heard anything back from our agency about our dossier, which means it probably hasn't been sent to Ethiopia. I am trying to be patient, but I really just want it to be in Ethiopia, I don't even care if they look at it, I just want it to be there. I just want to know that we are making progress, that we are getting closer to our child. Our child that I know nothing about but think of all the time... Will they be a girl or boy? How old will they be? Are they already born? Are they safe, warm, dry? Is someone loving on them? I just want to know that some day this is really going to happen. It is all starting to feel like some little thing I dreamed up but isn't really going to happen. So, hopefully they will send it off this next week, I think I will feel better then.

Since I had nothing new to report on the adoption front I thought I would share a little bit about our trip to the state fair today. I always enjoy going the fair, it is something different for us to do, and it is only once a year. This year was a little more exciting then the last time that we went, they are really working on making it more fun. We got to see a sea lion show, a lot of farm animals, including a petting zoo, a tiger show, a monkey show, food, food and more food. The tiger show was really cool, the tigers were beautiful. They are a tiger preserve from Florida and they are breeding Bengal tigers to keep them from extinction, which makes it even better. Overall we had a good time, it is always nice to have family time. I will leave you with a couple of pictures from our day today, for some reason I can't get any more pictures to load, so here are a couple of my boys, love my boys!

Trampoline

I don't really have much of an update, but I did just receive a postcard from a company in D.C. that authenticated our dossier, so that means that it is probably back at our agencies headquarters. I haven't heard anything from our agency, but I am hoping to hear something next week. I am hoping to hear that our dossier is being sent to Ethiopia, that would be awesome.

So for now I am watching the Olympics. I have been a little obsessed with them. I am currently watching the women's trampoline?!? I was not aware that this was a competitive sport, but here they are bouncing and flipping their little hearts out. Impressive.

Introducing....

Our nephew and cousin Hunter! He was born yesterday at 6:21 p.m. My sister was great and he is adorable and healthy at 8lbs 3oz. He also has a pretty cool birthday 8/8/08. We are bringing the boys to meet their cousin today so I will have to post a picture of that later. Kaden has been so excited to meet his cousin, he would lift my sisters shirt up and try to find the baby, too cute.

Update..

I just got an update from our social worker that our dossier is being sent to D.C. tomorrow! That is good news. Then, she said that they will probably hold ours at the Main office for a while because they don't want to overwhelm the Ethiopian office. That is fine, but I wonder, how long is a little while? A couple days, weeks, a month? This is frustrating to me because I worked my tail off to get all of this done ASAP and now it is just going to be sitting around, Urgh! I know that God is in control of the timing of our adoption, but I just want to be on the waiting list. We started this process in December and we still aren't on the waiting list. Please pray that our dossier will not sit for long and be heading to Ethiopia soon.

** Edited**
Okay, so as I was reading a bedtime story to my son I was reminded of a devotion that I did yesterday. It basically asked... Am I willing to follow God wherever He may lead so that I might fully know Him and make Him known? When I answered this in my journal last night I did not think this would mean waiting on God in this adoption, I feel like all I have done is wait. So, as I was reading to Kaden, this popped into my head and then I felt God say I want you to wait. This doesn't happen to me often, so I listened. I also do not like to wait so I know that the peace that followed this was from God. Although I hate waiting I just feel like God knows the child that he has for our family and if our dossier needs to sit on a desk for a while so that the right child is brought into our family then that is okay with me. So instead of praying for speed, I am going to pray that our dossier gets to Ethiopia at the time that is right, so that we may be matched with the child that God has chosen for our family.

Our Vacation

We had such a great time on our vacation. It was so nice to get away and have some really good family time. We started our vacation with a 12 hour drive to Phoenix, with two small children. It actually went really well, the boys did great thanks to the portable DVD player. So after hours of driving we arrived in Phoenix and decided that we would let the kids play at the hotel pool for a little while so they could wear themselves out and hopefully sleep really well. Well, we went down to the pool and took the boys shoes off and they both immediately fell on the slick tile floor surrounding the pool. Oliver seemed okay, he hit his head but really wasn't that phased. Kaden on the other hand hit the floor so hard he split his lip open. We immediately took him back to our room and called the manager and the hotel offered to take him to the ER, but we had already called our pediatrician and he assured us that he would be okay and told us that mouths heal so quickly that it would probably be fully healed in a couple of days. So instead of taking him to the ER we gave him some children's Tylenol and iced it, and now it is completely healed. Here is our poor little man and his fat lip.

We got to San Diego on Saturday and just hung out and relaxed, we were pretty tired from all the driving. It's amazing how tired just sitting in a car can make a person. The next day we hit the beach. We went to the beach on Coronado (where Kevin and I got engaged) because it is a great beach for kids, soft sand and small waves. The boys had a blast. Oliver was of course fearless and would just run into the water. Kaden was a little more cautious. He was sure that the fish were going to eat him. Here is one of our self-family portraits that Kevin loves to take.Here is our family at Sea World the next day waiting for the Shamu show. We loved Sea World, it was so much fun.The boys watching the Polar Bears at Sea World.Our great friends the Cleveland's vacationed with us in San Diego. It was so great to have them there, it made our trip even more fun. Here is Kaden meeting up with his best buddy Grant.Day 2 at the beach. We took the Cleveland's back to Coronado so their boys could play in the ocean. It was so fun to go back with them. We brought a boogie-board with us so that gave us more to do and there were more adults to watch the kids so the adults could play too. This is just a cute pic of Oliver when we went to Ocean Beach for dinner and to see the sunset.
Grant, Carter, and Kaden at the hippo exhibit at the San Diego zoo.
Kevin and I at Mission Beach. We went to this really delicious place called Kono's for breakfast and then we came and walked on the pier. I had to add a picture of just the two of us since we celebrated our 8th anniversary on July 29th.
Here is our family at the Wild Animal Park.
After we left San Diego we went to Santa Monica to visit our friends Chad and Emily. Kevin and Chad grew up together and Chad was the best man in our wedding. We really wanted to be able to see them and meet their new baby, James. It was great to spend some time with them and see where they are living and working and to meet their little man. They are such a cute family. We left on Sunday morning and drove 17 hours home, so we got home Monday morning at 1ish. We had such a great time, but it is always nice to be home and to sleep in our own bed.