Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Our Family Trip

I wanted to post a few photos from our family trip to New York. We are back in Colorado and are excited about getting together this Saturday with folks adopting from Ethiopia and who have already brought children home from all over Colorado.
It was great to see the family and Maren and Yabsera loved seeing their cousins and meeting their Aunts and Uncles and Grandma's and Poppa...they even met their great great grandma! We saw cows at a Dairy Farm (Aunt Kathy's), we went to an amusement park, we got ice cream (Custard!), swam a lot, has a big 4th of July Party and almost missed the fireworks, we went on merry-go-rounds, caught frogs and toads, did a piƱata, played and played, saw the midnight opener of "The Pirates of the Caribbean", ate way too much, sang, danced, went to my 20th High School Reunion, celebrated my oldest's 13th birthday, drove to Syracuse to see the family who inspired our Ethiopian Adoption, they have 12 kids, 5 bio, one from china and 6 from Ethiopia- they home school and are amazing, while there we visited the house we lived in for 4 years and the place where Phoebe Darling- my baby girl, was born...we did so much and saw so many many good friends...all the while Maren was saying "Where Daddy go? Bye bye airplane?" He was sad without his Daddy and the day before we left I told him that tomorrow - he would wake up and we would get on a plane and we would fly to Colorado and see Daddy- so all day it was "Tomorrow, Maren Bye bye Airplane Colorado Daddy!" You can imagine how truly upset he was when the first plane landed in Dallas and I had to break it to him there was one more plane. He really melted down and went into "Helen Keller" mode- I call it this because he just looses it and partly I think its the inability to really communicate what is going on in his little head. When safely back in Denver with Daddy and Max- he finally told me how he got the scar on his leg- I think this is the real story because I was saying something else= that I clearly misunderstood and he corrected me. He said, "Oomba" and then acted out a cow butting his head into his though. WE know that Oomba is how he says Cow- its not the amharic word for cow in the phraseboook we have - so it might be woliatan- but we know its his worked for cow. he did the pantomime well. I wonder how old he was when it happened if he remembers it- its a pretty big scar in his thigh. He has many scars. I have more to tell about the day we came home- but here are some pics from New York!
This is us greeting the family at the airport!

These are some pictures form the Water Park- we went to a huge water park in Colorado today and all the kids had so much fun. Its true that Maren is somewhat obsessed with water as I have heard other Ethiopian adoptees are. Today we had to throw away all of our water because they were not in factory sealed containers and this really threw Maren for a loop- he was suddenly frantically parched and NEEDED the water right away! This is grandma and cousin Carolyn- they loved meeting the boys.




These are all the cousins on both my side of the family and Mark's side- we have a new cousin joining us in November.

I have more photos in a folder on my desktop to post - but it's late so I will sleep and try and post a few more tomorrow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That pic of Maren in the toddler pool actually brought a tear -- he looks so joyful! Just thinking about what was, what now is and what will be for our children is just unbelieveable, but for the belief in all of this having been ordained by the One who made us all.

Thankfulmom said...

Em, Your children are surrounded by love - you can just see it. How fascinating that Maren was able to tell you about the scar on his leg. It must have been rather amazing figuring it out. What a smart little guy.
Lisa