Pictures of our last week

Fun at the Animal Show at Busch Gardens

The Hippo that did Wyatt in (this is the play set on which Wyatt broke his hand)

At Shark Tooth beach on the Gulf side

Mommy and her boys at the Christmas Carol in Durham

Cool Cast

Happy Boys

We've only been a LITTLE pre-occupied :)

I'm sure you have all been sitting on the edge of your seats for an update on Team Dragovich. I just knew it-- and I am soooo sorry to let your bum get sore :)

The truth is... we tried to stow away in Tony's Army baggage and head across the Big Pond with him. It almost worked, until his bags were weighed and each one came in WAY over the limit and... well... here we are. Back in NC!

Okay, that isn't what really happened-- I bet you're shocked. Really, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were so very thankful to have Daddy come home for a few days-- but it made saying goodbye again that much harder!! Fortunately, I didn't have too much time to wallow in my self-pity. The boys and I made and impromptu trip to Florida to visit a very dear friend of mine who was in the states for a couple of weeks. We haven't seen each other in four years and I would say it WAS ABOUT TIME!!! The boys and I made the 13 hour drive on Monday, played with our friends until Friday and then drove home. We had a SUPER time-- except for the part when Wyatt broke his hand at Busch Gardens in Tampa... on Tuesday. UGH! It ws not one of those obvious breaks, but when I finally did take him in to the ER (the next afternoon, of course!), there it was-- a spiral fracture on the bone connecting to his first finger-- forgive my lack of medical terminology... my husband is gone, you must suffer through my lame explanations of things (what would that be, the first meda-tarsil? Oh my, and I'm even spelling it all wrong!).

Well, anyway, other than the broken hand-- which sort of put a damper on things for Wyatt-- we had a lot of fun, and I'm so glad I braved the trip. I think I have not fully recovered, though. We sort of came home and hit the ground running-- and NOT the kind of running I would personally have preferred :) Saturday we went to Durham to see a theatre performance of the "Christmas Carol". Sunday I spent a large part of my day at church. Monday, we were at the hospital for many, many hours, trying to finalize Wyatt's hand situation. Today we had homeschool P.E.; and somewhere in there I have tried to make our home at least a LITTLE festive (we opted for no tree this year, since we will only be here for 2 weeks enjoy it, and all my boxes of Christmas are WAY up high and require an extension ladder and a Tony to haul them down), do the Christmas shopping, cram in some school--ha, ha! and whatever else seems to creep up. All I have to say is, "Praise the Lord for internet and FREE SHIPPING!!" ;D

To all my stalkers from IL, whom I just realized read my blog and don't post-- how naughty-- I am coming your way, so watch out!! I would love to catch up with you while we are in town, so shoot me an email or something! We'll be there for a while, so hopefully I can see some old friends :)

Grace, Peace and Good Tidings of Comfort and Joy to you all!
Shari

PS... I tried twice to load pictures and twice it was interrupted, so you will have to wait.

Thanksgiving Blessings

I cannot take credit for directing your attention to the following message. It was posted by someone from my adoption Yahoo Group yesterday to remind (or inform) us of how the celebration of Thanksgiving began. I looked up the entire speech by President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863 when he declared the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and remember from where our great blessings originate-- God.

If you want to read the entire speech, CLICK HERE.

But, this is my favorite part:

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

We have more things to be thankful for than I could even make room for on this blog. Freedom to worship Christ as our Savior, freedom to choose our family size, careers, be involved in the constitutional processes of this great Nation, freedom of press, speech, freedom to serve, raise our children in the way which we see fit... and those are just the FREEDOMS for which we are thankful.

The personal things I am thankful for bubble over and overwhelm me to even try and organize them in order to share them with you! I don't think I will even begin such a list-- I may never end this post... and that is no good, because I have a Thanksgiving Dinner to prepare!! :)

But-- let me just end on this note... one of funniest things I am thankful for which my kids (and husband) will never be able to get, but I subject us to every year... THE MACY THANKSGIVING PARADE!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

One more post

I just found out that one of my bloggy adoption friends is wanting to raise money by offering their time share over Spring Break as a way to raise money for their adoption. They are bringing home a sibling group of three and will be traveling in a few weeks to Ethiopia!!

If you are interested, visit them HERE.

They are the Semlow family. I am cheering for them-- even more because they have a sibling group (yeah!) AND they are from IL-- my home state :).

BTW-- they said that they may have other dates besides just Spring Break available as well-- so, go see what a great vacation you can have AND help bring home kids from Ethiopia all at the same time!

Grace and Peace,
Shari

My first CC

Believe it or not, after almost six months into the waiting process of bringing home our kiddos from Ethiopia, this was the first conference call I have listened in on. Every month our agency holds a conference call for "waiting" families. We are the ones whose paper chasing is done, but who have not yet received a referral. As Duni, our program director said today, we sort of rank 3rd (out of 3) on the priority list for keeping in touch with on a regular basis. Which is why they hold these conference calls once a month so we can sit around ALL month long and think of questions to ask on cc day, email them to her, then she spends over an hour and a half answering them, plus whatever other burning questions we may think of between the cut-off time for sending questions and the call itself.

I really appreciate that AWAA does conference calls. I just have chosen to never sit in on one until this month. Mostly, because I have felt like we were too far down the list to bother with it. I have a hard time reading my Yahoo Group posts a lot of times! It is easy to get sucked into the "waiting" process and just live and breathe adoption stuff. Not healthy. For me-- there is such a thing as TOO much information! The funny thing is, after putting the cc on the calendar and being all ready for it to be THIS WEEK, I somehow forgot I would be on the phone at 3pm today and invited a friend from church to come and visit for this afternoon-- duh. Once I realized what I had done, I decided, "Oh well. I'm not going to cancel with my friend, it is important to spend time with her. I do have some sort of important questions (to me), but... Lord, I trust that the right thing will happen and You will work it out." And... He did. My friend called this morning and couldn't make it after all. I was able to listen to the cc and found it a very interesting experience! Yes, I am sheltered. I have never sat in on a conference call before!

So... did I find out any earth shattering news? No. But, I didn't expect to, either. It was fun to hear live voices of all the people I chat with via our YG. And I did get my questions in and clarified that we REALLY DO want to bring home a sibling group-- and that our age range was 0-5 and we just want ONE of them to be a girl and no, one of them doesn't HAVE to be an infant. Now we just have to get that changed on our homestudy!

I can't even imagine who God has in store for us. One thing I do know. This is NOT about us-- except maybe for the girl part, we're still workin' through that one-- ha, ha!! He will choose whom He chooses and it will be for His glory, and not ours.

Grace and Peace,
Shari

All AWAA all weekend long!!

The whole Gang

Last weekend was just so fun!!! I have been looking forward to meeting in REAL life all the wonderful families I have been stalking for the past months as we all walk through this crazy thing called "adoption" together. And finally, it happened! Two families even drove from out-of-state to get together... okay, one family was passing through-- which is why we even scheduled the big event for this weekend in the first place.

My boys had a reserved excitement on the way to Raleigh. I kept filling them with stories of lots of boys their age to play with and be wild. I'm not sure they believed me. Then the rain clouds kept following us, or we kept running into them and that sort of made us all hold our breaths. But, God is soooo good and by His grace, the rain held out so we had plenty of play time at the park before heading over to the Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. And, Yes... there WERE lots of boys their ages to be plenty rowdy with... see, Mom knows how to come through :)!

Team Dragovich Meat Combo for two

And as for the restaurant?? They did GREAT :). They all tried it without reservation and I think Wyatt liked it most of all. Isaac does NOT like injera, which he was bummed about, since that is how you EAT the rest of the food (imagine a spongy, ginormous soft taco shell with different kinds of spicy meat spread out on top of it. You rip off a piece of injera and use it to grab the meat and then eat away-- no utensils... a boy's heaven). But, I told him to just eat the meat with his fingers and not to worry about it. He is my "clean" boy, so he wasn't so sure. Sam liked the goat cheese with his injera, and the salad. My favorite was the lamb.

The only thing that could have made the night better is if our Daddy was with us :( But we're hangin' in there and thanking God every day for watching over us AND him, while we're apart!

Not so bad!

Grace and Peace,
Shari

More on Snacking

The boys are into their snacks. Every once in a while I get creative and try to do something cute for snack time. It is a rarity, okay, so don't go thinking that I do all this crazy stuff as a mom. I'm boring-- really, really boring. But, now that I have introduced the "decorate with your food" concept, it is the greatest thing ever. Today I set out a bunch of different "decorating" choices and bananas and peanut butter and let them go to town. Of course we had to take pictures, so now you know just how much my children learn on a daily basis. They may not remember to capitalize ANY proper noun in their lives, but-- by golly-- they can make a raisin stick to a banana!!

Grace and Peace,
Shari

Sam made a giant spider from the Hobbit. You can't see them, but he put out 12 marshmallows for each of the 12 dwarves who were spun into the spider's web

Wyatt built a futuristic city that towers above the forests-- the pretzels are higher living quarters, the m & m's and marshmallows and raisins are the earth below

Isaac made a home-- you can see the sides (bananas) and the roof (pretzels attached with a marshmallow). He landscaped around the house as well.