Garage Sale Mania and Other Good Things

Wow! That last post must have been a good one. I got more comments on that post than on anything else I have written thus far. Thanks to all of you who weighed in on my diaper dilemma. I guess if I actually want to hear from some of you out there, I need to talk more about poopy diapers and my personal meltdowns. Will do! I'm sure when the girls get here, there will be a lot more to say on both of those fronts.

I have been percolating (I love that word) on this post for a few days. I have so many good things to share. This weekend, I had the chance to go with a friend to a killer multi-family garage sale in really nice part of town. The thing about garage sales in nice parts of town is that you actually get really good stuff for really cheap. My friend Jenna and I had so much fun driving around and around this swanky neighborhood hunting for stuff for the little ladies. To say that I scored would be an understatement. I got an antique desk that I am going to repurpose as a changing table (I'm painting it now) for only $45! I also snagged a cool art easel that is really high quality and a MOUNTAIN of clothes. I was literally picking up brand name dresses, sweaters, skirts - you name it - for somewhere between 50 cents and one dollar a piece! Check out the slideshow for pics of some of my treasures. Perhaps the most fun was stocking up on costumes for the costume box in the playroom. I got everything from a Tinkerbell outfit to a Care Bear costume with a stuffed bear head on it! I can't wait to have pictures of the girls playing dress up when they get a little older. I loved playing dress up as a kid and have such fun memories of trying on my mom's brightly colored plastic beads and scarves (this was the 80's after all). It will be fun to share playtime experiences like that with my girls. In retrospect, I realized some of the clothes I bought won't fit Little Miss J (our oldest) for another year or so but it was too hard to pass up cute clothes for a buck! When I got home, I did my first load of kid laundry. You can get lots of kid clothes into one load! It was fun folding all those little clothes up and stacking them in cute little piles. Make it a point to ask me in a year if I still think doing kid laundry is "cute". I have a hunch that the novelty of the experience may have worn off a bit by then.

The highlight of our weekend was attending the birthday bash for my former student's two year old son. EVERYONE at the party was Ethiopian. Needless to say, we stood out a bit! The people we met were so warm and so charming and made us feel like we were a true part of their community because of our daughters. Everyone we met wanted to see pictures and hear all about our girls. One woman even offered to come to our home once the girls get here to help with anything that needs to be done, including translation!

We also got to try Ethiopian food for the first time at the party. It was great! We really enjoyed the different types of lentils and the aromatic spices. Our host was very interested in what we thought of the food (he kept trying to get us to eat more!) and took the time to graciously instruct us in the proper etiquette for eating Ethiopian food using injera bread to scoop up the food on your plate rather than using utensils.

While at the party, we also got some great additional information on the meanings of the girls' given names in Amharic and more background on the region where they are from in Ethiopia. Our oldest is evidently from an area of the country that has a very rich historical connection to Christianity (as does the entire nation) that continues to this day. The amazing thing was that all the people we met at the party were Christians. One man was a pastor of an Ethiopian church in Los Angeles and he invited us to come and worship with them if we are ever in LA. What touched my heart most was how many people thanked us for what we are doing. One woman told me "Thank you for what you are doing for our children - for the children of Ethiopia." I was so humbled by the fact that she was thanking me for getting such a huge blessing! I told her that we were the ones who owed a debt of gratitude to Ethiopia for giving us our precious girls. We are so excited about staying connected to this community that embraced us so openly. Many of the people we met live reasonably close to us and have children. It will be so wonderful to have other Ethiopian children for our daughters to play with as they grow up here in the United States. There were so many kids at the party and they were all absolutely beautiful. It made us long to see our own Ethiopian beauties all the more. The night ended with all the kids gathering around the birthday boy to sing Happy Birthday in English - and then in Amharic! We'll need to learn Happy Birthday in Amharic (right now I'm still stuck on phrases like "Do you have to go potty?"). It would be special to sing to the girls in Amharic on their birthdays to honor their heritage.

In so many ways, these little "coincidences" - things we need provided for next to nothing, strangers embracing us as friends - have helped me to know that we are in the exact center of God's will in building our family through this adoption. I am so happy that we made this decision and I have such peace that we are right where we are supposed to be. I wrote in a previous post about how God "longs to be gracious to us". Each day of this journey, I am finding more reasons to marvel at God's graciousness as we prepare a home for our girls.



In my next post, I am going to be focusing more on Ethiopia and less on my "kid prep" saga. I don't want to overdo it on that. I just couldn't help but share my weekend of "good things". I really want this to be a bigger story that sets our journey against the larger backdrop of the need for orphan relief worldwide. I am also going to attempt in my next post to avoid overuse of the exclamation mark (we've talked about this before). I make myself crazy when I proof these because I just seem way too effusive. I will seriously try to keep those to a minimum next time! <- ha.ha.