Monday, December 6, 2010

weekend recap

we had a stellar weekend but it was soooo busy! all last week, whenever i would look at my planner i would get stressed out!! maybe because our month of december looks a little like this...

yikes! we seriously have something going on every day until we leave for ethiopia. i'm not complaining though. i would rather stay busy so that the time passes quickly and we're on the plane before we know it. oh, and by the way...yes, i do still rock an old school planner, and i'm proud of it!! i never felt like i could get a good picture of what my week looked like by using just my iphone so i went back to a planner where i write everything down. if you're looking to do the same, i can't say enough great things about my adorable one from here. check them out :) it's a modern momma's planner. ha!

so, what did we do this weekend??

*friday:
-we got to attend a wonderful airport homecoming for 2 families from arise. one family brought home a sweet little 4 year old girl, and the other family, vince and kelli, brought home their two sons, ages 6 and 4. we started the process around the same time as vince and kelli, so it was really exciting to see that they are already home with their children and deeply in love. while they were in ethiopia last week picking up their boys, they said that they got to visit with our little guy and that he's doing really great while he waits on us. i seriously love the tight knit community that our agency offers families, and the friendships we've built along the way! the Lord is not only blessing us with a new son, but also a great support group through this process too.

-after the airport, we went out to celebrate the 9th wedding anniversary of some friends from church. we had a great meal at bonefish grill with four other very fun couples and then went to do a little karaoke. having never done karaoke before in my life, i decided that friday was not my night! a couple guys from our group did brave it out though and it was a really great time. i'm not sure if all karaoke bars are this way or just the one we went to, but all the music people picked was depressing!! perhaps i'll open an "only happy music allowed" karaoke bar. that would be fun {as long as i still didn't have to sing in front of strangers}!

*saturday:
-our church had a women's christmas brunch and it was super fun. one of my besties, lindsay, and i volunteered to host a table which meant that we were in charge of our table decorations. we both love doing stuff like that and so it was fun to team up and design our table. {sorry, i once again have no pictures to share :( i really need to find our camera cord so i can start taking and uploading pictures again soon!} i was also asked to give a little testimony about our experience fostering and adopting at the brunch. i don't really like speaking in public so i was pretty nervous, especially to talk about such personal subjects publicly. i was nervous and cried pretty much through the whole thing...pregnancy hormones, perhaps? it was good to share though about what the Lord has been teaching us through this process and how we got here. maybe if i muster up enough time, i'll post some of what i shared.

-after the brunch, my mother-in-law graciously offered to come over and help me clean my house. boy did it need it!! i don't think i've really deep cleaned it once since the boys left, so now it looks sparkling compared to what it looked like before. we chatted, cleaned and grabbed a quick dinner together since ryan was busy reffing a middle school wrestling tournament all day. {have i mentioned that he's doing this on here yet? probably not. he just started 2 weeks ago and is loving it. he wrestled in high school and has a great personality for reffing. if coaches or parents yell at him, he's not intimated at all. after all, he did raise a teenager for a year so not much scared him anymore!!}.

-saturday evening, ryan and i headed over to my other bestie's house for a pre-christmas get-together. elizabeth and matt got married in july and this was the first time i'd been to their house since they got hitched. it was fun to see how they turned what used to be elizabeth's house into a married house for both of them! lindsay and her husband, joseph, joined in on the fun too so we had an evening of lots of laughter, food and fun. i was so tired when i got home after spending 2 nights in a row out until after 11:00 pm. since i found out i was pregnant, my new bedtime is around 9:30 so i was feeling a bit like a party animal :)

*sunday:
-ryan and i headed off to church sunday morning and it was our weekend to teach the preschool class. i really enjoying teaching that age and seeing how the Lord is already penetrating the hearts of the kids with His word. this sunday though, it seemed that many of the kiddos were hyped up. i don't know if it's the impending excitement of christmas or what, but at one point during the class ryan looked at me and asked, "how are we supposed to do this in real life?". ha! i assured him that while i love children, i doubt we'll ever have 13 preschoolers residing in our house at once :)

-after church our small group came over for a christmas party/lunch. i felt kind of bad because we are probably the least festive house for having a christmas party at this year. after having my husband drag all 5 rubber bins of christmas decorations from our shed into the house, i decided against putting anything up. i figured that without a christmas tree there really was no point. we can still celebrate Jesus' birthday without all the hub bub of green and red strung throughout our house! the party was very low-key but fun. just what the doctor ordered after a busy weekend. ryan actually ended up taking a nap on the couch while the rest of us hung out and watched some HGTV. i love just doing life together with our small group and they are a real blessing to us!

-for dinner that night, the armstrongs, another local arise family, invited us over for dinner. they made some yummy ethiopian food and i hate to admit it, but it was our first time trying ethiopian. ryan and i {well, probably mostly me} are not super adventurous eaters so we had been putting off heading over to our local ethiopian restaurant for quite some time, but now we have to go! we both liked it so that gives me hope that i won't be overly hungry during our entire upcoming trip :) we loved getting to know brittney and james better and hearing about their experiences in ethiopia. they adopted a sweet little guy from the same area as our little man so they gave us some tips for our trip.


so, that's our weekend recapped. i'm honestly just tired thinking about it!! it was a great one but i cannot wait to get on the plane to ethiopia and final relax a bit. yeah right :)

2 comments:

Ginny said...

You did a great job presenting at the church brunch! And I loved hanging out at the small group party at your house! Guess I'll see you soon!!!

lesli said...

thanks Ginny! could you tell i was nervous? ugh. public speaking is not my specialty but apparently public crying is :)