friends and fingerprints

Sorry for the silence on the blog front... if it's quiet, then you know we're especially preoccupied!

After a visit last week from Mom, Dad, and Arjan, we were excited to have a weekend visit from our friends, Matt & April, and their two kids Chloe and Sam. (Matt is a friend of Nathan's from pre-college days, and April and I lived on the same hall all through college -- we introduced them shortly after Nathan and I were engaged and a few months later Stephen surreptiously moved their place cards to be seated next to each other at our rehearsal dinner. The rest is history, as they say). Chloe is 14 months older than Ellie and Ellie is 16 months older than Sammy, to give you an idea of the ages of the kids.

Ellie and Sammy seemed to be doing and interested in the same things, which kind of goes along with our theory that Ellie's development is about at the place it would be if she were born to us at the time we adopted her. The kids seemed to have fun together, for the most part, and the parents had a lot of fun playing board games until way too late at night ... but that's how it goes when it's been two years between visits. Gotta make the most of the hours together! I'm afraid we were having too much fun to snag any photos of us together. ;-)

We had a great Global Cafe` Sunday night with guest speakers, John and Erica Rinehimer. John served on cabinet our first three years here. He went on to get married, attend seminary and take his new bride to Uganda for a few years! They returned from Uganda in November and are expecting their first baby in a few weeks! We enjoyed a nice dinner with them Sunday after the service and the chance to catch up with them about their time in Uganda and where the Lord may be leading them next. We really do get to work with some of the best that Asbury produces and count their friendships as some of our greatest treasures. (Again, no photos! I really need to get a point and shoot to carry in my purse).

Now, Thursday's here and I don't know where the week has gone. We got our fingerprinting done yesterday for immigration. I was a bit concerned because I burned my right index finger TWICE in the last two weeks and had a lovely blister on it, but the technician was able to get what he needed. What a relief. The four-hour round trip to Louisville with a 5:45AM departure is not fun when you rarely go to bed before midnight. ;-)

Because I know folks visit the blog primarily for Ellie pics, I'm including one taken last night after our cabinet meeting. Ellie saw the seniors making a pyramid and wanted on too. (Sorry Joel's not smiling -- he was in the others, but Ellie wasn't)

In the mail...

Yesterday we got two pieces of mail from the department of Homeland Security... fingerprint appointments next week. Things are moving along.

Visitors!

Ellie was a bit 'amped up' and not particularly in the mood for having her picture taken. I didn't notice this till later, but she's cupping her hands, poised to catch the M&M's Nathan had proffered to capture her attention

Ellie definitely remembered her grandparents this visit and barely let them out of her sight. She was a bit confused that Aunt Hannah wasn't with them.

Ellie would offer Gigi one of her candies... right before withdrawing it and sticking it in her own mouth.

Here's a great photo of Arjan captured by Nathan. I'm so frustrated at myself for not getting a photo of Ellie with Arjan!
He has worked with my parents in Albania since 1994.

It's been a treat to have them with us!

Crazy Socks Day

It's crazy socks day today at school.

I think they're actually cute, not 'crazy', but they do make a point.

Enjoying the wind, while we wait for the bus!

More crazy weather here too! 40-60 mph winds today and buckets of rain! School pick up was delayed several minutes. Good thing we took the photos before school instead of after!

Rainy Tuesday Office Day

I checked the blog and couldn't believe a week has nearly gone by without me blogging!  Here's a quick recap:

We have had wonderfully warm weather since Friday. That has found us working more on cleaning up our grounds. Now that the bulk of the limbs on the ground are removed, the broken limbs still hanging precariously in the trees are more visable. Nathan crawled up in one particular tree over the weekend and it was a struggle to figure out who needed my watchful eye more -- Nathan operating a chainsaw 15-20 feet up in the air or Ellie, terrorizing a stray cat who seemed amused at her using him as target practice for the pine cones and sticks she enjoyed hurling. So much for the tidy piles of sticks and debris I had swept off the patio.

Ellie returned to school on Thursday and seems to be enjoying getting back to her regular routine. Today she was especially cheerful and fun when getting home. One thing I thought I would share (please, friends from the south, do not take offense) is that I have detected the faintest trace of Ellie picking up a KY accent. YES! One of her imaginary role plays is to 'spill' pretend milk or juice or water on the floor and act shocked at the accident. What a dilemma! What are we to do? She will usually say, "Uh oh! Milk spilled on da floor!" Our dilemma though is that the one-syllable word "spill" comes out sounding like two, "spee-illed". Uh huh.

On Saturday we had a double dose of party fun -- and we didn't even have to leave the building! First up was Amy's shower for her twin girls who, Lord willing, will be coming home from Ethiopia soon!  They are about Ellie's age and we are SO excited for these new friends coming to Wilmore!  (If you are a pray-er for orphans, pray that the Kinnell's case can finally move on this Monday -- the judge has found little nit-picky reasons to keep holding them up.  Meanwhile the girls have already been moved from their village to the transition home, waiting for their mom and dad to come from America!).

Right after the shower we moved upstairs for Phoebe's 3rd birthday.  Phoebe's mom and dad are part of our adoptive parents group that meets monthly here at the center.  Phoebe requested a "pink" party and it was humorous to see how even some of the dads got into the spirit of 'pink'.  In Ellie's book, the party couldn't go wrong with the plethora of balloons Andy and Katie provided, especially one shiny mylar heart-shaped balloon that never left Ellie's hand. 

We had some wonderful guests with us these past couple of days, the Butlers, missionaries to Native Americans in Arizona.  "Grandpa Art" was a big hit with Ellie and "Aunt" Nancy was a sweet encourager to me in understanding having a child with delays.  We are so blessed with great folks who come through the doors of this facility.  I don't say that often enough.

This weekend we are looking forward to my parents coming for a visit on their way to a missions conference in Florida. They are bringing with them our friend from Albania, Arjan. We've been practicing saying his name with Ellie, but she really didn't need much practice. She pretty much nailed it on the first try. Now we're working on some 'mir dita's' and 'mir minjesi's'. It should be fun -- Arjan is an artist and recently has begun photographing weddings in and around Tirana so we are looking forward to talking camera shop with him (maybe he will get some family photos of us???). We haven't told Ellie much about their upcoming visit because the other day, Nathan happened to mention to her "Gigi and Gjyshe" and five seconds later the front door opened and she asked, "Gigi and Gjyshe?" expecting to see them (alas, it was someone else). I think she will be surprised and excited to see them when they do come.

Sorry I have no pics. We'll try to rectify that in the next few days, if we have time. Thanks for checking in!

Images from the Fancy Dress Session

The rocking chair above belonged to my Grandpa Van, and to his oldest sister, my great-aunt Helen, before him. It's nearly 100 years old!

I keep forgetting to share these photo of Els on the blog! They were taken at the end of November at a super-top-secret photo session for Christmas gifts that would be given to special grandparents. We shot them one morning on a spur of the moment less than 45 minutes before Ellie had to board the bus for school. She was great -- the hardest part was getting her to sit still! Enjoy!

Hump Day?

I know Wednesday is technically Hump Day, but today feels like Hump Day -- that blah point in the middle of the week. We just learned Ellie's school is cancelled *again* tomorrow. She hasn't been in school since January 23 and I'm forgetting what our schedule used to be like. Ellie is getting bored and I'm getting ancy to have those few precious hours back in my afternoon to work uninterrupted (was I spoiled?). For example, it took me 10 minutes to put together a simple deposit for Nathan to take to the bank in between rescuing receipts from Ellie who was searching high and low for papers for me to run through the shredder.

Camera phone pic of Ellie waiting to go down the tubing run Saturday

My feelings are probably exacerbated by the fact that we just had our big retreat of the semester last weekend and so everything else had been on hold while we prepared for that (it went really well!) ... as well as did things atypical of our schedule like shovel sidewalks & parking lots, scrape icy vehicles, made appointments with insurance inspectors, repeatedly mop floors stained with sidewalk salt, and pick up limbs in our yard. Yeah, I'm a 'type A' and don't take well to unplanned deviations from my schedule. Can you tell? Lest you think I'm a stick in the mud, I DO like surprises.

Between snow and ice storms and another good snowfall, things melted enough for us to discover that our van didn't exactly escape the falling limb unscathed as we initially reported. We got a good ol' dent or two. I'll try to post some photos. Also, our chainsaw decided last week that it didn't want to work anymore. I called our local Ace Hardware store that services the brand we own and they said that (naturally) they are experiencing a backlog on chain saw repairs. So, if you live locally and see the abominable pile of limbs in our front yard (and another couple in our backyard... and more on our deck), we're not procrastinating in doing our share of the clean up.

In other news, Ellie continues to surprise us daily with new words and sentences (today one new sentence was, "I can't open it!" and "Just one minute!"). Her new pretend play today was to be a 'doggie' and do all of the tricks and commands that Reagan knows (come, sit, stay, shake, chase your tail). I humored her and talked to her like she was our new puppy, even petting her head when she did all of her tricks correctly. Our poor REAL dog is so confused. [editor's insertion: I forgot to write originally that she starts the game by getting on all fours and saying, "Come here, Doggie." But she blends the first two words and so to the untrained ear she says, "Corndoggie!" Corndoggie"!] It beats the game she invented on Sunday when she would 'throw' pretend items on the floor and say, "Mommy get it!" Ha! I'm glad for her emerging imagination and can't wait for it to translate to playing with things like baby dolls or her tubs of amazing play food that have been waiting since her arrival in our family for such a time.

Because my dad is in Albania and especially loves to see new blog pics when he's away, these pics are for him (since we couldn't work at our desks tonight while Ellie was still awake, we decided to test out a fun new backdrop I got in December -- still perfecting the art of lighting).

Not much else to report from the Waggoner household today. Thanks for checking in!