Merry Christmas!

Halloween 2009

"Miss Alpine 1994"

"Somalian Pirate"

"GI Joe"

The end results...

Jake's attempt at carving a pumpkin.

Emily giving Israel a hand with the slimy stuff.

Disneyland 2009

At the end of a very long day they still had enough energy to make the silly faces for the camera!

My three beautiful Ethiopian boys!


Alemu's favorite ride. Matterhorn!

Snack time.

This is the only ride that we went on twice. They loved driving their own cars.

Israel was a crazy driver. I laughed the entire ride. He just could not stay on course.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Imagine? Being 12 yrs. old and NEVER had been on a merry-go-round.

We had a fun day all in all. The boys had a hard time with the concept that they had to wait in lines. Go figure.

Alemu's 12th Birthday

Who would have thought... that for his first birthday... in the middle of October... we would be having a pool themed party?! He used all his birthday money for the very exciting Wii system.

Foul Ball

Last night Brian took Alex, Josh, Alemu and Israel to the Padres Game. One of our favorite players Adrian Gonzalez hit a foul ball in their section and the man who caught the ball gave it to Alemu. As you can see on his face this was really cool. Thanks Brian!

So what do you do with your donations while waiting to send them???

An 18 year old boy...a punching bag!

Water by the gallon!

It was the day before Emily was to leave to go back to Ethiopia. We had a few stores to go to and Israel kept asking me for things. At the drugstore where we got Emily's pictures printed I let them pick out a candy. When we got in the car Israel wanted water. Of course the warm bottle that I had in the car wasn't good enough. Now we are at the grocery store and he is still bugging me for water. We were walking by the outside water dispenser and I said jokingly that I was going to stick his head in there and give him some water. Emily piped up and said that she would pay the quarter to watch. So...being a person to never back down to a challenge in goes their heads. They each got an entire gallon of water to themselves.