For Rana and Yvan...

Like me, her heart is heavy...


Like ours, their love is strong...


Like us, they walk on...



And make a wish for the future.


We all fight the good fight...


Until we get to the Other side...

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Mystery Blogger Revealed...

Rana and Yvan came to stay with us.

I am declaring April, "Invite a blogger you've never met to your home month."

More to come...

Would You Place Children With These People

Yes! Yes! You would! Who wouldn't?

Watch them in all of their beautiful adorableness HERE.

Also, press play, substitute JT's James with the word 'Jaynes' and sing along, LOUDLY.



Congratulations Courtney and Jason!!!

Sunday...

The Sunday Garden Tour will return next week. I am too busy hanging out with this mystery blogger. Can you see her? Do you know who she is?

Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

I wrote an article.

It is about something I know about.

Wanna guess what it is ?

(Crickets)

Okay.

I don't know about much.

You are right.

Point taken.

It is about waiting.

You can read it HERE.

Oh, and for those of you who know me live in person, the reason that I didn't use my last name, (the one that I share with my husband), is that I wanted him to stop banging his head on the desk each time I said I was sending more info about our lives into the Interwebs.


Mindful Mama

From Deirdre, editorial director :

Mindful Mama is a content and social media site for (what else) mindful parenting. I'm trying very hard to make it an inclusive place for families that have come together in all sorts of ways. We'll have lots of content on there about pregnancy and birth, but we'll also have articles about the adoption wait, adoptive breastfeeding, blended families, and so forth. More importantly, we're striving to make each article relevant to parents through birth and parents through adoption (insofar as it makes sense—obviously the labor and delivery stories are what they are). But one thing that always annoys me about sites and magazines is that they have an adoption section, and then they feel like they've checked that box and now they can devote the rest of their content to "normal" families—as though adoptive parents don't deal with sleep issues, picky eaters, and sibling rivalry. So here's my little corner of the internet where I'll try to combat that.

Deirdre is cool. So are her babies.

Thank you Deirdre, for asking me to write for your beautiful site, and thank you to the insightful, inspiring moms (who have made it through to the other side) for contributing their thoughts.

And the award for the person who made the best use of her waiting time goes to...

Meghan, Blueberry's mom


Meghan and her friend Amber raised sixteen thousand (yes, sixteen thousand!) dollars for Doctor's Without Borders. She also convinced tons of adoptive families to sponsor children at AHOPE.

Time well spent.

Would You Place Children With This person...

Travelers' Aid...

Okay all you Travelers on the bumpy road of adoption...

Here's a boost...

Those are our friends Nat, Dom and Simone. Simone just left the Gladney center in Addis Ababa.

LAX did not disappoint in its paparazzi level.

I received a smacker from new papa who is an international rock star...


The Aunties were verklempt...


A little Ethiopian met a Little Ethiopian...


And Simone was reunited with her friend the Baby Whisperer...


Auntie Amy leaves tomorrow to pick up her daughter Liv Tunsitu...

I gave Amy a few extra hugs to pass on to a certain Cupcake, a wee Mama's pup, and an Oklahoma Olly.

Welcome home beautiful Simone.

Sweet dreams. (Simone resting peacefully with her Grandma).


Feel better?

Me too.

Sunday Garden Tour- Bees!

In lieu of a garden view this morning, I thought I'd tell you about our visit to the bees. As I mentioned last week, we found a family to 'host' the Easter Bees. They have been at their new home for a week. We went to see how they were doing...


Some were friendlier than others...


They have been busy...


And reason 8,341 why my husband will be an excellent father...



Steven found a drone bee for us to meet. Drones do not have stingers.

Speaking of drones, I apparently purchased the most drone looking sunglasses I could find at Target after inadvertently sitting on my old pair that morning...



Sweet, sweet honey. No really, this is the best honey that I have ever tasted. There is just a hint of citrus. It is crystal clear.

Imagine Steven's surprise when his bee group made him the subject of a 'Tweet' on Twitter...

"Steve captured a swarm last Sunday. He is a urban beekeeper. Let's change the world." (They take their bees pretty seriously in that group).

All I know is that the honey is sweet and so is he. (Aww! How sappy!)

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Happy Friday...

I am lucky.

Today

Are you?

This may be particularly difficult if we do what we did last year on this day.

Better bring our Toms just in case.

Would You Place Children With These People

Sunday Garden Tour- A Day Late

The Habesha Garden is coming along. Steven has been working very long hours at his job, and it seemed like the Habesha Garden was not going to continue this year. Luckily, I nagged him he rallied, and things progressed.





Also, our Loquat tree had babies. Would you like your own tree? We have plenty of saplings. The fruit can be used in cheesecake. Hint. Hint.




On Sunday we got a call from The Rooney's. They had a hive of bees at their house that they needed to get rid of. They knew that Steven had an interest in bees and beekeeping.


Steven had never removed a hive before...


Luckily Abe helped.



As I mentioned before, Moses is highly allergic to bees so I found a family (through the earthy, crunchy, Waldorf-y school) who wanted to keep the hive in their yard. They live close to us, so Steven can visit the bees whenever he wants.

There was something so moving about getting these bees from Ted, Lori and Abe. The thought of Steven tending their bees, made it all of the sudden more interesting to me. Now three families are involved in keeping these bees.

To fully show the sweetness of my husband during this procedure, he arrived at the new family's house, and asked the two young boys who live there if they would like to carry the bees in. He made them part of the cycle from the very beginning. (A note about these two boys; I have subbed for both of them. One day at the school I said to the older one, "Oh, I subbed for your little brother in Kindergarten." He said, "I know. He said you are mean." Nice. Told you I was a surly sub.

So the bees are safely ensconced, and the garden is ready to go. We still have to put in the grain row. We will be planting tef again.

There will be a Habesha Garden again.

Happy Easter

This past week, this sweet couple finally received their proposal.

So did this woman.

And this woman made it official. Check out her adorable twins.

Here we celebrate being together, for as long as we can. Ted does indeed have cancer.

I am hopeful that we can get him to my parents' house this summer where he can bask in the sun and chase fish.



Later we will be Easter egg hunting with some of our favorite people.

AND, there will be a Sunday Garden Tour. Things are happening in the garden.

Happy Happy to you and your bunnies.

P.S. Nat and Dom, our friends here in LA, met their bunny!

The Good, The Bad, and The Teddy...

A few weeks ago I took Teddy to the vet to see if his super powers of flying through the air, and leaping bushes in a single bound, were directly related to being on too high a dose of thyroid medicine. They were.

While we were there, the vet found a lump under his lip and said, "I don't like the looks of this." She then went on to talk about how dogs at this age,"Go like Dominoes, one right after the other." I almost punched her. She wanted to biopsy the lump, and started talking about x-rays, jaw surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation. This, to me, was out of the question. I wasn't going to put Ted through that.

A few days ago the lump became infected and began to bleed. I took him to the same place we have taken our other two dogs for cancer surgeries. While the vet told me Ted's options (all of them involving expensive, invasive surgeries) I burst into tears and said,"We had a splenectomy for Lummi here and she died twenty-nine days later!" I think I was having some sort of post traumatic stress at this place. It was the same room, the same doctor, (He also removed several cancerous lumps from Moses) and the same bad news. At the time of Lummi's surgery they had said to us, either you operate, or she dies. We had them do the surgery, and less than a month later we watched another vet inject her with the drug that would stop her heart.

It seems that I am going to need your advice about coping skills. I know this place is a sad place, there are gigantic boxes of Kleenex in every room for a reason, but still, I should be able to keep it together.

Ted's lump had to come off. They took a huge wedge of his lip off, and are sending it to be biopsied. I am hopeful, that by removing it, we have bought The Ted some time. I am also hopeful that he never, ever looks at me the way he looked at me yesterday. He was furious, and so sad.

A few days before this happened, I opened my laptop to find tickets to see this guy. Steven surprised me, and we had planned to go last night. Since the Ted was in full recovery mode, we didn't want to leave him alone. We offered the tickets, along with babysitting to our friends. We were going to be home anyway. No one wanted the tickets, someone wanted the babysitting...



Abe tried to cheer Ted up by showing him his favorite Lisa Loeb video. You know the dog is in a bad way if Abe Rooney can't cheer him up.


Abe Rooney is serotonin in a pair of Stride Rites.


Later, a stranger from Silverlake came by with his friend to take us up on the tickets. (Yay Craigslist). They thanked us for the free show, and gave us a bottle of wine.

Not even Abe Rooney could make me feel better about the possibility of losing another dog. I know that some of you out there really understand this. These dogs, maybe they mean more to us than they should.

They are both so good with kids too.

I want them to be good with our kids.