Lili is now feeling better and has been introduced to art. A few weeks ago we introduced her to crayons, which she loves and this week she was introduced to sidewalk chalk. Here are a few photos of Lili van Gogh creating her masterpieces.
Okay, mommy helped get her started and as you can see, mommy doesn't have a lot of artistic ability.
Look at the concentration.
Creating this beautiful artwork is hard work and apparently Lili needed a break.
Okay, drawing on my arm is fun too. Maybe someday I'll be a tattoo artist.
Guess art time is over. Wait a minute, what's this tiny creature crawling across the driveway? Mommy says it's an ant, but he's really hard to catch.Okay, so staying on task is not Lili's strongest trait yet, but we're working on it.
Let me fill you in on adoption #2.
We submitted our application to the new agency last week and they received and accepted it on Friday. We have another form that needs to be completed and sent in to the agency and then we'll receive the contract and start on our dossier.
We can't being our homestudy until the end of September and even though we're using the same agency, we have to complete and submit a new application to them as well. We'll do that about this time next month with the hope of beginning the new home study the first week of October.
As many of you already know, adoption is not an inexpensive venture and families who are dedicated to growing their families through adoption find creative ways of raising money to help with those expenses. I wanted to find a way that we too could raise some money to help out with our upcoming adoption expenses, so last month we had a garage sale and sold enough items to pay our application fee. In addition, we cleared our house of things that had been sitting unused for quite some time and still have some items that we need to clear out. Those items will be posted on Craig's List and eBay over the next few weeks in the hopes of selling them quickly.
All of this brings me to the project I've been working on and am very excited about. In an effort to clean out closets and cupboards and to raise money toward our future expenses I came up with an idea that I hope proves to be a successful fund raiser for us. So, for the last couple of weeks I've been entering recipes into the computer as we create the Weeks' Family Cookbook. The cookbook will consist of all the recipes we've enjoyed over our almost 23 years of marriage. In addition, we will include recipes from our children's birth countries, Guatemala and Ethiopia. It will be a very simple cookbook, but one that I hope many will be interested in purchasing and will enjoy for years to come.
Like I said earlier, I hope to have this project completed and ready for purchase sometime in October (in time for the Holidays). I'll post more on my blog as time goes on and will include a link for ordering the cookbook once we get close to printing.
6 comments:
Thank you for adopting a child from Ethiopia. The Emperor of Ethiopia in 1924 adopted 40 Armenian Orphans that he heard play in a band while on one of his trips to Jerusalem.
When he found out they were orpans he adopted all of them and brought them to Ethiopia where they became the pillars of society, business owners, etc., One wrote the national anthem of Ethiopia "Hail God to Thee"
Unfortunately, time and invasions from other countries: Italy, Moslem invaders have taken it's toll on every population of Ethiopia. We still maintain churches in Ethiopia and to this day share the Armenian/Christian Quarter of Jerusalem with the Ethiopian Orthodox and Koptic Bishops.
Please enjoy this article and a piece of Ethiopian History where the Emperor of Ethiopian started by adopting the 40 orphans of Armenia.
STORY...
Armenians have always had a special place in Ethiopian life despite their small numbers. It’s quality rather than quantity,” he said with a smile.
Terzian’s father, who helped restore the town of Harare to Ethiopian rule in 1887, was named Governor of the Ethiopian town of Gildessa in 1888 and is credited with securing a vital road linking the city to the Djibouti coast.
“My father was also probably the first Armenian gun merchant in the world,” Terzian says.
As a confidante of Ethiopian kings, Terzian’s father was asked to arm the Ethiopian military and sent on a secret mission to France in 1890 to purchase surplus weapons. Given the political sensitivities of the time, the French would only sell the hardware but declined the use of their national merchant fleet to transport the weapons to Ethiopia.
Undeterred, Terzian secretly loaded the steel crates on a Dutch cargo vessel and transported them to the French colony of Djibouti for the land journey on camel back to Addis Ababa.
“It was the biggest arms shipment of the time, and it included 80,000 rifles, 13 million rounds of ammunition, machine guns and 33 cannons. This earned my father a special status, just like Dikran Ebeyan who was the royal goldsmith,” he said.
The Terzians, Ebeyans and others like them were first generation Armenians who had come as young bachelors in search of fame and money. They set the stage for the first major wave of families to follow in the wake of the 1895 massacre of Armenians in Arapkir at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
“My father brought about a dozen of his relatives who had survived the first massacres. They were mainly women and children, thus forming the nucleus of the Terzian clan, first in Harare and then Addis Ababa itself. More immigrants came in 1908 and again after the great massacre of 1915 and later young men and women from Aintab, Marash, Izmir and Adana. What you see in Addis Ababa today are the children and grandchildren of these people, and I am the oldest among them,” Avedis Terzian said.
One such group which is still remembered today are the 40 Armenian orphans brought to Addis Ababa by then Emperor Haile Selassie from Jerusalem.
“This was in 1923,” Terzian says. “Selassie, during a visit to the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, was very impressed by the performance of a brass band. When he found out that all 40 players were orphans of the 1915 massacres, he offered to adopt them.”
“The group came to Addis Ababa with their bandmaster, Kevork Nalbandian, who later composed the now abandoned Ethiopian national anthem. He also founded the Ethiopian military band which exists until today,” Terzian said.
With the influx of Armenians came the concept of organizing community life and that meant a school which opened its doors to a handful of children in 1915, just as new immigrants were coming.
Initially a small private kindergarten, the facility developed into the Araradian National School only to be fragmented into three smaller schools run by rival political parties in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.
“The introduction of Armenian politics was a divisive factor for this community, starting with the arrival of Matig Kevorkoff, a Djibouti-based Armenian merchant from Constantinople who was Armenia’s first ambassador to Addis Ababa in 1920. The inter-factional squabbles led to Kevorkoff’s abrupt resignation and return to Djibouti with his wife,” Terzian said.
Unshaken by what amounted to a diplomatic debacle, Kevorkoff talked the community into merging the three Armenian schools under one roof — thus forming the National Armenian Kevorkoff School which is still serving Addis Ababa Armenians today.
“We were a powerful economic force in this country, and more so after the British entered Ethiopia in 1941. For 33 years, or until 1974, the Armenian community of Ethiopia was at its zenith. It’s a different story today,” Terzian said.
http://lissanonline.com/blog/?p=410
More on the Armenians of Ethiopia.
Thank God for the Emperor Selassie who started with adopting the 40 orphans of Armenia
Wow! You have been busy. I impressed with the chalk drawings (for both of you :). Joshua would just eat it...he loves to follow ants too. Maybe you have a little artist on hand?
Reba
Glad Lili is better now. Sounds like you have and will continue to be quite busy.
Gail
Hi, Leah from Ethiopia Yahoo group. Your daughter is a doll. Congrats on the start of your second adoption.
I love the idea of a cookbook! How wonderful! If you need any recipies from Guatemala, we have a few favorites that I would be happy to share.
I love hearing your next steps for adoption #2.
Lili has got to have the cutest look of concentration EVER - look how intent she is on getting that chalk to make that concrete look pretty!
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