Of course, we also seem to be growing some rather more interesting nasty plants. There’s, of course, the lovely thistles. My favorite, however, is knowing that we’re growing nightshade. You know, deadly nightshade? The stuff you can make into some kind of poison?

Hey, maybe we can find some kind of market for poisonous and annoying plants to support the adoption. At least it would give me more motivation to dig them all up!

My back is bad again.  I twisted it a couple days ago searching for a book that Alexis had lost.  (Somehow I managed to pull a muscle in my lower back by climbing her bunk bed and trying to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling fan.)  Anyway, I’m limited in what I can do which is frustrating.  The older three folded my clean towels for me (folding is a chore they still enjoy, especially towels which they can do without help), and the younger two switched my laundry with me supervising.  Since I have the front load washer and dryer now they can pretty much do it themselves (though half of the time that it takes for them to put the wet clothes in the dryer is spent pushing the button that turns the light on and off inside the drum).  Anyway, they were a good help for the laundry chores, but now that that’s going I can’t think of much else that I can take on with or without their help.  I have cleaning I want to do, but it all involves bending or twisting.   Well, maybe it’ll be feeling well enough in another day or so to get more things done.  In the meantime… look out ebay!  I’m on the hunt for clothes for the new girls!

Though we enjoyed the visit (the kids loved it!), we decided that our friend should probably be moving along his way. Joel and I then spent about a half hour chasing him around the yard trying to catch him in a bin so we could relocate him. He started out not minding us at all (he was a very mild mannered black snake), but after we had tried to direct him by poking him with pieces of wood and such he started getting annoyed. The way we finally got him was by taking advantage of his coils when he got upset. Joel managed to slip a long narrow board under one and he lifted him up bodily and dropped him in the bin at which point I very quickly threw on the lid. (We had gotten him in the bin at least twice before that but couldn’t get the lid on fast enough.) Joel then took him back into the woods a ways and let him go there. I’m sure he’ll like his new home.

He was pretty, and did great with all of the petting he got. Near the end of the day he got a little agitated and started trying to get away so he had to be put back in his bag where he rests.

Here was what my friend for the day looked like:

She was a rose haired tarantula named Rosy. Apparently we got her on loan from a local aquarium/small pet store. She was a good little spider. I petted her several times. The kids were supposedly going to hold her as their fear factor thing, but we were informed that there could be liability issues there (rose hairs are known for their mild manner, but you never know what might happen), so we had to do things a little more creatively. We had a large box on the table with the back cut off and with a circle cut out of the front. I had to take the spider’s cage into it because, as we told the kids, the aquarium people said we should take her out in a dark, quiet place so she didn’t get upset. I would then take the lid off the cage as the child stuck their hand through the circle hole, take a little time to “get the spider out” since it was often down in a man-made burrow, and then I’d pull out a pipe cleaner spider which would climb on their hands. I felt vaguely guilty about it, but the whole thing was about the experience, not about learning about spiders. (How’s that for justification?) But we really played it up. The guy who helped me acted as my front man, really talking up the whole “Keep your palm flat, try not to shake! Don’t move suddenly!!”kinds of things. It was awesome. There were a few times that kids managed to peak around the box, but I saw them coming and made sure to have my hand in the cage before telling them they had to go around the other side so as not to agitate the spider. A couple of the kids didn’t even wait for the pipe cleaners to touch their hand. As soon as they felt my hand bump theirs (for the spider to crawl onto their hand from mine) they jerked their hand back out of the hole. A couple of them even screamed! One child insisted the spider had bitten him. It really was great fun for all. Really, it was.

Ok, and for any of you reading this who know me personally, DO NOT TELL ALEXIS THAT IT WAS A FAKE!!! She’s not good at keeping secrets yet.

Now that our adoption is fast-forwarding a bit, I’d appreciate extra prayer. Here are a few specific requests:

Funds – we need to send in our dossier soon, and we don’t have the roughly $15,500 that’s due with the dossier. We really can only scrape together a couple thousand of that at this point. Please pray that God would bring the money in somehow.

Van – we’re still praying to find a good, inexpensive 12 passenger van.

Paperwork – that things would move quickly through the various agencies that need to do background checks, authentications, etc.

Thank you for your prayers!

I decided to bring laundry soap this time, too. I’ll only be bringing the clothes that fit in my backpack, so I’ll need to wash them a few times while I’m there. I may let the hotel take care of it in Addis Ababa if it’s not too expensive, but in the other areas we’ll be staying I’m not sure they would have any laundry service available. I’ll wash the clothes I bring in the sink and hang them… somewhere… to dry overnight. I’ll let you know how that works out.

For now, mostly what I need to do is switch things from the one huge suitcase into two medium ones. Once I’ve done that it’ll just be a matter of double checking against my packing list to make sure I didn’t miss anything! Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever been packed this far in advance. Ok, so that’s kind-of sad. Oh well.

While I’m in Ethiopia I’m going to try to email Joel occasionally to let him know how things are going, but I don’t expect to be able to blog. Maybe Joel will post some of my emails or something. Anyway, since tomorrow is Mother’s Day I don’t know that I’ll be on much, and knowing that I have a chiro appointment in the morning Monday and the flight out in the evening, I’m not sure if I’ll be on again before I leave.

Wish me bon voyage!

* I managed to get all of our plants and seeds in the ground over the weekend except the carrots. I didn’t have time to do them, but I hope to get them in soon.

* I finished Alexis’ butterfly wings. I didn’t get to take a picture of them because I had to send them to school today, but if they come back home at some point I’ll take one and post it. They turned out pretty nice.

* We went to some of Apple Blossom Festival Friday, but we were rather disappointed. Rather than the family atmosphere I had hoped to find, there were more teens wandering around using foul language and people hanging out drinking beer than anything else. And this was in the area with the games and the parade. I don’t know that we’ll bother going to that part of the Festival next year.

* I might be leaving May 12th instead of the 14th for Ethiopia. The flight for the 14th is full right now, but since many of the flights have adoptive parents on them and some of those parents generally end up having to change their travel dates due to uncertain embassy dates (confusing process), I still might be able to get on that one. For now, the travel agent who’s booking the trip for us has me confirmed for a flight out on the 12th and wait listed for the 14th. We’ll see what happens!

2. NEVER pee on the floor.  Play, yes.  Sleep, yes.  Pee, no.  Neither should you poop.  These things should be done in the proper place, out of doors.  It’s amazing how cute you can be when you lift your leg where you’re supposed to.

3. Stealing people’s socks and running around with them is adorable until you actually chew holes in them.  When that happens, you’re no longer cute.  You’re bad.

4.  Letting people hold you for a minute is extremely cute, especially when you don’t end the cuddling time by suddenly trying to play nip at their hands.  Nipping really kills the mood.

5. Sleeping with your legs stuck straight up in the air has a definite cuteness factor.  It’s not even completely gone if you open your eyes and whine.  However, the cuteness points you win can be completely taken away if you follow up this performance by rolling over right side up and barking piercingly.

6. When your owner’s hand is hanging down from the edge of a chair, it is very, very cute to come and stand under it thereby petting yourself on their hand.  The effect is diminished when you then try to nip at their hand to play.  (See the note on nipping in #4.)

To summarize: You’re only truly cute when you’re good.  Bad puppies may seem cute to people who don’t own them, but those people are wrong.  Listen to your owner, and you will be the most adorable pup in the world… no matter what other people think.