Thanksgiving 2008

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! I think this is the most reflective Thanksgiving I've ever had. I'm sure like most of you, I have always had fond memories of Thanksgiving. It was always filled with family and tons of food. It was a life changing exprerience to spend it with children who literally have maybe a bag full of posessions, yet are the happiest kids you will ever meet. They are just enjoying life and could care less about material things. We had the opportunity to learn alot about their day to day lifes and how they live. Thankfully a majority of them live in an orphange that is funded by different supporters so they are recieving food and an education. One of the orphanages where 12 or so of the choir members are from, also recently purchased cows that they can milk to sell. They are hoping to start raising some chickens soon, too. I encourage anyone able to look into helping out in any way you can. They have a great web page to check out, too!

I have some more candid shots I wanted to share with you from yesterday..hope you enjoy them!!

Ella and Grace

The line of food..

Enjoying lunch..yum yum!

Randy and Ella having left overs that night at Ralph and Hazel's house

Me with Natalie and Ella

and here's one more video I took yesterday while they were singing and dancing for us..

Thanksgiving News Coverage

WNCT came by yesterday during lunch and did a little news coverage of the choir. If you want to check it out, click here . The lady that they interviewed was actually one of the host families from St. James, I think. If you look in the backround you can see a table of some of us eating. It was such a great day...I will be posting more pics later :)

Daraja Childrens Choir

Sorry for the delay in this post. We went to the concert Tuesday night and had a *great* time. The choir was amazing. They had the best energy and excitement about them, it was really contagious. The lighting was horrible for pictures, they all came out either dark or blurry. I still have some to post though..I also have been working on uploading videos to YouTube throughout the days, too. They are taking forever, but I'll post one on here for now and link you to the rest tonight or tomorrow.
Last night we had the privledge of spending some time with the choir members staying with Ralph and Hazel. The two little boys staying with them are so sweet. They are also housing Abbu and Grace. Abbu is the choir director that narates the video I posted last week. He and his wife Grace have an 18 month old daughter Natalie or "Ta-lee" as Ella like to call her. It was really neat to ask them some things about the children and the choir. You can tell that they are all having a great time, although I must admit I left seeing them almost sad. I just feel really bad that they ave a couple really exciting months and then they go back to being orphans in Kenya. Grace was telling Hazel it's very sad for the kids when they have to leave and that just breaks my heart...wish I could keep them all!!!! maybe one day :)

Hope you enjoy this video! It was my favorite song that they performed. You could see that each kid really meant it with their whole heart.

"Here I am To Worship"

We love you all and are very Thankful for all you do for us...Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Things I'm looking forward to...

Just thought I'd list some stuff coming up that I'm excited about :)

*Tonight: singing with Randy at Shannon's Birthday party..
*Hanging out at the ball filed tomorrow while Randy and Johnny's team play..they have an early game and if they win, they play a Championship game! Cool that they made it this far!
*Going to church on Sunday and having a nice day of rest with the family :)
*Tuesday, we're going to watch the Daraja Childrens Choir..I'm EXCITED about this!!


I encourage you to watch this video. Towars the end the kids talk about what they loved most about America, the food and places they saw, ect. It's really a wake up call at how much we take for granted like our beds!!


*I am looking forward to Thanksgiving the most this week because my small group will be spending the day with the children from the Daraja Choir and feeding them their first traditional Thanksgiving meal. I can hardly wait!


*And after Thanksgiving, I am going into full Christmas mode...and that's a whole new list!!
but..


*one of the things I am really looking forward to...is all of the wonderful advice and tips I'm going to get on here about getting lipstick out of clothes....

Yes, she really did already!!

This picture really lets her off easy to because it doesn't show much..She had it all over her clothes and in her hair, ears, everywhere!!

It's been awhile..

Sorry for the delay between posts..

Everything has just been pretty routine so there hasn't been much "blogging material" lol

Things are good though!

I have been keeping busy and battling morning sickness, but I'm starting to get used to the feeling lol (and how cute is our little baby looking on the widget?!? Finally out of the tadpole stage!!)

Ella's been doing great. She's Miss Busy and doesn't really stop unless she's napping. (and thank goodness for naps!) She's been having fun playing with a friend's baby that I have been watching in the mornings. This morning the first thing she said when she woke up was, "Bay- Beeee!!" I hope this is a sign that she will really like our baby, too!

and for Randy...he's doing great. Still up to the same ol' stuff.....

Our friend's, The Wallace's Yard celebrating the end of the election...

Does this bring back memories of the last election, Karey??

Here are some picks of the little one..

Relaxing in the baby chair that's back out during the day when I babysit...

and loving to play dress up! This is how she walked around for most of the morning!

Got Hair??

Thank you so much to everyone for all of your hugs and congrats on the new baby ;)

We are really excited!

Everyone always talks about how you forget what childbirth is like and then you get excited to have another baby..well I think the same is true with morning sickness! I had it so bad with Ella, but my memory of it had become pretty vague. Well..lets just say it came back so quickly when I felt my stomach starting to turn these past couple 4 weeks! People have a million different remedies for it, but I think it comes down to being sick whether you like it or not. I just try to smile and think of why my body is feeling yucky..and I must say all the sickness is worth it.

Here are a couple funny pics of Ella trying out some new hair! Hey- if her own hair isn't going to grow, she's decided to try out plan B!

Halloween 2008

We had a great Halloween this year..We started the fun on Friday when I dressed Ella up in a little Pooh costume that I thought would be a perfect daytime "around the house" costume for pics. It was adorable! Well, we ended up using it for Trick or Treating because it was so cold I didn't want her to freeze in her other costume. That evening, we made a quick stop with some friends to pass out some candy at a local nursing home. Some of the residents don't get many visitors and they really enjoy seeing the kids dressed up. We were running late and I was sick, so we had to make an emergency "dinner stop" on the way.. so we only got to visit a few people, but it was worth it for the few we got to visit.

THEN, we headed over to Winterville and joined the Ebeling crew for some Trick or Treating. It was indeed very "tricky" to help a 1 year old have fun, but I really wanted to go (for pictures, and because I LOVE CHOCOLATE!!) She was pretty fussy because she didn't want to ride in her stroller between houses. She wanted to walk like the bigger kids,only that would have taken forever. She did like going and seeing all the people at the door, though she could care less about the candy! So it basically ended up with me and Randy alternating holding her while WE trick or treated. Overall it was a fun time though. :)

On Saturday, after work we went to a party up at church.

Ella wore her pumpkin outfit since it was indoors....

Randy and I went as Fred and Daphne from Scooby Doo! LOL!

We had a great time and loved seeing all of the crazy costumes people came up with!!

Halloween is so much FUN!