Morgan's brother Daniel and kids visit

We had a great time with Morgan's brother Daniel and kids Cienna and Daemon.  It was a great visit, we don't get to see them enough since Daniel moved out to Spokane!!

Evy and Amelia at Sipsnstrokes

Amelia and her mom invited Evy to Sipsnstrokes today for an art class, and they had sooo much fun.  Aren't these Christmas tree paintings amazing?  Tracy and I are so impressed!!

Birthdays and Raking

Benjamin is quite the raker.

Uhhhh, Benjamin?

Apparently today was Rosie's and Old Bear's birthdays, who would have guessed??!!

A few days late on the pics but the Cowles had a GREAT Halloween!!  We had our fabulous friends the Balls over, my parents, and Beth's dad.  We headed out to Courtside for trick or treating (the houses are a little closer together, plus we have lots of friends in that neighborhood) while the three "grown ups" handed out candy and manned the scary music ipod selections... 

Ended the weekend with some fellow adoptive families, learned lots, shared lots, and had a GREAT time!!  It sure is nice that everyone we meet who's adopting from Ethiopia is way cool; that is working out so
nice :-).  AB I hope you are recovering from Benjamin's dentistry skills!!

Morgan and the kids are so talented in their pumpkin carving skills...

Our Egyptian pharoah (he's obsessed with Egypt right now, can tell you anything you would ever want to know), and our gorgeous pink leopard.

Annual Halloween with the Ball gang.

Mom and Project for Neighborhood Aftercare Video WSMV

My mom is the board chair for an organization called Project for Neighborhood Aftercare, which offers aftercare at no cost for kids in Metro middle schools in the needier areas of Nashville.  However, along with so many other things, they've been cut from the budget this year, which is very unfortunate for families and children who are helped so much by the program. Anyway I'm proud of my mom and here she is on News Channel 4 (she's in the black sweater). 

Click on title above or go here (http://www.wsmv.com/video/21475088/)

Evy Shines, and Turns 5!

All creatures great and small...

As you probably know, we are HUGE animal lovers over here at the Cowle household.  My parent's church has been doing the "Blessing of the Animals" service for years; we brought Ginger (let's just say she needs lots and lots of blessing...), and Mom and Dad brought Bear (their new deaf bulldog rescued from one of the Titans who travelled too much to keep him).  It was Ginger and Bear's first meeting and went very well!  Benjamin was in charge of pictures, because Ginger was pulling my arm off as usual...

Bear socializing...

B & E (& Ginger) loved the rabbits in the pew behind us...

Sick Days

I had a quiet day with Benjamin today who came home sick from school. He isn't too bad off, so it was actually really nice, just having time alone with him. I had a lot of school work to do, and I did none of it (go me!!). Instead we became OBSESSED with Jenga. By the way, we ROCK at it!! 

A Taste of Ethiopia

Shortly after we made the decision to go with AGCI and start our adoption process, we heard the news that a family we knew had just made the same decision!  We met them the summer before Benjamin started kindergarten at one of our playgroups for upcoming kindergarteners in our school zone.  Their kids are almost exactly our kids' ages, and they live right around the corner from us!!  It will be so valuable and supportive to have them going through such a similar family addition, and likewise so valuable for our daughter to have a friend with a common story living so closely.

Both of our families had been wanting to try an Ethiopian restaurant, so we decided to brave it together!  I asked my dear friend Etsu, who's from Ethiopia, and is in nursing school with me, for advice.  She suggested a place and some dishes to order.  She's so cute, every time I ask her anything about Ethiopia, she just beams.  I can tell she misses her home country.  I feel lucky to have her as a resource, and as a friend.

So even with all her advice, we still were totally uncertain what to order.  We ended up trying two sampling dishes, one a variety of meats (chicken, beef, and lamb) and the other vegetarian (lentils, cabbage, tomatoes with jalepenos, etc).  A large platter of injeras (picture tortillas but they don't taste like tortillas) was placed in the middle of the table, and then, without utensils, you each take what you want, place it on the injera, rip it off, and munch away!

It was good, but very spicy!  The kids did GREAT, they all had so much fun together, but their bellies were not quite full (Benjamin doesn't even like jelly on his peanut butter sandwiches, apparently that's just waaaay to risky for our little guy, so needless to say he finished his chicken nuggets in record time).  Ok you guessed it, McD's was the next stop (shhh!)!!

Happy Birthday Mom!

We went to Judge Bean's for dinner, got to watch Michigan win, and came over to our house for presents & cake! 

Granddad's face offers hours of fun...

Morgan made a strawberry country cake from scratch, thanks to Ina Garten.  Drizzled with chocolate for our chocolate lover, Benjamin...  Thank goodness there's one chef in the family.

Evy and I "at work:" me on adoption paperwork and Evy on a book about Ginger.

Benjamin REFUSED to smile on his first day of school, except for this ONE select picture.  I tried at home, in the hall at school, and finally got him here at his new desk.  Evy, on the other hand, couldn't contain her excitement.  She rand down the hall to her 4 year old class at preschool!  By the way, I too, started back to school today.  Let's just say I was NOT smiling! 

Lemonade stand with friends Benjamin & Kathryn Ball.  They made some serious dough.

Lake Shelbyville with the Stables