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!)!!