Christmas 2010!

What a fun Christmas we had this year! We were joined by our friend, Tanya, who arrived by road from Sudan on Thursday. She came bearing not only Christmas gifts from Ethiopia (where she’d just been for a couple of weeks) but a spare camera as well, so I can start taking pictures again!

We did Christmas shopping, had a nice dinner and opened Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve, then on Christmas day loaded up in the car and took off on a road trip to north east Uganda. More on that on another post : )

I really flunked out on the “Christmas traditions” this year. Being as I haven’t even hung our pictures up after our move the end of October, I sure as heck didn’t decorate! But regardless, we had a great Christmas anyways. There is a craft bazaar in town Christmas Eve that we went to and I gave the kids each 5,000 UGS (about $2.50USD) to buy the other kid a Christmas gift. Ella totally got it, Frank didn’t ;). I also knew what I wanted to get each kid (nice sandals for Ella and a drum for Frankie) and let Ella pick out her sandals on her own. I knew she’d love that! Much better than just surprising her with them as the kid loves to shop.

We shopped and did some errands, then came home where the kids napped, Tanya started on Christmas dinner (teriyaki fillet!) and I headed back to the mechanic’s to sit and wait for them to fix Frankie’s seat belt. After waiting there for an hour and a half they were unsuccessful in their efforts to get it fixed, so I headed on home to an almost ready dinner and children who were just starting to wake up! How nice to have another adult in the house! After dinner I bathed the kids and we opened presents – what fun!



Getting ready to tear into the loot – gifts from Granny and Grandpa, Tanya and Mom


Someone was just a tad bit excited : )



Tanya opened a Christmas gift from... herself. Yep, her friends didn’t remember to get her anything!!! ACK!



A beautiful new outfit!


Tanya got me some AWESOME gifts from Ethiopia! Delicious COFFEE and...

...this awesome hippo oven mitt! Isn’t it cute?!!!!

Ella got this awesome baby and accessories from her Granny – perfect toy to get the day before a long car trip!

Frank got these great trucks from his Granny and Grandpa as well. They drove all the way with us too!

Frank also got this electric guitar – needless to say it did NOT travel with us!

Ella got an entire Ethiopian outfit from her aunt Tanya and let me tell you, it is GORGEOUS. I didn’t get the entire outfit with my camera but will post pictures of the entire thing later. The mixture of soft white cloth against L’s soft brown skin is stunning.

Frank also got an Ethiopian t-shirt from his aunt Tanya! And in his favorite color too – Orange!

Cool flying remote control Tinker Bell from Grandpa and Granny! This didn’t travel with us ;)

Frank liked the drum I got him – that also did NOT travel with us!

Ella had more fun shopping for her new sandals than she did actually opening them. But they are nice!

The kids were happy with the gifts that they got each other. Tanya helped Frank pick out a nice bracelet for Ella and Ella picked out a really gawdy cheap plastic toy for Frank. It was cute – she knew exactly what she wanted for him! Something “shiny with red on it”.

Frank and the growing Ranger

Kisses from the growing Ranger!

Ella and her pups : )

Christmas just isn’t Christmas unless you have some excited little kids involved : ). Cute puppies and one of your best pals helps too!

Exhausting productive day!

Whew, what a day. Started out the morning by dropping the car off to be serviced in the POURING rain and taking a boda to work. Of course when it’s raining like that there are no boda’s to be found and you end up walking quite a ways to find one (through the mud of course!). By the time I got to work I was SOAKED.

Being the week before Christmas work was SLOW and boring. Lot’s of people in the office have already started taking their Christmas leaves and no one is really thinking about work anymore. Including me : ) But, due to this slowness, I was able to Skype with my sister and mom for quite a while – FUN!

Then I got “The Call” – the call that I’ve been waiting for! Frankie’s PASSPORT IS DONE! Hooray, hooray, hooray for our lawyer. I dropped Frankie’s few papers off last Thursday and here he has it not even a week later! INCREDIBLE. SO different than the miserable and torturous experience we had getting Ella’s. Getting signatures from every Tom, Dick and Harry in Entebbe and getting a letter from a certain cantankerous government minister. This dude (who caused me HELL) has since resigned (thanks be to God!) so we didn’t have to haul our sorry butts up to see him – WHEW.

Luckily our car was done in time for me to go get it (thankfully the rain had stopped!), I ran home to get my ATM card in order to withdraw money to pay the lawyer for the passport and land title stuff, then off to the bank. To make a long (and terribly frustrating!) story short, an HOUR later I had the needed cash in hand, all due to my own incompetence and stupidity. I hate that! We needed to be in Kampala at 4:30pm so we needed to leave here by 3:30pm at least. Traffic is a bit more crazy this Christmas week. I got back home at 3:30pm and still had to load up the kids and get gas (was running around on an empty tank). Even though I’ve lived here for almost six years now, I HATE being late for appointments. And we’d definitely be late for this one but I really wanted to get the passport and lawyer fees paid today so I didn’t have to go in later this week (when traffic would be REALLY crazy!).

We got to immigration at a little after 5pm which wasn’t too bad. Traffic was bad but at least it kept moving. We then waited over an hour for the passport to be finished but that wasn’t too bad either. I was AMAZED at the reception by various people that we got. I think that people’s perceptions of expat adoptive parents is changing. My kids got SO many smiles and friendly greetings from people and one woman even complimented Ella on her hair saying, “Your Mommy made your hair really nice.” Usually, no matter how nice your kids hair looks, women will always find something wrong with it. I was shocked at the compliment! Then to my disbelief one of the immigration officers came over to tell me how much he appreciated me “doing what you’ve done”. I could honestly reply at how much we really appreciated immigration for helping us get the kids their passports. After all, they are “their” Ugandan children (and their responsibility!) and it’s nice to see the government and individuals helping their own Ugandan citizens in this way. It’s nice when people don’t just say things, but do the right thing as well. In the not so distant past the old feeling was, “Why are you taking ‘our’ children?” Um, because you don’t want them and are happy to let them languish in western funded institutions? I’m all about people taking responsibility and doing the right thing! And I'm glad to see immigration doing that and making it so much easier this time around.

Traffic had thinned a bit by the time we were done and we managed to get home at around 7:30pm. I made a quick dinner (I would be lost without groundnut sauce and rice! Fast and easy!) while the kids bathed ALL ON THEIR OWN. Even Frankie! He even put his pajamas on the right way all by himself! After feeding them and putting Frankie to bed I then had to take out Ella’s hair so that she can go to the salon tomorrow. Not exactly something I wanted to be doing at 8:30pm but hey. My poor doggies didn’t get fed until after 9pm – a good three hours after their usual feeding time! Fortunately they were calm and submissive and it didn’t seem to bother them. What a well balanced pack!

So, while tired, I’m feeling that I accomplished a LOT today. Not only getting the car serviced but getting Frankie’s passport AND surviving the trip to Kampala safely! God is good, even when I’m exhausted!

Merry Christmas kids!

Whew – seems that I’ve taken quite a long blogging absence! Something like a blog fart perhaps?

Goodness what a week it’s been. It’s only Thursday and I have taken THREE, count ‘em THREE trips to Kampala this week! But as a result of those trips I’m feeling better than I have for the last four months : ) I went into kind of a funk after my parents and best friend left and hadn’t fully recovered.

So, what were all of those trips to Kampala for this week? I guess you could say buying my kids a super duper Christmas present – LAND!!! Yes, that’s right, a chunk o’ Ugandan land in THEIR NAMES on which we can build a house and live. There will eventually be no more landlords and no more rent!

It only seemed right that the land be in their names. After all, these kids started out with NOTHING and up until about 14 months ago Frankie didn’t even own his own underwear (Ella was three years old before she owned her own or even wore them!). I know that buying your kid a chunk of prime real estate at the tender ages of five and three doesn’t make up for their rough start in life but it just seemed right. A great way to invest what money I have/had into my kids AND get to live rent free after the house is built while I’m at it!

Someday I will write a post chronicling that experience and while it went incredibly smoothly there were some HILARIOUS elements to the entire deal. Wow – never thought I’d ever experience anything as crazy as that in my entire life!

But now I’m just sitting back and marveling at God’s goodness, timing and care for our family. Truly amazing to see how He orchestrated it all. Incredible!

And, the icing on the cake was our lawyer declaring that he could get Frankie’s passport for us next week! Getting Ella’s was pure hell and I had been putting off the process with Frank, even to the point of almost letting my own expire (it expires on the 2nd!) so that neither of us would have one should a coup encure after the elections in Feb. If we leave we leave together and if we stay we stay together! Not sure what this all tells me about how the elections will go now... I go in next week (yep, ANOTHER trip to Kampala!) to get mine renewed so we should be all set to evacuate should we need to. Which we probably won’t need to but better to be safe than sorry!

No pictures

So I hadn't wanted to mention it, but our house was broken into a couple of weeks ago and our camera was stolen. So that's why I haven't posted any pictures and I haven't been blogging much. What's my blog without pictures? And especially pictures of my puppies ;) But I should be borrowing a camera over Christmas (thanks Tanya!) and getting a new one in January. But until then, hang in there without any pictures of your grandkids or grandpups, Granny!

The Wedding

So Ella attended a wedding last weekend. Without us. She was gone a total of 9 hours and near the end expressed her disappointment that it was almost over. And she’s only five years old....

The wedding was between two of my colleagues, Irene and Sam, whom wedded last Saturday in Kampala. The actual wedding service was at 1pm and the reception was at 5pm, in Lubowa, which is this side of Kampala and relatively close and easy to get to. I had dutifully planned on attending both but Frankie was having an unhappy morning and was actually WANTING to take a nap (unheard of!) so at the last minute (as in, we were all decked out in our going-to-meetin’ duds) I thought, “This is a dumb idea, taking a tired 3 year old to a wedding and reception which are four hours apart, in Kampala no less”. A better idea was just to attend the reception at 5pm (which would include dinner!).

Ella was jazzed and already decked out in her princess dress (rather tattered but FLUFFY and Ugandans love fluff!), pink Doggers and a crazy Afro (I’d taken her extensions hair out the day before). I didn’t want to disappoint her so called up a friend who was going and asked if she’d have room and a seat belt for one more, who was small and fluffy. No problem my friend said!

So Frank and I walked our fluffy little princess up to the main road, with her jeweled purse slung on her shoulder, filled with water, peanuts, a hankie and a princess cell phone. I must admit to getting a little choked up as I buckled her into my friends back seat. My baby! Off to Kampala without me! Gulp.

Frank took an over two hour nap, I kept picturing horrible car accidents, and after he woke up from his nap we just kind of looked at each other like, “What do we do now?” It was pretty weird without Ella around to liven up the place! I think I read more stories to Frankie than I have in the last year because we couldn’t think of anything else to do. Seriously, we’re a couple of duds!

We headed to the reception at 5pm and were enthusiastically greeted by an excited, relieved, bouncing little girl! She sprinted clear across the rather large reception room and launched herself up onto me. Glad I was prepared as wouldn’t that have been a good show – me flying over backwards with Ella in her fluffy princess dress on top!

She’d been with our friends all day as friends from the office had car pooled up to the wedding. Her idea of a good time – crammed into a car with a bunch of friends stuck in Kampala traffic. Seriously! She LOVED it! A week later I am still hearing stories at work about their trip to and from Kampala with my daughter. Yikes!

She enjoyed dancing, bouncing around chatting with friends (as in MY adult friends!) and eating cake for four hours until the reception was over. She then voiced her disappointment it wasn’t longer. Poor kid. Never gets to have any fun ; )

And Frankie? Well, lets just say that even a two hour nap and a delicious dinner couldn’t sweeten his mood up much. Thankfully we made it out without him screaming at the incredibly darling and well behaved little flower girl that accidentally stepped on his fingers... But it was close!