Happy 5th Birthday to our sweet little Tizita Desta

Today is the day that Tizita turns five! Where have these last years gone? The time is flying by so quickly. Birthdays are a bit different for us. We have not been with Tizita since her birth so we have not been able to celebrate that day or her first birthday with her as most of you have.
We didn't experience holding her for the first time as a grandparent when she was just hours old, but seeing her walk off that plane three years ago was more than enough for us.
We did not get to see her blow out that special number one candle and put her little hands into that first birthday cake and smear it all over her face as most of you did, but seeing her celebrate her second birthday with her friend Elmo was just as sweet.
We don't dwell on the things that we didn't experience with Tizita, we just relish each and every moment and memory that we make together. After all that is what is weaving us into a family.
We feel as if Tizita has been with us forever, if not in person, then in our hearts and our heads. God hand picked this little lady for our family and we will be forever thankful for this blessing from Him.
Today, we celebrate this Blessing and Thank God for His Grace and His Plan. We thank God for choosing Tizita and placing her into our lives. We thank God for her health, her humor, her sarcasm, her beauty, her brains, and her charm.
So, Happy Fifth Birthday, Tizita Desta! We love you more than you will ever know! Five years old!

Four years old with the now ever famous Candyland Cakes!

Three years old, celebrating at St. John's Preschool with Grandma and all her friends.

Two years old! Her first little birthday cake and celebrating with Elmo.

We ask each of you to say a prayer of thanks for our gift of Tizita today, ask God to protect her and continue to bless her in the years to come, and if you wouldn't mind, could you also say a prayer for protection for her little brother Natnael who will join our family soon. We know God has chosen him especially for our family, too and we cannot wait to have him join us and start making memories with him, too.

She still bleeds green and gold

Today, Alissa and Nathan packed up their belongings and crossed the state line to move to Illinois. It seems like just yesterday we were there to help them load up a U-Haul and today we were there as the U-Haul took them to Bloomington, Illinois. It is bittersweet as we say farewell to their apartment, the place they called home for three and a half years. Never again will John and I visit this neighborhood. We will miss the happy times we spent here, but we are so happy that Alissa has found a new job and she and Nathan are able to be together again in Bloomington. We also look forward to many weekends spent making new memories down in a city that we learned to love while Alissa went to college there.

John is a bit saddened that from now on, a car with an Illinois license will be parked on our street whenever they visit, but at least, Alissa assures us she will still bleed green and gold and forever be a Packer fan! Phew, we would have to disown her if she turned to da Bears!

This is what we saw on our trip down Bluemound Road today. And all this time I thought Santa was apolitical! I call, "Fraud, fraud, this is not the real Santa, recall him!"

And, just to document, we had our first snowfall of the season today. I hope it is our last!

Celebrating Tizita's 5th Birthday

This past weekend we celebrated Tizita's fifth birthday with her up in Oshkosh. We took Gigi with us and Alissa also attended the big festivities. Tizita was in charge of the games and I was in charge of the cake. We played Hide and Seek and then Pin the heart on the penguin all directed by the birthday girl herself.

After games, it was gift opening time. Here is the new hook hanging that we got for Tizita's new room. She also got a princess game, a play school set, and a princess phone among other things. She was pleased with all her new gifts.

We played a lot of school the rest of the afternoon. Tizita was our teacher and we were all in her class. It was fun to see all the mannerisms that she has learned from her teacher and it makes me wonder what my students do when they are acting like me.

We had dinner at Two Brothers Restaurant. It was a new restaurant to all of us and we were so pleased with the food, service, and the prices. Tizita enjoyed this hot fudge sundae as a special birthday dessert.

We all joined in a rousing game of Princess Old Maid. Here is Gigi with the Old Maid, she was the big loser!

We saved our cake for after church on Sunday. We used a candle contraption that we found at MaryAnn's and boy, did we ever have a lot of fire on that cake! As I said earlier, I was in charge of the cake. Tizita wanted Pretty Ponies, so I bought three of them to put on the cake, but I forgot that the ponies have "hair" which we did not want in our frosting, so we took a quick picture and then took them off the cake.

After cake, Tiz and I played a bit of dress up before we headed for home. It was a wonderful birthday celebration for our sweet little princess.

Viewing it from the other side

Over the years, I have been involved in countless Christmas programs. Today I was able to sit back and enjoy Tizita's Sunday School program. I had to restrain myself from running up there to take over the director's job. It felt strange to be just an observer, but I settled in to my role and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Take a look at the little star.

Next Sunday I will be back in the director's role. I pray my students can perform as beautifully as these children did today.

We also celebrated Tizita's fifth birthday. It was a wonderful celebration and I will share more on that in my next post.

Oops, I done it again

I looked down at my feet this morning about 10:00, (I just mention the time because I had already been at school for three hours) and this is what I see. Yep, I done it again! Walked out of the house with two different shoes on. And might I add, these were two very different shoes with little similarities. Ugh!
At least none of the kids or any adults noticed or if they did, they did not say anything. Of course, to a four year old, this is really not so odd.
Okay, I do this once a school year, so it is behind me now.

Let it Snow, let it snow, let it snow

This year my new classroom has windows. Can you guess what my kids are looking at out of one of the windows?

It is something pretty exciting especially to them.

It is magical in their eyes.
Did you guess?

The first snowfall of the season!

In our old classroom we didn't know if it was sunny, windy, rainy, or snowy because we had no windows, so this year as soon as the first child noticed the snow everyone had to run over to the windows and check it out. The kids were so excited and I wished that some of that excitement could rub off on me, but instead of pretty white flakes, I see shoveling, cold temps, and icy roads.

I keep hoping it will be the winter of no snow or cold, but I don't think that will happen!

Birthday party, Pops, Lis, LIghts, a Big Weekend

It is Sunday night, we are waiting for a pizza to be delivered while watching a rather stressful Packer game. Courtney, Paul, and Tizita left a bit ago and we are tired from our very full weekend spent with Tizita.
It started on Saturday morning at Mehandis' birthday party which was held at Your Big Backyard in New Berlin. Since Courtney and Paul had a big craft show in Madison, John and I were given the job of getting Tizita to the big birthday bash. I have been FB friends with Mehadis' mom and grandma for a long time now and I was very excited to meet them in person at the party. I had never heard of Your Big Backyard and I was not sure what to expect, but as usual with these kid friendly places, I was not disappointed. The building is a big warehouse which has a huge playground structure as well as many riding toys for all ages, an area for basketball, and an area for younger children. A great place for little ones to run around, climb, and have fun. The staff, especially our hostess were so helpful and friendly.

Tizita enjoyed some time with Mehandis' little brother, Aberra. He is the cutest little thing. Both Mehadis and Aberra are also adopted from Ethiopia. Aberra is actually just three weeks younger than our Natnael. That really put things in perspective for me!

Here Tiz is taking part in a lively basketball game with Mehandis and some of his other friends.

After an hour of playtime the cake was served. It was a yummy ice cream cake.

Mehandis and Tizita having some fun together.
After our fun time at the party we were off to visit Pops at the Care Center.

He had some crafts that Tizita worked on while we were there. Pops was unusually quiet and said he was missing MaryAnn. That is understandable especially at this time of the year. We hope Tizita cheered him up at least a bit.
We spent an hour or so at Alissa and Nathan's apartment. They gladly took a break from packing for their move to spend some time with Tizita. It was good to see them, they are so excited for the next chapter in their lives and so are we.

We headed over to Candy Cane Lane to check out all the beautiful lights and decorations. Tiz was thrilled to sit up in the front seat with us. The cars drive so slowly through streets of Candy Cane Lane that we figured she would be safe out of her seat.

Then it was on the the light show in Waukesha. It was awesome. We enjoyed some hot chocolate and cookies before heading home after our long day.

Santa came and filled stockings for Tizita and Natnael. Tiz was excited with all her gifts.

I also wanted to add that on Friday night we all watched the Live Nativity at St. Luke's. What a wonderful presentation about the true meaning of Christmas. We ate dinner after the nativity at El Mariachi where we were seranaded by the Mariachi band. It was a great night.

Note to Natnael - We cannot wait for you to join on all these fun activities next Christmas. Your name came up so often this weekend. We love you so much already. Stay safe and healthy. We will see you soon!