Round 1 - getting ready to go...& a P.S.

The P.S. comes first on this post, since I just added this part:

Mom: "Hey Corey, whatcha doin'? Homework I hope!"
Corey: "Yep, I'm doing it."

(Mom comes upstairs to SEE for herself and finds something brown taped to his door. Great. She's admittedly annoyed, again, as her 12 year old has seemingly found yet another way to procrastinate)

(As mom approaches door, her patience is thin, as homework for this particular child is an issue. She thinks he's goofing off again, now making signs instead of doing homework - which he is! Mom takes a deep breath and gets ready to open the door...She's about ready to say something "not so nice"...and then mom reads this)

Mom: "I love your sign. What made you do that?"
Corey: "Just something I wanted to do yesterday and didn't get around to it. Going to do homework now."
Mom: "Awesome". ("Thank you God, for shutting my mouth this time")

Lesson: Before you bark at your kid (even your ADD kid who hates doing homework), make sure he's not processing some important life-changing event in his own special way :o)

Now, for the post of the day:

T-9 days...

Converter/Adaptor - check. Skype camera - check. Battery for laptop - check. Neck pillow - check. Cash in larger, crisp bills - check. Immunizations current - check. Tickets - check. Guest House accommodations - almost check. Transportation - almost check. Camera - Check. Basic Amharic phrases - not even close!

Started Kyle's "staging area" today. We're officially gathering things for his upcoming trip and making plans for how he will spend his days there. We're hoping he'll get to keep "him" with him at the Guest House so the two of them can spend some time bonding and going places together. We hear there is an arcade somewhere. Who knew? Jared is totally jealous now too (join the club, my son) and wishes he could go both trips. In fact, Corey jumped in last night and even said he'd like to go hang out with his future roommate. Oh well, our time will come. In the meantime, our best bet will be for Skype to work and me and the kids here to stay up really late or get up really early to "chat" with Kyle and his buddy! I really hope he doesn't have power issues...the kids REALLY want to "talk" to their soon-to-be brother!

That's it for today...going to be a busy week, but once Kyle has more details, I'm sure he'll fill us all in :o) All we know for sure is he leaves for D.C Friday the 13th, goes to court on the 16th and leaves Ethiopia on the 17th, arriving home on the 18th. If all goes "normal", trip #2 should happen in April - and we'll be a family of 7. Yikes!