Our African Violet and Sweet Michelle

About 4 years ago Yvan's mom gave us an African Violet. It bloomed for about 2 weeks and has never bloomed since. Yvan is in charge of watering our plants. I am the black thumb type gardener and have managed to even kill a cactus! How does on kill a cactus you ask? Well, you put it outside and forget about it and it freezes. Yvan has a green thumb for sure and he is a very conscientious waterer. He waters our plants weekly and cleans the containers often. I just buy what I like and he takes care of them.

Last night we had some friends over for a chocolate dessert fondue (mmmmmmmm...goood) and I was tidying the house before people came over. I happened to wander over by the area of the African violet. Quite often I look to see if it is blooming and I am always disappointed to see that it isn't. However, feeling optimistic I took a peak and to my utter amazement and audible in take of breath - I saw some teeny, tiny flower buds popping up!!! I was beside myself!!! Our African Violet is blooming!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a big believer in things happening for a reason....I believe that what you put out in to the world will come back to you ten fold. If you believe that life has nothing to offer and you constantly get the shaft...well than life will give you that. The same goes for positive thoughts and energy! If you put out the good vibes you will get it back. I mean if you don't ask for something...how will you get it right! We when we decided to have a family we just thought it would be easy. How wrong we were...it wasn't easy at all. Well, instead of just giving up we decided to ask for alternatives to having a family. Adoption came up over and over! When we started we were looking at China but the wait times were too long . We sent in an application for Thailand but were told that the program wasn't open. We had heard of all the people who were adopting from Africa and decided to look into it.

I think the universe had intended for this to be our direction from day one! We just weren't seeing it...initially the adoption process was a bit trying and difficult but when we made the decision to adopt from Ethiopia things seemed to get so much easier...everything became clearer if you will. Now, this isn't to say that our journey doesn't have its hiccups and frustrations - but all roads point to Ethiopia and we are very happy to be headed in that direction.

I think our African Violet is a testament to our being on the right path! Otherwise, I don't think it would be blooming!!!!

Sweet Michelle! What can I say?!? She made me cry but in a good way. Michelle and I are great friends!! We quite often go running together and are training to run 10K together. This morning we went for our run and she brought over a present for us from her and Peter!

It is the sweetest little journal for adoptive families. I have been thinking of how we would chronicle our passage to our new baby. I loitered briefly in the scrap booking section of Micheal's but I am not scrap booker! I would love to be but I am not.

Now we will be able to easily capture the moments and details of our adoption. The book is laid out so well. It is just what I imagined and was thinking of seriously starting to look for.

Thanks to Michelle and Peter we now don't have to worry about it. As my emotions are these days, I cried because this is such a special, meaningful gift!

I also feel the need to say how lucky we are to have such fantastic, loving, supportive friends (old and new) and family! They are as excited as we are about us starting a family and are right there with us on our journey!!!

Sending the love to all!