Monday, March 31, 2008
Ranavan's Thai Adventure
This past Christmas Yvan and I decided to take one last big holiday together as a couple before our new addition joins us. We decided to go to Thailand because.....well why not!
We packed our backpacks and spent two glorious weeks roaming the south of Thailand. We experienced the gentle, open and warm hospitatilty of the Thai people and some of the best food we have ever eaten. We slept in raft houses in the middle of a man-made lake, slept amongst the monkeys in the jungle and swam in the salty waters off the shores of the Phi Phi Islands.
We travelled by plane, train, boat, songthaew and long tail boat. We walked, swam and motorbiked to our hearts contents. We baked in the sun in the crowded streets and markets of Bangkok, lay on the sandy shores of Ao Nang beach and had our toes nibbled on by microscopic fish in the ocean. We ran after the crabs on the beach of Koh Sukorn and snorkelled with the clown fish, eels and jellyfish in the deep blue waters surrounding the Phi Phi Islands. We rode atop the gentle, giants that are elephants and hand-fed them bundles of bananas. We drank buckets of Long Island Iced tea, large Singha beers and the freshest of fresh fruit shakes. We ate red, yellow, green and coconut curries, savoured every morsel of the most delicious Phad Thai and banana pancakes in the world. We enjoyed thai foot massages, card games with new friends, gazed at the stars at night and watched the sun set and rise every morning and evening!
To our wonderous amazement and glee there were families from all parts of the globe in Thailand. There were baby strollers with babies sleeping, toddlers wobbling, school children running and teenagers swaggering everywhere we looked. As we are wanderers at heart and love to travel, we are excited to return one day with our bambino :)
See above montage for a peek at a very small sampling of the hilights of our trip!
We packed our backpacks and spent two glorious weeks roaming the south of Thailand. We experienced the gentle, open and warm hospitatilty of the Thai people and some of the best food we have ever eaten. We slept in raft houses in the middle of a man-made lake, slept amongst the monkeys in the jungle and swam in the salty waters off the shores of the Phi Phi Islands.
We travelled by plane, train, boat, songthaew and long tail boat. We walked, swam and motorbiked to our hearts contents. We baked in the sun in the crowded streets and markets of Bangkok, lay on the sandy shores of Ao Nang beach and had our toes nibbled on by microscopic fish in the ocean. We ran after the crabs on the beach of Koh Sukorn and snorkelled with the clown fish, eels and jellyfish in the deep blue waters surrounding the Phi Phi Islands. We rode atop the gentle, giants that are elephants and hand-fed them bundles of bananas. We drank buckets of Long Island Iced tea, large Singha beers and the freshest of fresh fruit shakes. We ate red, yellow, green and coconut curries, savoured every morsel of the most delicious Phad Thai and banana pancakes in the world. We enjoyed thai foot massages, card games with new friends, gazed at the stars at night and watched the sun set and rise every morning and evening!
To our wonderous amazement and glee there were families from all parts of the globe in Thailand. There were baby strollers with babies sleeping, toddlers wobbling, school children running and teenagers swaggering everywhere we looked. As we are wanderers at heart and love to travel, we are excited to return one day with our bambino :)
See above montage for a peek at a very small sampling of the hilights of our trip!
Friday, March 28, 2008
Waiting
I haven't much to say today...but remembered this poem we put in our Christmas letter that we sent out to family and friends this year announcing our adoption. Thought I would share it!
Waiting
I haven't met you yet or seen your face,but in my heart you hold a place. My hopes grow with each passing day,even though you're miles away. I know you're there waiting for me,as I am here waiting to see,the child God has sent from above,to make me a mother and share all my love.
By Karen Cooper
Waiting
I haven't met you yet or seen your face,but in my heart you hold a place. My hopes grow with each passing day,even though you're miles away. I know you're there waiting for me,as I am here waiting to see,the child God has sent from above,to make me a mother and share all my love.
By Karen Cooper
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Fur Babies
Yvan and I have adopted before, but it has been what we like to call our "fur babies". When I moved into my first apartment I fostered to little kitties and ended up loving them so much I adopted them. Suki and Sammi were my first babies and it is hard to believe that 10 years has passed since I first got them. When I met Yvan I was moving to Halifax to work for 6 months. He offered to look after my cats while I was away and the three of them fell in love!
After only a 1 - 1/2 months of being in Halifax, I moved back home because Air Canada decided to lay me off...again...for the 3rd time...in a year - thank you very much Air Canada :( (notice my disdain) and Yvan, me and the cats moved into a cute little house together.
In the fall of that year, we adopted Leroy Brown. He came to us thru a friend of my sister's who could no longer handle him and 2 kids under 3. When we picked him up, he hopped into my lap straight away and didn't look back.
I am not sure how we got so lucky with our fabulous fur babies! They have brought so much unconditional love into our lives. While Suki has gotten older and has diabetes and needs lots of care, and Leroy needs to have his teeth professionally cleaned every year - oh such the bad dog breath! We wouldn't have it any other way.
We can only imagine how much we will love this new little baby coming into our lives...if the love we have for our animals is any indication....it will be a whole lot!!
We can't wait for the day to post pictures of our entire family to be!!!
After only a 1 - 1/2 months of being in Halifax, I moved back home because Air Canada decided to lay me off...again...for the 3rd time...in a year - thank you very much Air Canada :( (notice my disdain) and Yvan, me and the cats moved into a cute little house together.
In the fall of that year, we adopted Leroy Brown. He came to us thru a friend of my sister's who could no longer handle him and 2 kids under 3. When we picked him up, he hopped into my lap straight away and didn't look back.
I am not sure how we got so lucky with our fabulous fur babies! They have brought so much unconditional love into our lives. While Suki has gotten older and has diabetes and needs lots of care, and Leroy needs to have his teeth professionally cleaned every year - oh such the bad dog breath! We wouldn't have it any other way.
We can only imagine how much we will love this new little baby coming into our lives...if the love we have for our animals is any indication....it will be a whole lot!!
We can't wait for the day to post pictures of our entire family to be!!!
Saturday, March 22, 2008
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!
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!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Training....again!
Yvan and I are back in training...again. Last fall I coerced Yvan into taking "A run your first 10K" clinic. I was running sporadically over the summer and thought I should get some training and actually try to accomplish a goal of some type. So, I decided to take the 10K clinic. Of course, I wasn't about to do this by myself...that would be silly....so I bribed Yvan into taking it and also managed to sweet talk my friend Michelle in to it as well. Well, that isn't necessarily true...Michelle didn't need any sweet talking...she was happy to join!!!
The three of us laced up our running shoes and filled our water bottles and started the clinic at the end of August. The goal was to run 10K at the Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis the first Sunday in November. We trained thru September and October with Brainsport and ran our hills every Monday night and did our homework the rest of week. I think it was during the first long (45 minutes) run we did one cool fall night in October that I thought to myself...."self what the #$%# are you doing!" As we ran up the steps of the train bridge and I realized how far we still had to go in order to get back to the store. It was very tempting to give up! But no, I would persevere.
I must also tell you that Yvan was a running a machine. He was worried that he wouldn't be able to even run for 20 minutes when we first started...uh, the name Forrest Gump comes to mind when I think of him the first night we went out! He ran and ran and ran and ran....and he hasn't stopped.
We finished the clinic and ran the 10K. Yvan ran it very well...me...I admit it I struggled...alot.
We finished and it felt great!
One night in December, Yvan says to me...I think I am going to run a half marathon...what??? Are you crazy???? Nope, he is serious! So, we are back training!! I am going to stick with my friend the 10K - I will conquer you this time. Yvan is training for the half! I am so proud of him...mainly because he has found a true passion! Oh, ya...his other passion besides homebuilding :) There is much chatter in our household about heart rates, pacing, lactic threshold....and of course homebuilding! Add into the mix the non-stop adoption talk I spew daily and we are a real treat to be around :)
The good thing about the running is that we are both getting in shape physically but most importantly mentally! This is good to keep our minds off the LONG WAIT!
The three of us laced up our running shoes and filled our water bottles and started the clinic at the end of August. The goal was to run 10K at the Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis the first Sunday in November. We trained thru September and October with Brainsport and ran our hills every Monday night and did our homework the rest of week. I think it was during the first long (45 minutes) run we did one cool fall night in October that I thought to myself...."self what the #$%# are you doing!" As we ran up the steps of the train bridge and I realized how far we still had to go in order to get back to the store. It was very tempting to give up! But no, I would persevere.
I must also tell you that Yvan was a running a machine. He was worried that he wouldn't be able to even run for 20 minutes when we first started...uh, the name Forrest Gump comes to mind when I think of him the first night we went out! He ran and ran and ran and ran....and he hasn't stopped.
We finished the clinic and ran the 10K. Yvan ran it very well...me...I admit it I struggled...alot.
We finished and it felt great!
One night in December, Yvan says to me...I think I am going to run a half marathon...what??? Are you crazy???? Nope, he is serious! So, we are back training!! I am going to stick with my friend the 10K - I will conquer you this time. Yvan is training for the half! I am so proud of him...mainly because he has found a true passion! Oh, ya...his other passion besides homebuilding :) There is much chatter in our household about heart rates, pacing, lactic threshold....and of course homebuilding! Add into the mix the non-stop adoption talk I spew daily and we are a real treat to be around :)
The good thing about the running is that we are both getting in shape physically but most importantly mentally! This is good to keep our minds off the LONG WAIT!
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