Our good friend Pat (known around our house as Uncle Pat) is getting married next month. He and the groomsmen are wearing traditional kilts. They ordered tartans from Scotland (Homeland Security actually held them in customs for a while before they arrived here) and Libby and I are making the kilts. We have six to make. Three groomsmen, 1 groom and 2 ringbearers. We found a site online that has a decent tutorial and we have a pattern that is approved by the Official Scottish Kilt people (yes, they have a more official and respectable sounding name than that but I don’t remember what it is). The nice people at Treadle Yard Goods assured Libby that kilts are easy. The person who wrote the rather humorous tutorial reminded us that it’s a myth that kilts are hard to sew.

Um…yeah. They’re not. They are complicated and time consuming. Libby and I have it figured out and if the little kilts are any indication of how the full size one will look, the guys will be looking pretty good. But these are going to take a while to make. The groom’s kilt has over 8 yards of fabric and the groomsmen have about 5 yards. And about 3/4 of that fabric needs to be hand pleated. That’s going to take some time.

I’m excited to see how these turn out. It’s a big project and the fabric is gorgeous. Pictures will be posted as soon as they are finished.

Some of you may have heard that our wait for a referral has had another 3 months added to it. That doesn’t mean it still can’t happen anytime now but it means that more than likely we won’t hear anything until the holidays.

To fill the time I’ve decided to make a quilt for the baby. I made one for Lexi out of her baby clothes and I want to do a special one for the baby as well. So I am undertaking a pretty big project involving lots of people (including you, if you want to participate). I organized a group of about 15 moms who are all adopting from Ethiopia. We are each going to make 15 identical quilt blocks, keep one block for ourselves and then send 1 block to each member of the group. Then once we get all of our blocks we can piece them together however we want. The kids who come home from Ethiopia will all have a quilt with a common theme running through them (just like they are all from Ethiopia) but the quilts will be different in their own way - just like the kids are all different.

15 blocks is only about half of the front of a quilt. To piece mine together I would like help from family and friends. I’m modifying an idea I’ve seen a lot of other adoptive parents do. It’s from a tradition in China called a 100 Good Wishes Quilt. I was originally going to just do a 100 Good Wishes Quilt but I liked the idea of tying in some of Ethiopia as well.

If you want to be a part of the quilt, cut a piece of material (any kind as long as it can be machine washed) into a 12 inch square and send it to me. Pick a material that you like - something that could represent your family, you, your interests, you favorite color, a favorite flannel shirt you never wear anymore- and send it too me. I’d appreciate it if you’d include a note as to why you chose the fabric. I’ll save these and put them in the baby’s life book (side note: A life book is the adopted child’s version of a baby book). I’ll use all the piece I receive as a border for the quilt and to fill in the middle if needed. You don’t have to limit it to “1 per family” either. If you’ve got kids and want to do one for you, one for your spouse, one for each kid, go right ahead. If you want to do one as a family, go right ahead. I’m also planning on creating a page on my blog to post pictures of the squares I get.

If you’re a time line sort of person, I’d like to be able to put the quilt together over my Thanksgiving break, so if you could send it before then, that would be great.

If you need my address, just e-mail me or leave a comment and I’ll send you my address.

**Note: This is an open invitation for anyone who reads my blog. If we’ve never met but you feel like you want to do this, please do.**

I realized this weekend (when my parents were in town) that we need more glasses. When we got married we started out with a set of 12. Now, mostly thanks to one of my closest friends (who shall remain nameless) we are down to 5. Now I’m not saying she broke 7 glasses, Kevin and I have broken a couple as well. But I’m pretty sure that she’s broken a glass every time she’s come to our house.

Lexi is a big fan of our friend, Josh. Which is interesting because (including today) I think Lexi has seen Josh in person about 3 times. She’s seen lots of pictures of him and his family. And he’s made it to the top of her “people to pray for” list. At dinner we usually have to pray for our food and for Josh. It always goes something like this, “Dear God, Pray for Josh. Amen.”

Anyway, today we spent the day at their new house (Yay for friends moving back to Minnesota!) helping move boxes and put together IKEA bookshelves. Needless to say, Lexi was thrilled. She jabbered the whole way there about seeing Josh and Stephanie and Caleb. And while we were there, she would wander around, look for Josh and give us the play by play on what Josh was doing or where he was.

When we were eating dinner, Lexi decided that she should pray for Josh. Very thoughtful of her.

The ride home was also fun. Lexi sang the whole way. Mostly her version of ABC (it goes something like “ABC HIJ Sing with me QUST, WXYZ Now I know next triangle with me.”) But there was also the Wheels on the Bus/This Little Light of Mine/Bob, Larry & Mr. Nezzar/ABC medley.

Last September I counted up all of the friends having kids in the near future and (surprise, surprise, the list just keeps growing) I thought I should do a quick update.

Here’s the current list:
Rachel and Jonathan had Hannah back in April.
Harriet and Ben had Lucy in July.
Andy and Anna had Peter in August.
Steph and Josh had Caleb in September.
Kelly and Milo have a boy coming any day now. Peyton arrived in September.
Christy and Imad are expecting a boy in October. They named him Justin.
Amy and her husband are adopting a boy who is due in October. Joseph came home at the beginning of October.
Lance and Tara’s baby is due in November. They named him Malachi.
Brick and Rhiannon are due in January. Milo now has a little sister named Emma.
Laura and Brad are due in January. Another Emma in the world.
Aimee and her husband are due in January. Jack arrived just after the New Year.
Becky is due in January. Wyatt - totally in love with the name.
Mandy is due in February. Jackson showed up on his due date (I think).
Jenny and Matt are due in Febuary (I think). I can’t remember if Isaac was born in February or January.
And we are adopting but we haven’t been matched with a baby yet so it’ll probably be another year - we still don’t have a referral but we do have a time line - it’s about a 3-6 month wait for a referral.

Yesterday we went to the Minnesota Zoo . For those of you not living in MN this is the “big zoo”. There is also Como Zoo which is a smaller zoo near our house. Como Zoo is also free (well, free as in donations strongly suggested by the little old lady vlounteer who sits next to the donation box at the entrance.) The Minnesota Zoo is a pretty impressive place. Their outdoor habitats are pretty amazing. Some of them are so big it’s hard to spot the animals. This summer’s big event is the African Savanah. They brought in 5 different animals that co-exsist on the savanah and housed them all in one habitat so people can see how they interact (all though yesterday’s interactions mostly involved sleeping or wandering aimlessly). In the one exhibit there are giraffes, ostrich, wildebeasts, gazelle and zebras. At certain times of the day you can also buy crackers to feed to the giraffes, but we missed that part. The indoor stuff is also very cool. They have coral reefs, dolphins, sharks, tanks holding starfish and small sharks that you can pet, crazy looking sea horses and a whole Tropics Trail which has cool animals like tapir, tree kangaroos, otters, sunbears, lemurs (which we found out are extremely loud when they all start barking/howling at the same time), gibbons, tortoises, slothes, leopards, and other fun rainforest type animals.

So, Tim, Nicole, Kevin and I loaded Amana, Caleb and Lexi (and their strollers, snacks, lunches, waterbottles, diaper bags, and a few random toys) into the mini van and headed down there for the day. The kids seemed to enjoy the day. Lexi liked her stroller ride, Caleb liked people watching and Amana had fun looking at all the animals. Going to the zoo with a three-year old is always fun. There was a never ending stream of questions: why did the animals look like this?, why were they making that noise?, what is this called?, what is that called? but it was fun answer the questions and watch her run from animal to animal. Although I think the highlight of the day for her was running back and forth through a bamboo curtain.

You can see a few pictures of our day here.

Almost a month ago a friend of mine got married. And then he and his new wife apparently joined the witness relocation program because as of this entry, his blog has gone blank and hers has not been updated since May 15. Mutual friends have not heard from them either.

I have several theories on what has happened to them;
1. They are taking the world’s longest honeymoon.
2. While waiting for their plane at the airport to come home from the honeymoon they started chatting with one of those guys who stands outside of airports and hands out flowers and are now also standing around airports handing out flowers.
3. They have moved to a remote island with no phone, internet or mail service.
4. They are contestants on Survivor and are still stuck wherever the plane dropped them off.
5. They started moving into their new apartment, a huge pile of boxes fell on them and they are now trapped.
6. They were abducted by aliens.

Now I am going to see about placing one of those ads on the side of a milk carton.

(I wrote this around 1 or 2 in the morning. I’m not editing it. So it is what it is.)

A friend of mine and her husband are expecting their first baby any day now so the excitement, anticipation and nervousness is starting to build. Last Sunday, she asked me, “What if my baby is ugly?” She said she’d had a dream that her baby was so ugly she didn’t want to look at it. I laughed and told her not to worry, that her baby won’t be ugly.

Now, I keep coming back to that conversation and thinking about how the world views people and how God views people.

My first thought is that this baby about to be born can’t be ugly. It’s made in the image of God, created by the Almighty, it will be beautiful and perfect.

My second thought is how differently we see people compared to how God sees us. I know that sometimes I will look at a person and think,”I wonder what their husband/wife sees in them? They’re not that great looking.” (A rude thought, I know.) But this is how the world sees us - no depth, just judging on appearance alone. Then, I will start to get to know a person and suddenly I can’t understand why I ever had my original thoughts about them.

And I think this is how God sees us. He knows our hearts and can see the beauty in His creation.

So, to my friends expecting their baby, I can’t wait to see how beautiful he or see is.

Here’s the quilt I made for Tim and Nicole. It took me a couple months to do and I really like the way it turned out. I really liked doing this quilt. It was fun to make because it was basically taking two different quilts, finding something they have in common and linking them into one. (Insert appropriate metaphor here) Tim and Nicole designed the quilt so it was a unique pattern. Not a typical been done a million times pattern. That was one of my favorite parts. On paper, they look very different from the finished product and I couldn’t wait to see how it turned out. So anyway, here’s a couple of pictures.

This is the purple side - it’s a little more traditional.

This is the red side - this one was really cool to see come together.