June 2nd, another special day!

So far in 2009 we have had many incredible days. January 2nd, we officially became the parents of Yonatan and a family of 4. February 2nd we finally got to hold him in our arms. Yesterday, June 2nd, we readopted him in the State of Ohio. Going into the courtroom we knew Yonni was our son and nothing would change that, and this was just another paperwork thing towards his citizenship...but for me it still had its hints of excitement. Because we were not able to be in the courtroom for the original adoption in Ethiopia, this gave me the sense of it being official. As a family, this time we were all able to be participants. Although we have had our share of tough days, we are so blessed to have gone on this journey and even more blessed to be able to call Yonatan our son.

Here is Elijah and Yonni as we made our way to the courthouse.

Daddy leading the way

A quick photo opp before entering the building.

Waiting in anticipation for the judge to see us.

They took us into the courtroom and we were seated and had to wait for the judge to arrive. Elijah and Yonni had fun playing peek-a-boo under the table.

YAY, its over and my name is now officially Yonatan James Williams!!!

Sometimes they are just so darn cute!! I love to see how much they care for eachother!

Where has May gone?

So I looked at when I last posted and wow...May 3rd? Where has this month gone??? Well, in a nutshell...Here I go...

Elijah is still doing super at soccer

For Mother's Day Scott made an incredible lunch

and I had fun playing with my boys!

Elijah had his last day of preschool...which means kindergarten starts soon...so sad!

Here's another of him on his last day with my new flower bed in the background. Yep, May included a lot of yard work and gardening too!

That takes us to this past weekend, where we enjoyed getting away to Michigan of all places to attend the Alma Scottish Festival. Some friends let us borrow their pop-up camper and we made a weekend out of it Here's some pics of the boys sporting their prized possessions...their kilts!

I must say, at first i may not have been the most excited about those things, but darn if they don't look cute! They're winning me over(-:

So the main reason we went to the festival is because Scott is really getting into the Highland games and will be competing a couple times this summer in them. So the last picture has a little to do with that. On Saturday, after the "Pros" competition was over, they opened the field up to the "common man". They had a farmer's walk, you had to walk as far as you could carrying 400lbs! Yep, 200lbs on each side! So Scott said he was going to try. After seeing the bodybuilders that were doing it as well, I was a little nervous for Scott. "Oh ye of little faith" Sorry honey, but I had no clue you'd be able to get 2nd!! Yep, he took second out of 8, so I was very proud of him and must say shocked as well!! The pic below is what he walked around the track with. I'll have to post the video later!

Geographical Tongue

So...anyone ever heard of this??? For us, I'll start at the beginning. The second day after being united with Yonatan we started to notice some random weird white spots on Yonni's tongue. At first I just thought he had a couple of fever blisters, but by the third day they had grown into lines and circles and then the next couple days they seemed to move around in different places on his tongue. Jokingly I said it looked like his tongue was an alien road map. Being in Ethiopia at the time, we started asking and no one really seemed weirded out by it or worried, but no one really had answers either. Scott and I started really freaking out. After being there a week, a new family came into the guest home and the wife was a dental hygienist and she right away suggested that it was "geographical tongue". After returning to the US, that was one of the questions we had for the pediatrician. Of course, the day of our appointment, his tongue was completely normal. We described what was going on and he too right away said "Geographical tongue". He too seemed to not even give it a second thought and said don't worry about it. I've since been trying to research it and have read horror stories from random Internet sites but on webmd and more trustworthy sites, they all suggest that it is really nothing.

The mayo clinic says...

"Geographic tongue is a harmless oral condition that gives your tongue a map-like, or geographic, appearance. The distinct look of geographic tongue occurs when parts of your tongue are missing the layer of small bumps called papillae. Although geographic tongue may look alarming, it doesn't cause any health problems and isn't associated with infection or cancer. Geographic tongue is usually painless but can sometimes cause tongue discomfort and increased sensitivity to certain substances. Geographic tongue often heals in one area and then moves (migrates) to a different part of your tongue. Geographic tongue is also known as benign migratory glossitis."

So anyway, random info about our son's tongue. At this point he doesn't seem to be bothered by it, so I'll try not to either. I think he thinks that sticking your tongue out all the time to show people is just a common thing, like saying hi(-: And just because I think its rather interesting to look at...here are some pics(-:

Big Brother Little Brother

Our neighbor's lawn was so beautiful with weeds...yep that's what I said...I had to get the boys playing in the flowers! Anyway, on to the post, so my in laws were visiting last weekend and brought a book to the boys called Big Brother Little Brother. Elijah is absolutely loving it! So much so, he came home from school yesterday with this...

Apparently they had a project where they looked through some pictures and picked one and dictated to the preschool teacher their story behind the picture. In case you couldn't read the picture above it says...

"Its like I'm the big brother and that's Yonatan, And I go on a bunk bed like that and Yonatan sleeps on the bottom, and I sleep on the top. And we do everything together. We drive our car together, and even a funnier thing that we do, we watch TV while we're resting and that we can do everything together."


Yep, he made his mama cry!

What a FUN Weekend!

Don't you just LOVE this little guy's smile??? I find myself just falling in love with it ALL the time! He's a charmer and totally knows it too! Anyway, so how's life been? I've been falling behind in the blogging world, so sorry if this is a long post(-: The past few weeks have been... well, lets just say, Elijah caught whatever bug was going around...you know the one...High fever, nausea, fatigue, for lets say 6 days straight!! Thankfully, he seems to be on the mend and the rest of us didn't catch it. I was just getting tired of not sleeping in my own bed. The first night I was on the couch with him...then it dawned on me, "hey, we have a guest bed....duh!"
OK, back to the weekend. We went to Columbus on Friday to get a last minute Easter outfit and just hang out as a family. The boys had fun playing at the indoor play area at the mall, mom found no clothes though, bummer! It was a drizzly day, so I decided to take some playing in the rain shots of the boys, I think they came out pretty cute...


Love those boots! We had bought Elijah a pair well over a year ago, and Scott's mom found the same pair for Yonatan. So let's see, that was Friday....Saturday, the boys and I did some yard work in the backyard. Cleaned the garden up a bit and brought out the lawn furniture from the shed. Scott had fun helping out at the track meet and then coming home to finish raking the backyard(-: During Yonatan's nap that afternoon, Elijah and I painted Easter eggs. Even though this was Elijah's 5th Easter, this was the first time I had ever done the decorating egg thing with him. Call me OCD, but the mess always scared me. To my surprise, it wasn't too messy at all, maybe next year I'll brave both boys helping(-:

Later that night, I had the brilliant plan to start on Cake Pops (check this blog out, http://bakerella.blogspot.com/ seriously fun stuff if you are into baking). Anyway, not realizing how time consuming they would be for a first timer, I dove in (yes the night before Easter..before getting up early for 2 services...not too bright am I?) Oh well, I think they turned out super cute and am now wanting to make up holidays to make these for! Seriously, cake on a stick...who wouldn't like that??

OK, so that brings us to today. Easter Sunday! I awoke to my husband saying, "He is Risen" I was supposed to respond, "He is Risen Indeed!" But couldn't remember the liturgical stuff. Sorry babe! We had a really good time at church, being reminded why we are here, what our purpose is founded on and really just challenged to take our faith seriously. It was a good morning! After church we ran home and took some pics of the boys...

and headed over to my sister's house for a yummy lunch. The pic below is of the 5 "Ohio" cousins. That was the best shot I could get. It had been a long day for them!

All in all it was a fun weekend. The sad thing is that Upwards Soccer kicks in this week and we will no longer have free Saturdays for a very, very long time.....that's depressing!

My Little Photographer

For Elijah's 5th birthday, the only thing he asked for (more than once) was a camera. So we found an inexpensive one on clearance and gave it to him. Since then, he has randomly been taking photos...some are pretty funny, I'll have to post them later. This particular photo, I actually took (i haven't uploaded any of his yet), but it was after I walked into the living room and noticed him placing my willow tree figurines like you see up above. I asked what he was doing and he then explained that he wanted to set them up so he could take a picture of the whole family seeing the new baby. Like most photographer's I think he took like 20 photos of the same scene. Gotta love it!

New Pics

So because I am trying to go through the different days in Ethiopia, I haven't really posted much of Yonni since we've actually returned, so I thought I would put a few on the 'ol blog today. I had a "mini photo shoot" a week or so ago and we took these 3.

A week or so after we got back from Africa, we had a movie night and watched Madagascar 2. Yonatan loves popcorn!

Here is Yonatan and his cousin Ethanah having fun together.

This past week had a couple of gorgeous days, so we joined my sister and her family and went to the park...