Merry Christmas!

Mark and I celebrated Christmas in our home today. Mark and I exchanged gifts this morning and then his family joined us for lunch and to exchange gifts, too. We are headed out to Pennsylvania for the week to visit with my family.

I need to brag on Mark a little bit (and he doesn't know I'm doing this!) because I truly have the most THOUGHTFUL and CARING husband ever! Hands down. Don't try to argue with me. : )

I once mentioned, oh, probably 3-4 months ago, that I would like to look at getting a Peace Pole for our yard some day. I know that they can be kind of expensive so I just tucked the idea away for a few years from now. Well wouldn't you know that Mark picked up on that idea and MADE A PEACE POLE for me! I knew that he was doing a project in his shop but I didn't know what he was up to. It is beautiful -- gorgeous!!! It has four languages: English, German, Sanskrit, and Amharic. Of course, leaky me started to cry when I pulled the giant bag from the Peace Pole this morning. We've already got a place in the yard for it and have begun talking about what we'll plant around it. It's nice to think about spring when it's -1 degree with a windchill of -25! Isn't Mark awesome?!?!

But wait -- it gets better. I think that I've mentioned before that we're using giraffe's in the nursery. He found the cutest giraffe from a women's artisan group in Ethiopia and ordered it for me for Christmas. Yep, my leaky eyes started to cry again! It is made of twine and really, really neat. Mark is incredible. His thoughtfulness never ceases to amaze me and I love him so much.

We had a really nice day with Mark's family. It was fun to celebrate Christmas with them in our home, especially since this is the first Christmas in our new house. Here are a few photos of two of our favorite little girls, our great nieces Lily and Braylee.

Merry Christmas to all of our blog readers! We wish you much peace and happiness.

And then ... the lights went out!

We had a little excitement at our house on Friday morning! Around 7:15 a.m., I was eating my breakfast and watching the morning news as usual. All of a sudden, the lights flickered -- there was a loud 'pop!' and the lights went out. In fact, everything shut off! The little bit of ice that we had on Thursday night was too much for the leaning tree in our backyard. It tipped over just enough to take down the power lines on our house and one of our neighbors to the west on Mulberry Street.



So there we were ... in the dark.



We lit a few candles, got ready for the day as much as we could, and prepared to head out to Mark's studio so that I could finish getting ready for work. We could see two power lines dangling in the wind from the pole. They weren't touching the ground but it sure didn't look safe! And Duke Energy couldn't give us any kind of estimate on how long it would take them to come out and fix it.



As we were backing out of the driveway, we discovered that someone had smashed into our mailbox, took out part of our bush, drove through our front yard -- and didn't stop to tell us! We found the actual mailbox in our front yard and the post and random pieces of it scattered across the driveway. I was more upset than Mark but glad that it wasn't worse.



We made it through the icy slush to Main Street. I finished getting ready and Mark started his day early. Mark kept on tope of Duke Energy throughout the day and by 5 p.m. we had power again -- yay! But here's what the Duke tree trimmers left behind:

We are thankful that the power was out for just one day! We know that there are many people in Indiana and across the midwest and northeast that have been without power for days. You never realize all of the things you can't do without electricity until something like this happens. We're also grateful that the tree didn't damage the shed or the house or anyone else's house.

Anyone need some firewood? : )

Adoption Update

On Wednesday of this week, Mark and I spent the day in Indianapolis to take care of some of our adoption paperwork. Our first stop was the Secretary of State's office to have our dossier sealed. We were so excited that this took just 30 minutes. After that, we explored Indy's downtown for a little bit. We found some wonderful shops on Mass. Ave. -- a global gifts store, a fabulous, old-school toy store, and a great little chocolate shop.

As lunch time approached, we made our way to Abyssinia (see my post below about our trip to this great Ethiopian restaurant for lunch.) From here, we traveled to our agency on the northeast side of Indy. One of the staff for intercountry adoption reviewed our dossier. The good news is that our paperwork all looks good. We only had two small things that needed to be corrected. The bad news was that our primary notary incorrectly dated all of the paperwork she helped us with. The good news is that this won't hold us up at all ... we are still waiting to receive our copy of the home study to submit with our I600. We will see Jennifer on Sunday and she will re-notarize all of our paperwork, no problem.

We are hoping to receive our home study copy before we leave for Pennsylvania. We'd like to get it in the mail to the government and get the I600 process started while we're visiting my family. This could take anywhere from one to two months to complete. We're still hopeful that our dossier will be on its way to Ethiopia early next year! Our friends Chris and Sarah are currently in Ethiopia with their son. Their embassy date is in early January. And this week, two more of the Lafayette families received their referrals, both for boys! AND, to top that off, another of the Lafayette families passed their court date will be soon be traveling to pick up their daughter. It's been an exciting week around here!

Read on below for more fun updates from me and Mark ....

A Christmas Story: The Exhibit

Many of you know that I absolutely love -- LOVE!!! -- the movie, A Christmas Story. This year is the 25th anniversary of the release of this classic movie. The movie is based on the fictional town of Hohman, Indiana. The author actually grew-up in Hammond, Indiana, which is about an hour north of here. To celebrate this anniversary, the Hammond visitor's center has set-up an exhibit in tribute to the movie. On our way home from Chicago on Tuesday, we stopped at the visitor's center for a few minutes so that I could see the exhibit and relish in the silly-ness.

Here I am sliding down the slide after a visit to Santa. (Ok, not really. I jumped the rope and sat down at the bottom of the slide -- Santa was on a break.)

Here I am pretending to be Flick with my tongue stuck to the school's flag pole. This was Christina's idea -- a very good idea in my opinion. You can see the scene displayed in the background.

Here is the scene showing the Bumpus' dogs eating the Christmas day turkey.

"It's a major award!" The classic leg lamp displayed in the front window. I love the look on Ralphie's face -- they really captured the look he had in the movie.

And finally, who can forget these great pajamas? I still wish that someone made feety pj's for adults!

Finally! Lunch at Abyssinia

If you've been reading this blog since its beginning, you may remember this sad photo:

This was Mark on his birthday back in September. We tried to go to dinner at Abyssinia, the Ethiopian restaurant in Indianapolis but they were closed on Mondays.

Now, take a look at this photo:

Cha-ching! Abyssinia was open yesterday! We finally got to try Ethiopian food. We were so excited and we weren't disappointed. The food is very rich and flavorful. Mark chose the sampler platter so that he could try lots of things. I chose a lamb dish. Our food came with lots of injera, a spongy bread that's flat like a pancake. You tear off a piece of the injera and use it to eat the other foods instead of using utensils. It can be kind-of messy but it was very delicious! Here are a few more photos from lunch:

Let us know if you'd like to try Abyssinia sometime ... we'd be glad to meet you there!

Happy 40th Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

These are my parents, Paul and Bonnie Hutchinson. They celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday, December 14! Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! You won't find two nicer people ... they take such good care of each other and of their families, especially their own parents and their kids. They set a high standard for us in what it means to care for others. Mark and I are both grateful to have parents who have had long, strong marriages. (We celebrated Mark's parent's 45th anniversary over the summer.) Thank you for all that you do for us! Mark and I are looking forward to seeing you next week. Love you!

Chicago -- My Kind of Town

This past weekend, I attended the CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) District V Conference in Chicago. The highlight of the conference for me was hearing the keynote speaker, Ron Clark. He was so inspiring! He is a teacher who doesn't take no for an answer, dreams big and doesn't give up on his students. There's a movies about him called "The Ron Clark Story" in which Matthew Perry played Ron. I haven't seen the movie but I'd like to. I'd like to read his book, too. (Can you tell he made an impression on me?) The rest of the conference was good, too, but this was certainly the highlight.

The conference sessions ended around 5:00 on both Sunday and Monday so my friend and co-worker Christina and I hit the town to do a little shopping. I was good and only bought some treats at Fannie May (to share, of course!) What I love about Chicago at this time of year is the gorgeous decorations and the millions of lights strung everywhere for Christmas. Even our hotel had the most beautiful decorations. It was a treat -- even with the negative wind chills -- to be in Chicago for a short time. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the trip.

This is the view from my hotel room window-- I could see both Lake Michigan and the Chicago River! If I looked to the right, I could see the towers on top of the Sears Tower -- awesome!

On Monday night, Christina and I ate dessert first at the Hershey's store on Michigan Ave. We both had the most delicious hot chocolate and brownies. After a little bit of shopping, we had dinner at Buca di Bepo's -- or Bucka de Pepo's as my friend Kelly likes to call it!

We stopped by Chicago's NBC station, channel 5, to watch a little bit of the evening news broadcast.







And here is Christina at the new Trump building. I love her hat! Seriously, it was soooo cold it made my cheeks burn within a few minutes of being outside. Hanging out with Christina made this trip all the more fun!