Day Two & meeting Penny

After only one random wake up, a second Benadryl, a better wake up, and a scrumptious breakfast, we were met by our fearless facilitator/ guide/ interpreter and headed off to the town Penny lives in. The drive was beautiful, lots of farm lands (though no "farms" i.e.: homes/homesteads as I'd think of them) and beautiful countryside. The drive up into the mountains was a bit rougher, with a LOT of fog (for the local readers, makes Afton Mountain look like mist!) This was God's gift to me, as the drop off's on the side of the road were steep. I'm no fan of heights. 

We arrived in the city (small sized, but definitely city, not town) and found her orphanage. Finally meeting her was a bit surreal. God provided so much more than I could imagine though. First and foremost, she allowed me to hold her. She's not bigger, but certainly a lot stronger, and more mobile than I'd have thought from her medical reports. She can move all of her joints, though clearly the arm up by her head is the position o'choice. Her fingers are super long & graceful, and she's got eye lashes that would put any Cover girl mascara model to shame :) Much like I used to do Miss Sarah's hair many years ago, it was pulled up on top, Pebbles style!! (and she has enough hair to pull up!) We got to sit up, lie down and watch her show off turning (and trying with reasonable success to sit up-scaring me nearly to death), and watch her eat. See one, do one, teach one, tomorrow is my day to try feeding her! I am not sure how much she cared about the toy I bought, but she certainly liked Laura's camera. Shiny, pretty, and directly to the mouth it goes. In many ways, like a 4-5 month old baby, as though she were in a state of suspended animation. But she is completely aware of what's going on, watching everything.

We found our hotel (for future traveler's to the area-yeah, WiFi in the rooms now!) It's pretty, set out from the city by about 15 minutes or so. Lunch was pizza-the small will feed two of us for two days, with salad, and Kaufland, which might be BG's answer to Walmart-with better coffee.

 The clouds banking over the mountains as we left Sofia. Pretty neat looking!

 

Miscellaneous shots of the country side...and tractor dealerships because I'm a redneck like that...

Street banners from Penny's home town.

Now, here she is, holding my fingers. She had a much stronger grip than I'd have figured. This could be due to the fact that this is the preferred sucking hand.

This one is during our first meeting. She had already gotten a hold of my finger. It's funny, in a small world sort of way, as the flannel used to make her bib is the same exact flannel my dear mother in law has used to make a baby blanket for Baby Grey.

 

 

I was able to get a few video clips too. Unfortunately for blogging purposes, I'm chatting to her using her "real" name, thus pretty well negating any possibility for publishing. 

 

After Penny's dinner (lil miss certainly liked her food!) we made our way back to the hotel, had a fun dinner with our facilitator (chatting food, customs, and politics), and I'm certain now it's bed time. I mean, it's at least 8 o'clock local time right?!? Somehow, I think I managed to be jet lagged in reverse.  Happily though, we figured out the heater, as the forecasted overnight low is a balmy 33* (and no, that ain't Celsius!)

 



Arrived & Day 1 in Sofia

We survived our trip over, making all of our connections and apparently better time through baggage claim & the currency exchange than the average. Go us! I slept all the way from Germany to Sofia, a much needed power nap. We got checked into our hotel and, after getting freshened up, Laura & I decided that we must NOT go to sleep now.....bad form at 2:30 pm local time. So we wandered about Sofia, scoring some tasty pizza en route. These are some picks

 

View from our hotel room-That's looking down, and the historic downtown region would be to your left.

Not certain of the name of every place, but we did see a 16th century mosque, the largest Sephardic Jewish Synagogue in all of Europe, and an Orthodox cathedral that was the site of a terrorist attack against the then king of Bulgaria in 1925. All in the space of about 5 blocks!! The statue has a gold face, but don't let the colouring deceive you-NOT sunny, and not warm. That's me up there, quite grateful I packed a fuzzy fleece jacket. We snagged some 1 lv slices of pizza (that was seriously good, cheap eats),  got some good exercise in, and talked to everyone at home on Skype.  Now, at the crazy late hour of 7 pm, I so think I am calling it a night! Tomorrow, we travel to visit Princess Penny! Please pray for us, for favour, and for the Holy Spirit to just go ahead of us every step of this trip! Thank you!

(More) English Funnies

Homeschoolers have the most fun with English grammar. For example, when was the last time you had the privilege of studying verbals?

What's a verbal you ask? Well, to misquote Shakespeare, it's a verb by any other part of speech. Verb-like, verb-lookin' words, used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. AKA gerunds, participles, and infinitives.  Trolling the recesses of my high school experience, I vaguely recall the first two (honestly, I think I learned participle form in German, not English) and the final one not at all. Thank goodness my college best friend, who lives 10 minutes away, was an English major and has taught this craziness.

Verbals get a nifty little bit of diagraming, on the ole sentence skeleton diagram. A slightly lopsided pedestal type thing in the simple subject position, that looks more or less like a headless hang man doing a jumping jack.

I think I like my darling daughter's interpretive take them better though. After all, it would never do to confuse verbals with furballs.

Dates & Updates

I've been dreadfully quiet on the blog front. We've had a few rounds of annoying little viruses (with rashes-bonus!) and a whole lot of get ready for school.  We're into week three now, and nearly ready to launch the MFW component. I've organized, and reorganized binders galore. Now to actually DO it! I lead up our church's Wednesday Night Children's Ministry too (the 3 year olds to 5th graders only) and have been busy with our team coming up with a new plan (and some new energy too!) We'll be using What's In The Bible, which looks to be fun (I love the blue haired Sunday School Lady!)

We've been blessed with travel dates, bringing us in country to meet the girls the very beginning of October. Other than missing the state fair and yummy Virginia Tech BBQ & milk shakes, I'm TRILLED to be finally meeting these children of my heart.  Don't know the whole itinerary yet, but we do plan to fly through Germany. Might as well go to the one country whose language I know a cursory bit of, right? I'll be doing my best to try to blog along, but don't know the degree of Internet access that I will have everywhere. I also need to figure out where the heck to track down a European plug adaptor. Somehow, I'm not envisioning this as an off the shelf item at office max, though it could be! I've swapped out my fall clothes and working on organizing  my travel bags (not actually packing, but thinking about how and what I'll pack.) Basically nesting.

The summer garden is winding down. I need to get the last of the peppers and tomatoes picked. If time allows for it, I'm hoping to get a few fall crops in. Like garlic...a goal of mine to try planting for like...ever lol!

 I will try to get some school shots updated and keep you posted on travel plans. Any and all advice (good advice, not travel horror stories, 'K?) are welcome. We are working on gathering up some footie pajamas for the P. crowd as well. The upward soccer league locally also donated uniforms from previous season (new, just not current, and they get a new colour combo each year) and BALLS! Not as traumatic to pack as you'd think, but I need to get this organized too. I'm wanting to put together photo books for the girls too. Somehow, I have more ideas than time. Go figure!

Well, that's about all that's new on the suburba faux-farm. Hope you & yours are well!

Variable Measures of Productivity

(Just the title makes your eyes sorta glaze over, doesn't it? )

Well, here on the suburba-farm, on a rare day of no outing and synchronized naps, I've gotten quite a bit of stuff done. We've been blessed with late September weather in the middle of August. 70's, breezy, and sky the most perfect shade of blue.

The Tomatoes and Peppers all picked (and the last of the green beans, but they are big honkers, looking to become chicken chow :-p

A Full Clothes Line

 

 

 The future makings of tomato, basil, mozzarella salad-just add balsamic vinegar ......



And a little something pretty to dress up the table

 

What's going on at your place?

 

  As far as adoption updates, the Hidden Treasures auction as blessed us with nearly $1500. Basically that's all of trip one, 100% covered. We still haven't heard a peep about actual travel dates, though our verbal referral should now be an official signed referral.

 

 I added a web gadget of sorts, for coup-aid. They offer the option to purchase $50 worth of gift card, by way of Restaurant.com for $20-$10 goes to the organization, and $10 to our adoption fund. I'm reluctant to campaign too much for funding, as folks have been beyond generous. However, if you want a cheap eat out night, and feel like kicking in to the adoption kitty to boot, feel free to click away. I am confident we are probably very close to funded, but really have no way to know precisely, as the fees are not yet squared away. God will provide, regardless. Of this I have no doubt.

 

 



 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;  and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  ⁰ Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

   “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’   For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.   Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

(Matthew 6:28-34 NKJV)

Less than 3 days left!!!!

For our Hidden Treasures auction benefiting Princess Penny (and Princess Julie too-who began her journey in the same orphanage as Penny.)  Our family is absolutely in awe of the generosity of all of those who have donated, and that of those who are bidding so generously to help us get our girls home. File under 'Abundantly more than you can think or imagine'.

Life is trucking along here at Casa de 'Zinger at what appears to be the stable, make-you-want-to-chew-a-bottle-of-Tums, pace  that has set the tone for the entire summer. My mom had another scare with complications from her cancer, necessitating a week's stay in the hospital again. I was fortunate to be able to sneak up to see her on Tuesday. She's home again, briefly, but still HOME. Round 3 begins Friday.  We've had a bit of a virus running about the house too (it seems to be running about a lot of places) with some fever and generally feeling like dirt. Mr. P seemed to take the brunt of it this go 'round (someones got to, right?) running up a temp of 104!  Needless to say, not to much time to blog, so please accept my apologies for being so slack here. Work is still work. Busy, crazy, best nursing staff ever. Ce la vie....

No news yet on travel dates. We were warned to expect a minimum 4-6 week lag, and honestly, having already seen the evidence of God's wisdom in not bringing the much anticipated 'travel around the first of July' into fruition, I am doing much better in being still in the waiting ;) Of course, the circling insanity (and complete lack of sleep) could be helping too, but the other sounds much more noble! We can't get a drop of news about Julie, but were updated that Penny has not one, but TWO babas working with her. Again, abundantly more....

Well, that is absolutely all that is new, exicting, &/or crazy in these parts. The weather is lovely, and the grocery shopping is well over due, so I am off!

 

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:20- 21 (NIV)

 



IAC update

The IAC met again on July 23 to review dossier for official first trip referrals. In prose, for those who haven't studied the nuance of this process ad nauseum: you send your big paperwork packet (dossier-it's French for stomach ulcer) and await the Ministry of Justice's International Adoption Committee to meet, review your dossier, and *ideally* issue a referral. This is for trip #1. Once this referral is issued, you wait, again, for 3-6 weeks for the actual signed document and official travel dates/invitation, etc.....


And so.....yesterday, the IAC met again......





AND OUR FILE WAS REVIEWED!!!! WE HAVE OUR REFERRAL!!!! It's been a long, LONG, nerve wracking wait. But God is good, all the time.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. 

Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)