Thursday, Dec 12th

Happy Birthday, Grandma Loretta!  We miss you so much!  We have a video for you, but have to post it on Facebook because we can't get it to load here.  Love, Sid, Lil & Beck

It's Sidney's mom here, wanting to share a little bit more about what we have been doing.
Every morning, we go to the orphanage and spend a couple of hours with Beck.  We bring stuff to do, and we usually end up playing with the other kids too.  We try to make a point to love on the kids who we know don't have families yet and the ones who we personally know their families.  We play LOTS of soccer, some days we bring a beach ball, some days we bring balloons.  We always bring bubbles.  We've brought books to read with him, cars to play with, coloring books & crayons.  We try to mix it up every day.
In the afternoon, we do quite a few different things.
We've stayed at our guesthouse and played with kids, we've walked about a mile to the coffee shop and back, we've gone shopping, we went up Mt. Entoto, etc…  We're trying to experience as much of the culture as possible (and I feel like Sidney & Lilly are seeing both the good and the bad parts of Ethiopia)

On Tuesday, we went with Ordinary Hero (an organization that helps people both in ET and in the US) to play soccer with some kids.  These are all "street kids" meaning that before they got hooked up with this organization, they were living on the streets.  These kids are all un-adoptable.  They range from 8-17 years old and now live together in a big house.  There is a guard at night and a cook & housekeeper there during the day, but no one there for the day to day needs of the children.  These kids are absolutely amazing.  As part of the requirement for living in the house, they are required to go to school.  5 of the 17 or so kids are #1 in their class.  They have nothing, yet this organization said "we believe in you, we're going to give you a house and food, pay for your school" and these kids stepped up to the challenge.  They don't have blankets on their beds, (and it gets pretty cold here at night.  The other morning there was frost on the ground) their sheets are so thin, you can see through them.  Those who have pillows have holes in them.  If they are lucky enough to have a backpack for school, it is either a toddler sized one (picture a 17 year old boy with a Dora backpack that is too small to fit a text book) or they are completely falling apart.  They all share a couple of pens, and if they're broken, they just use the inside refill part.

Looking at everything we brought with us for 2 weeks, and we have more in our room than these kids do combined.  I don't think Sidney and Lilly truly understand what those kids go through every day.  Which is good, because they can look at them for who these kids are, and not their circumstances they live in.

So, while we are waiting to take custody of Beck, we are lucky enough to be experiencing these things that most people don't get to.  I'm praying it gives our family a more realistic view of the world around us instead of focusing just on themselves.