Counting the days...

Our court date for Merete is still a week away, and it seems like time is moving much too slowly while we wait to hear if he's legally ours...at at the same time it's moving much too fast when it comes to being prepared!

E and I put together a care package for him, the problems is that everything had to fit into a gallon size plastic bag. E drew a picture of the family, gave him his little backpack (we had his name put on it), and picked out some cars and a train to send over. I made him a little photo album and flash cards of the family, etc. We also included this great book, Zufan and the Flower, which is in Amharic, English, French and Spanish (guess he'll only need a couple of those for now). It took some doing but we fit it all into the bag, and hopefully the next group of families to travel will bring it to him!


This weekend I tried making some "traditional" Ethiopian food. First I made the berbere spice, which is really a combo of tons of other spices, including lots of paprika and cayenne pepper. It's used in many different foods, especially wot, which is a red stew (red from all that parika and cayenne pepper!). I only used 1/3 of the cayenne pepper to make it "mild". I then made sega wot (red beef stew), which turned out to be too spicy for E and nearly too spicy for Han. So, I'll have to make more berbere with much less cayenne for those two boys. We'll see if Merete's palate is more adventurous (I hear they are used to very spicy foods there). I also made Injera, which is a spongy bread that is used to pick up and eat the food. When we had it at the restaurant in Chicago, I didn't like the sour taste to it, so I tried making a not-so-traditional version that didn't ferment for 3 days. It was a hit with the boys, but I actually missed some of the sour when eating the beef stew with it. And I won't go into much detail, but cooking it took a lot of trial and error to get the right texture! Finally, I made a veggie dish with potatoes, cabbage carrots and onions. It was mild and simple and definitely the easiest to make! All in all, not a bad first try, but I'll have to keep experimenting.


Here's E and his friend after tonight's karate class, when we made them do all sorts of exercises that got them nice and sweaty. He'll probably need a hair cut before school starts, but it sure is more fun when it's long and spiky! Oh, and we've been watching "Ninja Warrior" these days, which is an obstacle course show. E keeps trying to make objects in the house obstacles, so maybe this weekend we'll have to set some things to jump over! If you get a chance, check out the show, it's hilarious!!