A Family Affair

I have been blessed with an amazing family!  They never cease to amaze me.  My parents were able to come up on Wednesday night and Bobby on Friday, so we got in lots of great family time.  I've known since Matt and I started this journey that our family is completely behind us in this, but this weekend I learned a lot more about what that means.  We spent hours talking about our classes and what we learned; because they really wanted to know and learn along with us.  They had lots of questions and we were able to talk through a lot of the concerns that we had after the classes last weekend.  One of the suggestions that we took away from the class was to start buying books, toys, dolls, etc that have different colored people in them--not all white.  I never would have thought of that on my own, but what a simple thing that we can do when bringing home a black child.  On Thursday afternoon, mom and I headed off to the book store and spent probably an hour just reading through children's books.  And we came home with some great books.  One book called "God Found Us You", had me tearing up by the end!!

We had also learned in our classes that there are several Ethiopian restaurants in town.  When my family learned about that it was quickly decided that it was definitely time to check it out.  So on Saturday night that's just what we did!!  We ventured downtown and arrived at a little restaurant/Ethiopian Market.  There were people in the market the whole time we were there, but we were the only people in the restaurant.  The owners were amazingly patient and kind with us; explaining the menu, explaining what everything was once we received our food AND how everything was cooked, all the while taking pictures for us.  Yep, we were eager to learn AND document the evening!  Like I said-very patient with us.  On the way out, we thanked them again for everything and promised that on our next trip we would act a little more like "normal" people. :)  Oh, and the food was delicious!  It was served family style and we ate everything by hand.  We ordered two dishes, both made with lamb; one was just chopped lamb with spices and the other was a leg of lamb with lentils, greens, and veggies.  We were also served Injera Bread-kind of like pancakes- which we used  like silverware to scoop up the lamb and lentils.  We all tried real Ethiopian coffee as well, which is STRONG!!!  I kept watering it down and adding sugar, but Matt loved it straight up.  I gotta say, eating with your hands and out of the serving dish is a great way to go!!  And saves a lot of dishes to wash.  We may have to adopt this at home!

My family proved to us this weekend just how "in" this they really are.  They don't just care because we care, they care because they love our child as much as we do.  We love that they are reading, researching about Ethiopia, and preparing right along with us.  There is no doubt that our child will be loved beyond their imagination by our entire family.