This morning, I didn't want to get out of bed for anything. I told Matt I was going to call in sick, and he just pushed me on out of the bed. I sure am glad that God gave me the strength to get out of bed today. This morning, at CdE, things were going pretty calmly, and I ran down to my mom's for a minute to get something. I had not been there 2 minutes when Cindy came running as fast as she could saying Any (pronounced Annie) and Yair (pronounced Ja Yeer) are here. I took me a second to realize what she was talking about, but when I realized it, I took off in a foot race with her (which I lost) to go meet these two precious souls.
Any and Yair came right before we arrived in Honduras, but their mom got papers from the judge very soon after that which put them back into her custody, for about 5 days. Her new boyfriend didn't like them, so she gave them back to IHNFA. IHNFA wanted to assure that she could never get them back, so they have been stuck in the system for about the last three months while they said they were working on paperwork. Being that both Karen and my dad are out of the country, they could not get a hold of anyone to let us know that they were coming; therefore, it was a big surprise to everyone.
Any remembered CdE, but she was still very nervous. She will be four in February, but she only weighs about 20 pounds and is several inches shorter than Haley. Yair will be two next week, he is small, but not like his sister. Yair doesn't remember being at CdE, and he is very nervous. He did not take a nap this afternoon, and when we saw him this evening, he was crying.
My mom and I had already planned to run some errands and leave at 1:00. We only had a couple places that we were going, but with two extra kids, we needed some presents for the two new additions. We decided the soft fleece blankets and pjs were to be delivered tonight. On the way home, I found that the ink tag had not been taken off of the pjs for Any. We gave each kid their blanket and gave Mirian (the house mom) the pjs for Yair. Any was running around wearing her soft, pink, blankie like a cape. She held my hand and showed me her bed, and her baby doll that I gave her earlier. She was so happy to be home.
Before I left, Mirian and I were discussing a few things. As I walked out the door, Any said "adios tia, te amo," meaning: "bye bye auntie, I love you." Yair snuggled up to me and stopped crying for a minute. Pleas pray for these two precious souls as they adjust to their new life.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Christmas shopping for 19 kids -- Only one week before Christmas
I haven't blogged much lately, but today was truly a blogworthy experience.
We have a family of 5 here that wanted to do something different for Christmas this year, so they are here bringing a little Christmas joy to the people of Honduras, especially the kids at CdE. My dad has planned to go skiing this week with my brother for much longer than this family had planned on coming this week. Therefore, Matt is running things. This week is pretty light: shopping today, feeding center tomorrow, build Tuesday, dump Wednesday, CdE Thursday.
Malls are all the same internationally on the last full shopping weekend before Christmas. My dad and Karen decided a while back that this year would be the year of no toys for Christmas, only things they could actually use. I promise you toys would have been much easier. We decided that each kid would get shoes, jeans, and a shirt.
Now imagine 8 gringos and 3 Hondurans going into the most crowded store in the mall to shop for 19 kids. I thought it would be easy, but I thought wrong. For shoes, I only had a traced cutout of each child's foot, and for clothes, I only had my best guess. More shoes than not seemed to not have the size we wanted. After the clerks bringing us at least 75 different shoes saying, "This is the biggest size we have," we only left the Carrion store 5 pairs of shoes short of what we hoped for.
Here we are not allowed to carry the shoes with us until we buy them. They must wait with the cashier until we are ready for checkout. We got someone to carry the shoes downstairs so that we could purchase everything all at once. My main job was to make sure each child ended up with right sizes and sending each person off to pick things out. I think I said some thing like this: 3 tens, 1 twelve, 2 eights, 3 six, oh i'm forgetting someone. I counted and recounted to make sure that we ended up with the right number pants and shirts. I sure hope we did. We are still short one pair of shoes. Brayan really wants cowboy boots, and the only ones we saw were really expensive.
Tomorrow, my mission is to find wrapping paper (more difficult than you could imagine here), bows, stuff to make cookies and gingerbread houses. While I hated being with everyone else that lives in Tegucigalpa this afternoon, I am thrilled to be able to see the excitement on each person's face when they get to open their gifts.
We have a family of 5 here that wanted to do something different for Christmas this year, so they are here bringing a little Christmas joy to the people of Honduras, especially the kids at CdE. My dad has planned to go skiing this week with my brother for much longer than this family had planned on coming this week. Therefore, Matt is running things. This week is pretty light: shopping today, feeding center tomorrow, build Tuesday, dump Wednesday, CdE Thursday.
Malls are all the same internationally on the last full shopping weekend before Christmas. My dad and Karen decided a while back that this year would be the year of no toys for Christmas, only things they could actually use. I promise you toys would have been much easier. We decided that each kid would get shoes, jeans, and a shirt.
Now imagine 8 gringos and 3 Hondurans going into the most crowded store in the mall to shop for 19 kids. I thought it would be easy, but I thought wrong. For shoes, I only had a traced cutout of each child's foot, and for clothes, I only had my best guess. More shoes than not seemed to not have the size we wanted. After the clerks bringing us at least 75 different shoes saying, "This is the biggest size we have," we only left the Carrion store 5 pairs of shoes short of what we hoped for.
Here we are not allowed to carry the shoes with us until we buy them. They must wait with the cashier until we are ready for checkout. We got someone to carry the shoes downstairs so that we could purchase everything all at once. My main job was to make sure each child ended up with right sizes and sending each person off to pick things out. I think I said some thing like this: 3 tens, 1 twelve, 2 eights, 3 six, oh i'm forgetting someone. I counted and recounted to make sure that we ended up with the right number pants and shirts. I sure hope we did. We are still short one pair of shoes. Brayan really wants cowboy boots, and the only ones we saw were really expensive.
Tomorrow, my mission is to find wrapping paper (more difficult than you could imagine here), bows, stuff to make cookies and gingerbread houses. While I hated being with everyone else that lives in Tegucigalpa this afternoon, I am thrilled to be able to see the excitement on each person's face when they get to open their gifts.
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