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Today, I connected my laptop to the TV and Ethan (wearing his backpack, at the time) helped us choose some gifts. As we’ve written about before recently, we’re enjoying involving our kids (mainly Ethan, at this point) in our mission giving. We usually do some extra giving at the end of the year and one … Read more
In the monthly West Side UMC Stewardship newsletter, we have been looking at the twelve qualities of the Christian steward as presented by Rev. Phillis M. Bowers in the booklet, Guidelines for Leading Your Congregation: Stewardship. The next quality, which is appropriate in the midst of Advent/Christmas and as we begin the new year, is … Read more
I have written several posts this year about the Virgin HealthMiles activity rewards program. The program is available to individuals but is available to us through our health insurance in The United Methodist Church. The program involves wearing a pedometer to track steps. Depending on how active you are, you can progress through various stages, … Read more
Earlier today, Ethan described the past weekend, saying, “I had a big weekend.” Well, we’re a little over seven weeks through our 10-week family leave (in connection with our adoption of Sarah) and we finally took a couple days for the four of us to go out of town (most of the time has simply … Read more
We’ve been home almost six weeks and it’s hard not to compare our current bonding experience with Sarah to our first one with Ethan. Some of the differences are no doubt related to the differences between Ethan and Sarah, but beyond that, they’re just different experiences. With Ethan, he was pretty much our sole focus … Read more
As our family goes through a period of change there are times that really bring a smile to our faces. This is one of them. Our mealtime habit has been to feed Sarah first and then sit her on the floor with a toy while we eat. One morning as I prepared Ethan’s breakfast (and … Read more
On our first trip to Korea (when we went to pick up Ethan), we bought Ethan a set of children’s chopsticks and soup spoon (two common utensils in Korea). While we were there, we learned that children in Korea commonly begin learning to use chopsticks around age 3. On our second trip to pick up … Read more
We’ve written some about Ethan’s transition in the past month with the addition of Sarah to our family. We even started writing about his transition before we went to Korea. We also discussed our mixed emotions about going to Korea while leaving Ethan behind at home. One thing we never wrote about, though, was the … Read more
We think the current transition of our family is difficult for Ethan not only because there’s a new baby in the house but also because the previous routines Ethan has known have been thrown into a state of chaos (of course, the new baby in the house is a major reason for those lost/changed routines). … Read more
Sunday marked one month since we received Sarah in Korea. It’s also been about a month since we arrived home. For Sarah’s part, the transition into our family is going well. For Ethan, it’s still a struggle (more on this soon). But in case you missed them, you can read/review our earlier reports here and … Read more