CCI Reunion

Our adoption agency hosted a reunion of families and children at the Brookfield zoo near Chicago. Tamirat's brother and sister were there. Obsi saw three friends from Kamashi, where he came from.

Alex, Mulugeta(Whitelaw, WI), Seth, Tariku(Michigan), Obsi, Nati(Whitelaw, WI), and Tamirat.


Tamirat and his brother, Ben:

Camp Forest Springs

Two/three weeks ago, we spent a week at CFS.

Tamirat and Obsi went on the Snowberry bog hike. Camp has one of the top bogs in the nation!


Tamirat is digging for snowberries. They are hidden.


Bill, Seth, and Tamirat went on the high ropes course. Obsi sat below and took pics for me.


Here they all are:
Here is Seth:

Here they all are at the top:

And Tamirat chickened out and went back.

We played a lot of Mexican Train Dominos with Tamirat! He loves that game.

Air rifles:

Alex and Tamirat on the archery range:


We celebrated Tamirat's 12th birthday:

It was a good week!

Summer Fun

Last week we camped at Point Beach State Park which is located along Lake Michigan. We did a mid-week camping trip and it was wonderful. The weather was perfect, it was quiet, the biking was great, and the boys had a ton of fun without TV and video games! We camped with our good friends, the Martinez's who also have boys, Brandon and Sam. The mosquitos weren't horrible. This was Obsi's first real camping trip. The other camping trip for him was Camp Forest Springs. At Camp, we only sleep in the camper.



When we camped over Memorial Day weekend, the boys had gathered up tree bark and discovered the huge fires it can make, along with a lot of black smoke! Tamirat thought it was pretty cool so here he is with tree bark, followed by the huge fire. These types of fire aren't allowed but they burn fast and we didn't get caught! ;-)



Here we are at the beach. The mom's came looking for the boys....how could we miss with this amount of bikes?

What a beautiful beach! This is Alex and he is supposed to look like the Sphinx.

We had eight boys with us.

Nati and Mulugeta were able to join us on this day.

This was also Obsi's first time with his new Trek bike. We all took a bike ride into town on Wednesday, had lunch at McDonald's, did a little shopping and biked back. About a 15 mile trip. The next day, Nati, Obsi, and Tamirat biked to Neshota Beach (into town) and back.

And at the end of a long day, the boys relaxed with a movie in our camper.

Doctor/Dentist

Obsi had his doctor and dentist appointments this week. All is good. On Monday he had 4 vials of blood drawn. All is good. The only concerns: Acne and TB. He will be on antibiotics shortly...hopefully today. So many guidelines...one hour before meals, not with vitamins, twice a day...ugh...I will delegate to him because I can't remember to give them to him.

For TB: We have to wait until our County Health Department appointment next week. The chest xrays showed his TB exposure to be just that, an exposure. So the doctor wants to start him on INH for 9 months! Ugh, another pill. None of us, except Bill, are on any meds so I don't have to deal with keep track of that. I know Obsi will remember. The doctor said the Health Dept. will give us what we need. INH and vitamin B.

The dentist appointment was good but long! He has no cavities but had lots of tartar at his gumline. It took an hour and a half to scrape it off. This was Obsi's first dentist appoint ever! Not bad. He gums were very sore when he was done.