I've come to the realization that Spring Vacation is not a vacation to rest up from what has already occurred but more so it is a rest up before life becomes almost too crazy to control.  We hit the ground running April 6 and have not stopped.   Keep in mind Noah is only one of 5 children in the house. : >)  

  

Here's the lowdown.  We decided that Noah has been doing pretty good with school and the family so we extended his life experiences and put him on a baseball team this spring.  Noah's a RiverDog (whatever that is).    He's got a great arm, he's fast, and in Ethiopia he use to bat rocks with a stick...so the hand/eye coordination is there as well.   

Three games down and he's held his own.  Ok...so he's had to be told to hush up the "goat call" when he's bored on the bench (it's an amazing sound he used to call his goats in ET, it gets quite the rise out of his bench warming buddies and soon the entire bench is trying to call goats instead of cheering on the team..this would be ok if we lived in the city but we are country folk and there are goats within earshot of the ball field...Ha ha...imagine if the real things escaped their fences and came to the ball field...a horror movie in the making...then again Noah would probably grab a bat, call the goats and get them back into their pen before dialing 911 was complete!)

  

What is more gratifying than anything to Jeff and I is how Noah has been included by everyone. When he got his first hit this past Saturday the entire crowd stood up and cheered for him. They know his story and are blown away that 1 year ago he WAS herding goats in Dessie, Ethiopia AND hitting rocks with sticks.  Now, here he is in America playing America's game.  

We also celebrated Easter this past Sunday.  Noah understood Easter from his Orthodox teachings in Ethiopia. Once again however, we Americans had to confuse his world by throwing in a giant furry bunny hoping around the country delivering eggs to children.  For one thing he informed us that bunnies do not lay eggs and it should be a giant chicken instead.  Second, why does the bunny put 'gross' stuff like candy inside and egg when the real stuff inside a real egg is so much more 'delis-shious' than candy. Spoken like a true survivor of his hungry world in Ethiopia Also a reminder to us that so much of our traditions are just routine mindless excess.   : >)  He's got a point on both topics.  I don't think he believes in the Easter Bunny...or Easter Chicken.  He believes in just the facts.