Five month pictures

First week home

We've now been home a little over a week. It's been a quiet, lazy week with us just spending time looking at Alex and learning his signals. Our favorite part is getting him to laugh, which he is starting to do a lot more easily!

We've also spent a lot of effort getting him on a consistent schedule. This has been rewarded in later and later morning wake-up times (this morning he woke up close to 7:00!). Alex has so far been a really easy baby and we are really enjoying every minute spent with him.

We do intend to post more in the coming weeks regarding our favorable impressions of the Care Center, our Ethiopian travel, our transition to parenthood and other adoption related information. Thanks for your patience as we are still adjusting to this new, much-busier life!

Anna

PS - Another sign of being a new mommy....it dawned on me late last night that our eight year anniversary is today!

Introducing Alex Tesfa Braasch

After weeks of deliberation (and Grant reading through a book of 50,001 names while we were in Ethiopia), Grant and I finally chose a name that we have both liked and talked about since we were dating in college. Alex is a Braasch family name and means, "Protector of Mankind." In Amharic (the main language in Ethiopia) the spelling would be Iskinder. Also, of significance with my Swedish heritage, Alex's Swedish name day is December 12th.

Since we've been saying "Tesfa" since the middle of Apri it will be difficult for us to make the transition from Tesfa to Alex so we may be using both for the next several weeks or months!

We are all feeling settled into a regular schedule now. Alex still thinks that morning starts at 3:30, but we are slowly working to transition to a later bedtime. Thankfully Grant and I have adjusted to this timezone very quickly. It is also so good to be home and not worry about what we are eating or drinking!

If all goes well, Alex will be making his Big Minnesota Debut at church this coming Sunday!

Thanks again for being part of this journey with us. - Anna

We're home, a little tired, but doing well

It is SO good to be home!!! Other than a little meltdown on the DC to Mpls flight, we had a really great and uneventful trip home. We arrived back in Minneapolis around 4:30 yesterday, came home to a fun "It's a Boy!" sign in the yard and dinner in our fridge provided by our wonderful next door neighbors. It was fun to show Tesfa around his house and his room.

We all crashed early last night and slept well. This has been a nice and quiet "transition" day.
We'll post again when we are all a little more alert.

Blessings,
Anna

Back to Minnesota!

Our bags are packed and we're ready to head back to St. Louis Park! Our flight leaves tonight at 11:55 p.m. but we have to leave the hotel at 8:00 p.m. We're excited to get home!
Grant and Anna

Journey to Tesfa’s Birthplace

Today we returned to Addis Ababa from Durame, Ethiopia which is Tesfa's place of birth. Durame is about a 5 1/2 hour drive from Addis. Four hours are on a good smooth highway and the last 1 1/2 hours are on very rough roads. If you still have your Ethiopia map handy, Durame most likely won't appear. However, it is south of Addis Ababa and in the region near Hosiana. The director of the Care Center in Addis assigned a trusted friend of his, Dr. Fikru, to be our guide. In addition, we hired a driver (who turned out to be our cook as well!) and another Toyota Land Cruiser for the trip. Dr. Fikru is the chief resident of opthamology at Addis Ababa University and is originally from the Durame area so he was a perfect guide for us.

We left at 6:00 a.m. Thursday morning so we could get out of town before the traffic got bad in Addis and so we could arrive early in Durame. However, almost an hour into our drive, we realized that something was wrong with the alignment of the car and we could not drive very fast without the truck shaking terribly. The decision was made to turn back to Addis and get the car fixed. We finally ended up leaving Addis around 11:00 a.m. A short 5 hour delay and we were off!

After seeing much of the countryside on our trip to Asela on Tuesday and along the way to Durame, we didn't hold much hope for Durame to be a quaint little town. However, we arrived to find a beautiful area with lush green mountains all around and interesting birds and vegetation. A quaint town it was not but the natural beauty was unparalleled with anything we'd seen in Ethiopia yet.

As we've previously discussed, we are going to be very careful with what we share about Tesfa's background since we feel it's important for him to learn about these things from his parents rather than hearing it second hand from someone else before he's ready. We did, however, get a chance to talk with someone who knew Tesfa during his first weeks and were able to get some very good information that will be valuable to Tesfa when he's older. As always, we generated quite the crowd and enjoyed interacting with the local people. Even though we couldn't communicate with words, everyone seemed to enjoy seeing themselves in the video camera and their pictures on the digital camera.

There was another part of the journey which ended up being a pleasant surprise. On the way to Durame on Thursday, Dr. Fikru mentioned that we would most likely be bringing a baby back with us from the Durame area to the care center in Addis. After we finished our business related to Tesfa on Friday morning, he set out to gather the information he needed about the other child. Long story short, when we left Durame on Saturday morning, we had four babies in the truck with us for the trip back to the care center! In addition to the babies, two social workers also accompanied us to escort the children. We left on Thursday in the Land Cruiser with four adults and returned today with 6 adults and 4 children! The driver and I were the only ones without a baby on our lap. Needless to say, this was another incredible experience for me and Anna. Our impressions of Ethiopia are forever changed.

After having a few days in the rough this week, we decided to spend our last night in Ethiopia in the luxury of the Addis Ababa Sheraton Hotel. It is said to be the nicest hotel in all of Africa and from what we've seen, I'd have a hard time thinking of how there could be a nicer one on the continent. The grounds are sprawling and beautiful and the rooms and buildings are very impressive. It's a remarkable contrast to what we've seen during the rest of our time in Ethiopia and definitely not representative of the country. Regardless, we're thrilled to be here and will enjoy these hours of luxury. We hope to get a good night's rest and be energized for our long trip home tomorrow. We have to arrive at the airport by 8:00 p.m. tomorrow night to leave at 11:55 p.m. Please pray that the trip will go well for all of us. We're excited to get back to Minnesota and show Tesfa his room and settle into our new life as a family of three.

It is very clear that every part of our trip has been very blessed by God and we're very thankful for the many friends and family who have been praying for us during the last weeks and months.

See you soon, Grant