I bet you can’t guess what I woke up to this morning (and no fair guessing a throbbing toe, because that is NOT what I am talking about.) :)

Give up?

SNOW!

Yes, on Sept. 16 it was snowing on my house. Not just a few passing snow flakes either…three or four hours of real snowing snow. The kids were bouncing off the walls, the house was chilly and soon enough it had warmed up enough that it melted away and everything outside is a muddy mess.

We live in the mountains and unseasonable snow is not all that unusual, but this is early even for us.

Last night I got an even better surprise… I got an email from a friend directing me to Denise’s blog, as there was a “Belane story” in the latest entry. Now I check Denise’s blog every morning and every night before bed just in case she happens to see Belane, and I would have found it in the next few hours, but it was fun to hear about it in an email and know that my friends are looking out for me (thanks Rich!!)

Here is what Denise writes about taking Belane to her embassy appointment (it was Wednesday, Sept. 13…the appointment at which her HIV waiver was submitted).

Gail pulls up in the van and I leave to go to the embassy. I'm going with a little girl from AHOPE, the same one I took pictures of when she received her gift bag. We arrive at the embassy and go up to the hot, packed room upstairs. The girl had fallen asleep on the ride there, arms behind her head, elbows out, leaning against me. Now she's awake and not happy to be there. The kids play with my hair, they have me write out math problems, and columns of capital letters and lowercase letters so they can match them up. The girl sings, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," in Amharic. By the time we leave, three hours later, she's escaped the play area several times, cried when I pulled her away from a man she apparently likes better than me, and complained quite a bit in Amharic. On the ride home, she falls asleep against me. I carry her into AHOPE while she blinks at the light and the kids call out her name.

In the next post Denise is talking on the phone to one of the volunteers that just left Addis, and she says how she tells her, “how I sang "Silent Night" really softly in the embassy and even pointed at the picture of George Bush and said something suitable for three-year-old ears when the little girl was tired and I wanted to distract her.

I love reading this stuff and getting these kind of details. I love that Denise is the one doing things like giving Belane her gift bag and taking her to her embassy appointment and tracing her feet so I can order her shoes (pink, sparkly sneakers!).

I love picturing Belane sleeping with her little hands behind her head and her elbows sticking out…why do they always schedule those embassy appointments for nap time??

So far this weekend I have gotten a nice little “Belane fix” and some untimely snow. I hope you all are having a great weekend. :)