I don’t need dessert…it’s not my business.
A major learning theme this year is to worry about yourself (in terms of tattling, etc.)  This is really hard for hypervigilant kids.

A tissue!
Better known as “ACHOO!” in English.

May I shoot cheese?
Or “shred.”

You were ticklish me!!!

Did you/Will you picture me?
No joke.  We correct this EVERY DAY.

Are those chips? No. But you are chipsing them!

I am having New Jersey tomorrow.
Or “surgery.”

Did you go mooney day?
This took a while to detangle, but the question should have been, “Did you go on a honeymoon?”

That test my inroastins.
Apparently the Ethiopian equivalent to “You get on my nerves” is “You roast my intestines.”  Sometimes it doesn’t quite come out right.

My face is watering.
Or “sweating.”

What’s called? French rice? Ride frice?
Or “fried rice.”

Can I eat adopt?
Yeah, this was an interesting conversation.  Turns out she wanted to eat “a date.”

Pass me diet.
Or “dice.”

I will just cute.
Or “quit.”

Here is her recorded response in Amharic. (You can save the sound file to your computer by right clicking the link.)

The roughly translated transcript is below:

“It is hard to live with siblings that are biological because you don’t understand or relate to them easily. Sometime we fight with our siblings.  Because they are not biological to us, the fighting makes us feel further apart.  You feel like you don’t want to talk to them anymore…just ignore them. Sometimes we think our new parents like us less than their biological children when we fight with our siblings. Sometimes we focus on the things we don’t like about them…not good things.  It is hard but we have patience to work to not fight.  We come here to live a new life, and we need patience.  Many times we fight with our new mom and dad, but that is normal. Even when you fight, think first about what you say.  Try to focus on good stuff. Even if they are saying something you don’t like, stop to listen.  If you take the time to talk to them, things become good.  If that does not work, pray to God. Tell God what happened and ask Him to show your family how to love and how you can love your family. Each time choose to be happy with them.  Work hard. Thank you for listening.”

To see all the posts in this series, click here.

We’ve made an attempt to introduce many common, now American traditions.  We always do corned beef and cabbage around St. Patrick’s Day.  Somehow adding berbere to “make it taste good” just seems so wrong.

Our older kids have had limited exposure to art.  So much so that they think art is some odd form of torture.  I’ve been trying to incorporate an art lesson into every week that exposes them to a variety of art mediums.  This week we painted our clay sculptures and explored oil pastels.

The Corkum Family in snowmen.

Who knew singing the timeline song could be so fun?

If you clean out your work area, you may just get motivated enough to do a project.

Kayla testing out our new pool membership at the local Y.

This pretty much sum up how the girls feel about Kayla’s new braces.