Hello All,

Last week, on Thursday we all went to public health for another round of shots. I got 3, Ty got 3, Ali got 2 and Duane got 5. Yikes!!! If anyone plans on traveling to Africa, be prepared to get a lot of shots. We wanted to make sure that we got everything required and recommended. We didn't have to get Yellow Fever vaccinations to go to Ethiopia, but we have heard of people not being allowed back into the US if we went to a country that had Yellow Fever. I'm sure that whenever we get back to the US we won't want to be stuck in quarantine. We also don't have to take medicine for Malaria while we are there because the capital city's elevation if too high for there to be Malaria in the mosquitoes there. There isn't a vaccination for Malaria. The way to prevent it is to take antibiotics while we are in Ethiopia. I think we will all take the antibiotics to prevent Malaria just in case. Sometimes adoptive families get to leave the city to meet their new child's birth family, so better to be safe than sorry:0) We have an appointment next Thursday for our next round of shots.

Another big thing we have been working on is getting our house ready for another kiddo. We finished (almost) the room in the basement that we have been using for storage for the last 10 years. Wow, we accumulated a lot of stuff in that amount of time. We got the room done about 2 weeks ago, with the exception of the closet organizer and Ty moved in. He seems to like it. It is bigger than the bedroom he had upstairs, and it is farther away from Mom and Dad which is always a good thing when you are 17. It kind of turned into a whole house bedroom makeover. We repainted Ali's room yellow and purple. She got new mirrored closet doors and new carpet in her room. The room that will be for our adopted child got new carpet and new paint. While Ty was in that room, it was red, white and blue. We decided to paint 2 walls white and the other 2 kind of a medium blue. I am not a fan of blue at all, but it is suppose to be the most relaxing color. I'm sure that when we bring our new child home they will be scared and won't understand what we are saying to them, so if the color blue might make them feel better, I guess I can deal with it :o)