9 months home!

Life on the Braddy farm

  Don't let the title fool you, we're not tilling rows and milking cows...yet. Things are feeling a bit farm-ish around here, though! We've taken on our first chickens and the garden is sprouting nicely thus far. With 3 dogs, a cat, and 14 hens, I can confidently say that we have reached animal capacity on the Braddy frontier. Gideon is loving it, though! Most days he has a chicken on his shoulder and is screaming "Arrrrrr, Mommy! Me a pirate!" Who needs a parrot when you've got a leghorn named Mesrak?! Most of our chickens have been graced with beautiful Ethiopian names by little man. I'm thinking that we should call the coop Hannah's Hope soon, because he has exhausted the names of all the staff there!
  Spring is springing here in south Mississippi! We are feeling the muggy, buggy days full of lots of spring showers. We have also been celebrating lots of little anniversaries in our home. It is hard to believe that it has been a whole year since we moved. It has been an incredible and full year! As usual, we have been celebrating each month home with Gideon. Yesterday made 8 months home! It is just flying by!

  So much has been going on! Life has honestly been so fast, it is hard to remember what all has been happening! We had a wonderful time celebrating our Risen Savior on Easter (and everyday!). We made our best attempt at a family picture, and sadly...this was the best we could do, ha!

  
  I did get some sweet kisses stolen between shots, though! LOVE!!!

  What an incredible journey this life is! We are doing our best to glorify our Lord with every moment and constantly learning what that means as parents! Loving every. single. second.

Love, Katie

Gotcha Video!

Felt inspired on this month that we will be home for 6 months! Hope you all enjoy! (Be sure to go down the page and turn off the music so you can hear the video) Love, Katie


Gotcha Video from Josh Braddy on Vimeo.

haven't quit yet...

  Yes! It's true! I have not actually quit blogging, though it may appear that way! I am not even going to apologize for the long absence because, well, I'm not sorry. There you go. :) The past five months have been incredible, hard, beautiful, exhausting, exciting, exposing, healing, and absolutely joyful. Not the over-the-moon, happy-all-the-time kind of joy, but the real kind. Joy that comes from trusting that even when you can't go anymore, the Lord will sustain you. Joy that comes from seeing that no matter how much you fail as a mommy, the Lord heals and preserves the heart of your little one. Joy in standing on the promises that He is with you through every moment. 

  All of that being said, I have been choosing to be present with my little honey, rather than blogging because for us, we cannot do both. I have a precious, sweet, rambunctious 4 year old who doesn't nap or really sleep that well, so...I'm "on" all the time. And I have chosen to be there rather than in front of the computer...no regrets. I haven't had any hate mail yet, so I'm assuming no one has even noticed I've been on hiatus, anyway. :) 

  Okay, I'm finished with my ramblings...I know what all of you want, anyway...pictures of lil' man. (Who could blame you...he's ah-mazing!) And yes, I will oblige. I have finally caught myself up a bit, so you can have a lot this go-round. You're Welcome. Here you go!

 

2 months home...a little late!

It is so hard to believe we have been home 2 months on Oct. 16! Little man is amazing and keeping us super duper busy! Gotta run! Love, Katie

"Room" to Bloom

  This post has been a long time coming...I mentioned in an earlier post about GT's room. It is absolutely magical! I can say this because I take absolutely no credit for it. :) My precious friend, Whitney, is the mastermind behind putting together a cute and fun place for our sweet little boy to play and rest. She and her husband, Kyle, are dear friends of ours and some of the most generous people in the world. They even have a business, Whyle Frames, that benefits an orphanage in Haiti that is special to all of us! They, along with several other people that we love so much, did such an incredible thing for us!
  Whitney and I have been talking about little Braddy and planning for all of the fun things that come with your first child for a LONG time...like 2+ years. When Josh and I moved we were starting from scratch with our whole house, so we have been trying to "nest" within the rest of our house rather than worrying with our little's room. Then...boom...referral! What?!!?!? We were SO, so, so shocked! We received our travel dates so quickly, but we were hesitant to nest after our lost referral for our girl, E. Knowing there would be a while between trips, we decided to wait and nest in between trips...plus of course the fact that we were both still getting acclimated to new jobs and trying to get the rest of the house ready for Mr. T!

This is the drab room that we had for T before our 1st trip!

  Let me go ahead and warn you...I'm about to go "girly." Like we're talkin' HGTV, girly. I'm going to take this moment to turn this into a DIY, bargain shopping, old-house makeover blog, mmm-kay?! If you've ever met my husband, you know that he is an extrovert...he loves bright colors. I have to tell him all the time that we cannot paint our living room neon yellow. I, on the other hand, am a chicken. Especially when it comes to paint. We finally managed to paint our room (a lovely shade of gray) and I decided to try and achieve some bright colors via fabric and furniture. I had 2 main inspirations...orange and gray. I just wanted that color combo for some strange reason! That's where cutie-pa-tootie, wonderful at all things Whitney came in the picture! One day she sent me this fun little picture:

 Mmmm, yes! Mama love! 

  So...we decided since GT had an obsession with cars that we would take that adorable car/motorcycle print and run with it! Then, I stepped out of the picture! Whitney and a sweet lady I love named Mrs. Cathy Brown made magic happen with fabric and I had no idea what it would look like! All of a sudden, we got our Embassy date...what?!?!? We had SO much to do (but who cares...our son was coming home!!! Wahoo!)!

  Next thing on our list was to get our paint on! Some precious ladies from our church came one day while we were working and painted T's room for us! Amazing! And I got to painting on a dresser that Josh was not too excited about. I believe his words were..."why are you putting girl furniture in our boy's room?" But I made a believer out of him...you'll see! Here's the before:

 This dresser was in my old room at my parents' house.

   I felt a little guilty for painting this beautiful dresser, but I really love how it turned out, so no regrets here. A few days later I received a wonderful package with some fabric and instructions to look at a tutorial for an upholstered headboard from Whit. It was so much fun, so easy, and seriously...so cheap! Much better than having to buy a bed! And the best part is that it is easy to change the fabric for a whole new look. Here's the run down on the easy - a piece of MDF board, 2 foam egg crates, quilter's batting, fabric, and a staple gun. Boom. You've got yourself a headboard.

 My fabric ended up being a bit too short, so I had to figure out a little sewing fix to stretch it:

 Brainstorming before the sewing...

 All ready to go!

And all done!

  As we prepared to go to Ethiopia to pick up GT, this is what his room looked like:

A bit of a mess!

  And when we arrived home, we knew that little angels (Whitney and the crew...) had been in our house making sure everything was ready! Gideon Tamirat, Josh, and I were all equally surprised and overwhelmed! Our friends went above and beyond what we ever would have imagined! It is my favorite room in the whole house. These pictures hardly do it justice...the colors are vibrant...and the walls are actually gray (not some strange khaki-gray). :) It's simply wonderful.

 Little guy in the corner says, "well-com" to his room!

 Another pic from the entryway

 One of our closets transformed into a "nook" to read and play!

 Yes, Mommy needs to paint those closet doors :)

 We love our glider-rocker for family reading time!

 Mechinas!!! (cars) and toys!

 A beautiful vintage map from my mom, our finished dresser, and an elephan-tay from Ethiopia!

 Finished bed...with pics from our first trip above...

 We love our gator sitting in the corner - we practically live in a swamp!

 More "nook" fun...

 Mommy and Daddy threw together some frames

 

This is the face of a boy who loves his room!!!

  Like I said...we are so overwhelmed at how incredible our friends, family, church(es), etc. are to us! While we were away, our friends/faith family from our former church had a "gift drop" for us and right before we left for Ethiopia, our wonderful faith family at our current church had a "shower" for us. GT is one loved little boy and we are so thankful for all of the love and support we daily receive from all of you family and friends! We LOVE you! You are truly a blessing from God!

Katie

"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you..." Phillipians 1:3

1 month home!

I can hardly believe that yesterday was the anniversary of our 1 month homecoming! That means we have had our sweetie for almost 5 weeks! The time has flown and creeped at the same time. It has been a mixture of hard, sad, joyful, and beautiful. I am falling more and more in love with him each day. He is such a sweetheart and full of energy! We are seeing the fruits of cocooning and of all of the prayers for us and for our precious son! Here are just a very very few things about him 1 month home...

Ethiopia Trip 2

Well...I may have finally found a few moments to fill you in on our second trip to Africa! Let's see how far I make it until I hear "Mooooommmmmmyyyyyy!" and have to hang this post up for the 50th time :). The trip started much like the last one...lots of suitcases, but this time filled with wonderful little boy things mixed in with our clothes. We were SO excited and nervous...things progressed so much more quickly than we anticipated and we felt a little unprepared to actually bring him home! In fact, when I left, his room was blank walls with nothing in it - there were some sweet angels who remedied that while we were gone, but that's another post for another day! :) We took a quick hop from New Orleans to D.C. and had an overnight layover. Bright and early we boarded our plane - a direct flight to Addis (so wonderful considering our crazy layovers last trip).

 

Ready to go!!!

Sixteen hours later, we arrived at about 7:45 a.m. Ethiopia time. After a long wait to get our bags (Hallelujah, they were there!), we met with one of the hotel workers and jumped on a bus. We were unsure of what our schedule would be, but we knew there would be an itinerary waiting for us at the hotel desk to let us know when we could go and pick up our little at Hannah's Hope. By this time, it was around 10:30 a.m., and we saw that they would arrive to bring us to HH at 12:30. So off to the room we went to freshen up and get ready...no rest for the weary! This trip, there were many other families at HH for their first trips, so as we scurried around, another family was taking some cute pics of our T for us to cherish.

 photo by Andrew Bryant

 photo by Andrew Bryant

After a quick shower, some organizing and unpacking (a.k.a. hiding toys strategically around the hotel room so we could ration them through the week) we saw the familiar face of one of our drivers in the hotel lobby! It was here...time to go get our Tamirat! Let me just go ahead and tell you...all those glamorous videos and pictures of "Gotcha Day" that you see on other blogs and those chill-bump eliciting stories your friend's friend's friend told you...that ain't the norm, people. In fact, our "Gotcha Day" was the complete opposite of all of that. Case in point: Mommy and Daddy brought a cute little stuffed elephant on trip one so that when we went to pick up T-man he would have something comforting and familiar...when we arrived at HH, Daddy asked to see the elephant. He was chilling on the couch in the hotel. Case in point #2: We were ready with the camera and asked our driver to snap a few pictures for us...the camera battery was in the charger, also in the hotel room. Case in point #3: The video camera lived in Josh's pocket the entire time because we were so shell shocked that it was ACTUALLY HAPPENING. I could keep on with the "case in point's," but it's getting old, so on with the story I'll go. :) By the grace of God, we happened to be overlapping trips with a family whose Daddy is a photographer. Score. So, thankfully, he was able to catch a few moments for us, as well as the beautiful pictures above. We are SO thankful for these!!! What cherished photos to mark the memory of our Gotcha Day! More examples of the non-glamor - it was lunch time when we arrived. They run a tight ship at HH, so when we realized this, we also knew that T would not be able to jump up and hug, etc. until he was finished with his lunch. Sigh. But, that did not keep us from hovering over him in excitement...so here are a few of those moments:

 Daddy letting T know that we're finally back!

photo by Andrew Bryant
  

 Mommy being super excited about the luscious curls that grew while we were away!

photo by Andrew Bryant

 Shell-shocked T-man :)

photo by Andrew Bryant

Talking with Mommy

photo by Andrew Bryant

Checking out all of the action (there were lots of people in that tiny room)

photo by Andrew Bryant

 Washing hands to finish the lunch-routine

photo by Andrew Bryant

 Drying hands while I hovered, dying to scoop him up :)

photo by Andrew Bryant

 Some warm-up tickles (just like meetcha day!)

photo by Andrew Bryant

 Smiles with Daddy and a familiar "mechina"

photo by Andrew Bryant

 Gotcha Day! August 11, 2012

photo by Andrew Bryant

Might I also add that my child looked a hot mess that day. :) No offense to anyone, because the thing is...they dress them well at HH. They usually match for the most part. Mind you, T was wearing girl pants one day on our first trip, but you work with what you've got, right?! Well...not this day. My baby had on swim trunks, a polo, and a track suit jacket with high ankle socks and his sweet little red shoes without insoles in them (these were the shoes he always wore at HH). There was not a like color in the whole mess - see for yourself in the pictures above. He was, however, precious. I found him adorable and honestly, Josh would have probably cooked up that ensemble himself. :) Just thought I would add it to my list of non-glamorous gotcha day items since we're on it. 

After lingering around HH for a little while, saying some good-bye's to some of our favorite "special mothers" and staff, we loaded the bus to the hotel - WITH our son! Yippee! He was shy and tentative (not at all like his personality) and we knew that his little world was being rocked. As we rode the bus, he enthusiastically gestured to us about how we were all going to fly on an "aeroplan-e" to "Ah-med-ica." 

I'm going to spare you the rest of the details of that day, because, well, it was a tough day for all. In fact, it was a tough week. We spent 5 days in a tiny hotel room with a 4 year old and a limited supply of toys during rainy season. Catch my drift? Not to mention the fact that his world was being upside down and he was beginning the process of grieving all he has known in his little life. That's a lot. On the reals. Okay, now none of that is meant to sound negative...it's just real life. It's hard. People hurt and Jesus heals. Praise the Almighty God that He is the mender of broken hearts! Now, in all of this time we had some beautifully sweet moments, some fun moments, and some not so great ones, too. Josh was sick for a lot of the trip, so we tried to give him as much rest time as he needed. We walked a lot of halls, ate a lot of candy, and learned to play in the bathtub (not a known concept for kids who don't have water to waste - they've never sat in the bath before). Here are a few pictures to make you grin:

 

Movie time with Daddy before bed.

 

Being goofy.

 

Listening to some tunes and making funny faces.

 

Modeling for Mommy before bedtime.

One of the afternoons of our trip was filled with an Embassy appointment in which we were able to testify that we understood the circumstances of our adoption and agreed that it was ethical and legal. And then we got to testify that we desire for T to be our son! That was it! Now all we had to do is wait for our proper documents to be processed and we were free to take this sweet dude home! Talk about having ten thousand pounds be lifted for one second and then dropped back on us :). The realization that we were parents! Wowza! Here are a few pictures of us all dressed up for embassy:

 

Mommy was SO tired.. and T was SO over pictures. :)

 Glad to be back in good old Room 203 after a long afternoon.

The next couple of days passed at a turtle's pace, but after a brief documentation overview with some HH staff, we found ourselves heading to the airport. T was doing great...he was definitely overwhelmed, but being so close to bedtime he was being a trooper. As soon as he caught sight of the plane, it was LOVE :). This boy loves machinery - cars, trucks, tractors, boats...if it goes, he's a fan. 

T slept pretty well on the first leg of the plane ride. Considering that he is a boisterous 4 yr. old, he did amazing. Thankfully, because about 2 hours into the plane ride, Mommy got super sick with sharp abdominal pain, etc., etc. (I'll spare you the gory details). 14 hours worth of sick, ugh. Daddy did a great job flying solo with GT, though!

By the time we made it to D.C., I could barely stand. While we were waiting on a ramp to board a shuttle to customs, I was literally doubled over on the floor. Let me just tell you, ladies and gents, I have the world's most incredible husband. Seriously. He is amazing. He was wonderful with T and at the same time taking care of me and the five thousand bags we had with us. Don't know how he did it. On the shuttle another adoptive mom that was on our flight came over to me and prayed over me as I cried and it was one of the most precious moments I have every had. This stranger who never even told me her name, found me a seat, wiped my face with wet towels (she may as well have washed my feet) and cried out to our Lord on my behalf. Amazing. And her prayers (and mine) were answered. The Lord gave me strength to get through customs, recheck our bags, and help Josh with T until we made it to our gate. We all promptly sucked down a bunch of Gatorade and freshened ourselves so that we would look somewhat approachable to our friends who would be at the airport. This translates into changing clothes and bathing int WetOnes. :) T was getting so restless and was suuuper tired. Josh literally ran with him up and down the airport to get his "wiggles" out before we boarded for NOLA.

The flight to NOLA was a struggle. T-man HATED his seat belt. Our plane was so small that Josh had to sit apart from us, so T and I literally wrestled through take off and landing to keep his seat belt on. But....finally....we LANDED! And we were home! (or close to it, anyway!) 

I know you've seen the airport pictures already, so if you need a refresher, go back and check it out. We were so amazed to have such a warm reception at the airport and so glad to finally go home and crash with our little dude. 

I tell you all of this crazy stuff in hopes that you see that life is real and that the one thing that is more real than anything else is that we need God. We simply can't do it without Him. We are so thankful that the Lord brought us through this process and this trip. It has stripped us down to our cores and we are constantly reminded each day of how much we need him and of how INCREDIBLE it is that He would have us. Thankful that our God heals, restores, strengthens, sustains, and more than anything...he loves. May He receive all the glory and honor in every breath of our lives. 

Katie

"We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19