Laughner's Journey to Ethiopia

Look who fell asleep eating grilled cheese and tomato soup on sunday!

This map shows all of the states the Daniel has been in since arriving in the US on November 8th of 2008. He has also been in Ethiopia, and Rome. I would say that this little guy is a world traveler. This last week we had planned on traveling to Arizona to see Grandma DJ. She has been on hospice since November for cancer. We got the call on Monday that she had taken a turn for the worse and we may not make it. Tom called the airlines to see if we could leave a day early. He asked me how quick I could have 6 of us ready to go. I had started the packing already, but was no where near ready... I told him 20 minutes. We were out the door in 30 minutes. We arrived in Arizona (Tucson) at 3:15 am. We slept a few hours and headed over to see Tom's mom. She was unable to communicate with us, but I think that she could hear us. We spent the morning with her and then took the kids to the zoo (a much needed break for them). Hospice then called us back to the house. We visited a little more and...

Today we celebrate three months since gotcha day! We took Daniel into our arms 3 months ago today and walked out the door of the Transition Home with him. Just look at how much he has changed since our referral pictures in July. We love him so much and he is such a blessing to our family. We could use good sleep at night, but that will come. July (referral and traveling family pictures) August (August Update and traveling family picture) September (Our September Update) October (these are our October Update Pictures) November (Our time with Daniel in Ethiopia) November (Daniel's home coming) December (home 1 month) January (2 months home) February (3 months from Gotcha Day)

On Saturday, Tom left to take Michael to his basketball game, about 40 minutes later I tried to take Allison to her basketball game. Both games were in different cities and not ours. Well as I started backing out of the drive, I got stuck in the snow and ice. The more I tried to get out, the worse I got stuck. Thankfully a neighbor took Allison to meet Tom, so that he could get her to her game. Michael then stayed and watched the neighbors basketball game and then they brought him home. I called AAA for help. They came out and looked at our drive and told us we were on our own. They could could not help us. Daniel and I worked for an hour, the van was just stuck. When Tom got home we worked for over another hour, sand, salt, digging.... nothing was working. I got it stuck good. (Thank goodness Tom was not home when I got stuck or the car would have been blocked in the garage). It was really cold and dark out, so at this time we decided to call it a night. We will deal with it in the mo...