Synopsis of April

Another month has whizzed by!

April 19th we celebrated 1 year since we first held Yosi in our arms; in adoption jargon aka: "Gotcha Day". During the early morning church service we participated in a public declaration of our intent to raise her in "the nuture and admonition of the LORD". You can see a clip of this on my YouTube channel: "Dedication" (double click highlighted text to open video). We ended up feeling like the whole week was a celebration. Yosi was clueless, but several times we would remember aloud where we were or what we were doing on that particular day 1 year ago. It was wonderful to think about how far God has brought us.

Easter weekend was alot of fun. We spent the afternoon with my mom and Yosi enjoyed her first egg hunt. She stuffed herself full of candy, but was remarkably well-behaved on her sugar buzz.

There have been many days of warm weather and we are enjoying getting back in the routine of walks in the evening, whenever possible. We have learned that since Yosi knows the word "walk" and it's implications, it is not advisable to mention it until you intend to follow-thru, because otherwise you will be pestered about it incessantly, until you feel that you simply MUST, even if you are dog-tired exhausted and the weather isn't ideal. Also, in the last few days we've realized that Yosi can reach the screen door handle and so, has suceeded in letting herself out a couple of times. Thankfully, we've been nearby and caught her right away. We are going to be making good use of the lock on that door.

Last weekend we went to Mee's Zoo, in Indiana, with Kari and my dad, as a late celebration of my dad's birthday. We had a great time, feeding and petting tame animals and ogling wild ones (ie: lion and tigers and bears) at a much closer range than any other big zoo could offer. But so many close encounters can be a little overstimulating, especially since Y was about 2 hrs past naptime. As we were touring the gift shop, getting ready to leave, we viewed a few smaller live specimens housed there: snakes, birds and a chinchilla. David had shown her one set of each of the first 2 and I took her to see another set. As we approached the bird cage, one of the finches flapped its wings noisily and startled Yosi. She jumped, and whimpered a bit, so I thought it best to distract her by showing her the quiet snake next door. As we neared, it began to move in it's lazy, sinuous way. She is her mother's daughter, and did what any reasonable person should do when nearing a snake- screamed and turned away. Of course, we promptly moved to the other side of the store and spent the next few minutes calming her. Even the chinchilla, fuzzy, cute, silent and motionless was unappealing at this point. Time to go home! We unwound in the van, eating brownies, and she was "out cold" in 5 mins.