Picture of the Week (a little late! :S)

Whoops! I'm not off to a very good start with this whole picture of the week thing, seeing as I've already missed one, and its only the second week! :S But my cousin got married on Sunday, and its been very busy getting ready for it this past week (my little sister is a flowergirl!), so I kind of have an excuse! Anyway, here is my favourite picture from last week... It was actually on Sunday, so its kind of from this week, but its just so cute, I had to share!

Its from my cousin's wedding day, right before we left.. Josh and Moses were matching! They were both very excited, and very adorable all day!

Slumber Party!

On Sunday my sister and I had a little slumber party for one of our friends. Her name is Kohl, she is 6 years old, and this was her very first sleepover ever. Her older sister had gone for a sleepover with one of her friends, and we though she might be kind of jealous, so we invited her over to have one with us. :) She was so excited! The first thing she said when she walked in was, "Oh wow! I can tell this is gonna be fun!" We wanted to make it really fun for her, so we gave her a little mini spa, with a manicure, and pedicure... it was all very cute! Here are a couple pictures of our "exciting slumber party" as she named it. :D

So excited!

Pedicure Time!

Bed time..... (she actually didn't fall asleep until 11.. which is very late for a 6-year old! But she had fun, so we kind of didn't mention that to her mom! :S)

Whoops! Major red eye! (You can see my major burn line on my neck in this one, which made my face look extremely pale! It's almost a tan now though! :D)

Picture of the Week

I saw this on someone else's blog, and thought it would be fun to do. (Thanks Nikki! :D) Every Saturday I'll post my favourite picture from that week. It could be of anything.. my friends, siblings, kids I babysit, my rabbits, even scenery.. it'll just be the picture I liked the best from that week. So here is the best picture of this week....

This is my gorgeous little sister Ayana. I put this one on my other blog too, but I just love it so much. I love the lighting, and how the green from the grass, and the tree goes with her dress, but also contrasts with her beautiful skin. She also looks so happy, and loving being there, modeling for me. :D Thanks Ayana, for the picture!

Me and my siblings

This was taken at Stanley Park the other day.. I love it because of the light, and the fact that everyone is looking, and smiling, which is quite hard to get when there is both a 1 year old, and a 2 year old involved.. although Ayana can be quite a show off to the camera when she feels like it! :D

Famous For A Day!!!

Since I mentioned it, I thought I might as well tell how we were "Famous for a day". Yes, we were in the newspaper, front page! Very cool, actually! :D
A newspaper had asked our adoption agency if they knew of any families who were already home with their adopted children, and we were the closest ones, so they told them our phone number. Of course, when they phoned up and said, "Would you mind being in the newspaper?".. well, who would say no! So they did an over-the-phone interview about the adoption with my mom, and then a photographer came over to our house for a photo shoot. It was very cool, and he did some very cool, professional shots of our family.. he loved our staircase, because it kinda of twists around. As soon as he came in, he was like, "Perfect! That's where the pictures will be!" I guess its good for artistic poses or something.

Anyway, he did tons of different pictures, and then said that he had enough shots, and he would email us the ones they ended up using. "Oh yes" he said as he was leaving. "Since the surrey paper (our local paper) is the sister paper of the one doing the story on you, they might decide to do it too, is that all right?" Of course we didn't mind! Two newspapers doing stories about us! Even better! So the next Saterday, in the top right hand corner, there was a little picture of my mom and Moses, with a little caption saying, "In Tomorrow's Paper: Crossing Families; International Adoption" We all thought that was very cool, and didn't expect much more than that. So when we got the Sunday paper, and saw (no joke) our family pictures blown up across the entire front page.. we were pretty excited! I was famous at school for about a week after that! My teachers would all be teaching, and then catch my eye, and suddenly say, "Oh yes, did everyone see Erin and her family in the newspaper this weekend?" Everyone was soo excited.. some people were even more excited than I was about it! :P
But I just thought that was really cool.. I mean, who wouldn't like to be a little famous, even the tiniest bit? Oh, and our really good friends are neighbors with the paper boys, so we ended up getting not one, not two, but a total of 7 or 8 copies of that paper! :D And the paper boys were pretty excited too.. as they came to the door (it was open, so we said hi), they looked down at the paper, then back at us, then whispered, then said, "You're the people in the newspaper!" Yes we are! :D
It was kind of funny though.. for the next few weeks, even in the grocery store, complete strangers would come up to my mom and say, "Oh your kids are so cute.. hey! I saw you in the paper!" We even ended up meeting a very kind Ethiopian man because of it. He had seen the pictures, and read the story, and ever since then, had been desperate to meet us. It just so happened, that he was friends with the owner of the Ethiopian restaurant we always go to, so when we showed up, the owner called him. Suddenly, my dad was handed the phone, and was soon talking away with this sweet man who was saying how excited he was to see that we had adopted one of his countries children, and how excited he was to talk to us! It was so sweet!
So it was a pretty cool experience all together!

The Picture in the corner of the Saturday Paper.

The Front Page Picture.

The picture on the inside, with the story.

A Little About Me

Hi There!
My name is Erin, and I go to high school in British Columbia, Canada. I have two wonderful parents, four siblings, three rabbits, and a large extended family, stretching all the way to England, which is where my mom is from. My family is actually very international.. my dad's parents are from Siberia, my mom and her family are from England, and, the newest addition to our family, my two youngest siblings are from Ethiopia. You can read all about that on my other blog:

http://erins-ethiopia-trip.blogspot.com/

That is the story of my little brother and sister, Ayana and Moses , and how they came to be in our family, and different stories since they came. It started off as just a way to communicate with my friends while I was in Ethiopia picking them up, but I changed my mind, and I now write in it pretty regularly, althougth sometimes I forget to! I will be updating that blog, as well as this one, so feel free to read both! :D My other two siblings are Megan, and Josh, and they are both biological.

I have been to many different places, most of them with my family:

1991, 1993, 2002, 2003 (Every Season!)- England

2002 (Fall)- Portugal

1998 (Fall)-China

2004, 2005, 2006 (Spring)- Mexico

2005 (Summer)- Uganda

2006 (Summer)- Ethiopia

I love traveling, and I just know that there is a lot more in store for me over my lifetime. If you're wondering how we were able to travel during the fall, well the answer is.. I was homeschooled from Kindergarten until Grade 5. My parents tought me, and no.. I couldn't go to school in my pajamas! =)

Anyway, here are a couple of facts about me:

Name: Erin
Age: Turning 16 soon! :D

Interests/Hobbies: reading, going on the computer, hanging out with my friends, taking pictures of.. everything! :P, playing with my brothers and sisters, traveling, babysitting, scrapbooking

Favourite Movies: oh wow... tons.. my friends say I like every movie. But I'd have to say my favourites are probably LOTR (all of them), Pirates (all of them again), A Walk to Remember, Bridge to Terabithia (sooooo sad!!)

Favourite Books: that's almost harder than movies, but: LOTR again (I've read the whole series 7 times! :P), Inkheart, Inkspell, Dragonrider, and the Katherine Kingsbury series (Redemption, and Firstborn series)

Family: David, my dad; Lesley, my mom; Megan, my sister; Joshua, my brother; Ayana, my sister; Moses, my brother.

This is a picture from a while back of my whole, wonderful family. It was actually in the newspaper! But I'll tell you about that later. For now, I've got to go. Talk to you later!