Our More Abundant Life: January 2013

It really is hard to believe that we're in 2013 now. Last night as the ball dropped John and I were still groggy from waking up 5 minutes earlier. There was no champagne, no wine. We barely cheered. Hahaha! All we wanted to do was go back to sleep. The year before was so different. What a difference a year makes, huh?

Looking back on this year, I realize how much Eva has grown and how God has blessed the important life decisions we've made concerning our family. So far everything is going very smoothly which lets me know that God's divine hands are involved. This is how the year of 2012 fared for the Mancini family:

January - Eva's first experience of snow.

February - Eva's dedication

and her 2nd birthday

March - Celebrating Eva being home for 1 year!

April - Eva's first church Easter egg hunt.

May - Eva met her uncle for the 1st time & she and I spent a month in Florida with her grandparents.

During this month, we also came to the realization that it would be possible for John to retire from his job

and for us to move to Florida by June 2013.

June - A wonderful unexpected opportunity afforded us the ability to go to Bermuda and stay with family for 10 days. Eva got to see old family members, meet new family members, and swim in the ocean for the first time.

July - Eva got her first face painting picture.

This month we were able to go back to Florida to see my parents, celebrate my birthday

and our 9th wedding anniversary!

August - A very busy month: We went to our first and last Ohio State fair. Eva tried cotton candy and other yummy fair junk food! We went to Cincinnati to attend an AGCI adoption picnic. The weather was sweltering. We felt like we were melting out there. This month was also Eva's last month of Mommy & Me classes. She started potty training. Also....

She started her 1st ballet class.

We went apple picking for our favorite Honeycrisp apples!

September - We celebrated 2 very important Ethiopian holidays: Enkutatash -

Ethiopian New Year and....

Meskel - The Finding of the Cross

Also this month, I started homeschooling Eva and she started a 1-day/week preschool class.

October - This was an equally busy month:

It started out with the 1st annual EOR (Ethiopian Orphan Relief) 5K run.

Eva's 1st time going to a pumpkin patch and picking her pumpkins.

This year we went to Boo at the Zoo AND trick-or-treating!

While all of this activity was going on, I was busy packing us up for our month long business/vacation for November. For 2 weeks we stayed in a condo, so I had to pack up a mini household. That proved to be NOT an easy thing!

November - We were in Tampa so that John could attend a 2-week law enforcement certification course. This was a MAJOR step towards our move to Florida in the summer of 2013. While we were in Tampa, Eva and I did a lot of really cool things: We went to the zoo and Eva....

Rode a horse for the first time.....

And rode a camel for the first time!

She even fed a giraffe!!

We also went to Glazer Children's Museum and the Aquarium. Eva met new family members and fell in love. We were blessed to be able to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, and very thankful that John passed his Florida State Exam to be able to work as a police officer in the state.

December - While this was not Eva's first Christmas with us as a family, it was her first Christmas in our hometown. She enjoyed every aspect of the season: the snow, watching it fall, helping her dad, grandfather and uncle build a snowman, make snow angels, and have a few snowball fights. It was a wonderful and blessed Christmas!