Thankful

We are blogging from Missouri this Thanksgiving Day. We have had a wonderful meal of turkey and ALL the fixins' and are now all kinda lounging around trying to digest! We have spent the week with Shawn's older sister, Kelly, and his mom, Jan. We all have so much to be thankful for this holiday season and Shawn reminded us with 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 that we are called to be joyful always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances. This is a really good reminder to not let the little (or even big) things in life cause us to lose the joy and thanksgiving that we have in Christ. It has been a wonderful week with family. Kelly and I have also continued on with the 3rd annual Hendricks family mystery puzzle. In case you don't know, this is a puzzle where you read a little mystery novel and then put together the 2 puzzles (whose pieces are mixed together and you don't know what the pictures are) to solve the crime. It is always a lot of fun for all the Hendricks clan, but it was up to Kelly and me to keep the tradition going this year. We are looking forward to next year when the whole gang is together, even the family that lives in Kenya! We hope you have all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Faith in Action

On Thursday night, Shawn and I attended the Family Foundation of Virginia Annual Gala. It was a formal evening at the Richmond Convention Center that serves as a forum for the Family Foundation to share their vision for the upcoming year, what has been accomplished in the previous year, and a fundraising event for the organization. The theme for this year is Faith in Action and the keynote speaker was Eric Metaxas, the man who wrote "Amazing Grace" (the biography of William Wilberforce that was written to accompany the movie by the same name). Eric has also written for Veggie Tales and was an absolutely hilarious speaker! He kept us all laughing, but also told about the role faith played in William Wilberforce's action to abolish slavery. It was a great evening where we were challenged to encourage our public legislators and to put our faith into action.

Big Day!!

Today we sent our formal adoption application to our agency by FedEx!! Our preliminary application was approved about 3 weeks ago, and we have spent these last weeks gathering up all of the paperwork necessary for our formal application. According to the FedEx scale, the packet weighed 0.55lbs...thats a lot of paper! Now comes the first waiting step of our adoption journey. It can take up to 4 weeks to just get the FBI background check back. We have to keep reminding ourselves that this is a long process...2 years or more, but we are really excited and will keep you updated as we get new information about our adoption journey.

Happy Birthday to Shawn!!

Thursday was Shawn's 34th birthday...he sure is getting old!! We celebrated by me serenading Shawn with the birthday song first thing in the morning, followed by opening presents, me singing the birthday song every time I talked to Shawn throughout the day, and then ending the day with a delicious dinner at Texas de Brazil Churrascaria. This restaurant was made for Shawn and his appetite. It is essentially an all-you-can-eat meat place. You start your dinner with the selections from the very large salad bar. There are things like olives, cheeses, tuna, salmon, california rolls, soup, breads, etc. If you don't get too full there, you start getting the meat being brought around by men carrying large skewers with various options. You have a little card at each place setting (like the one above) that is green on one side and red on the other. If you want more meat, keep the green side up and when you have had enough, flip it to red. We had filet mignon, garlic sirloin, lamb chops, sausages, Parmesan pork, chicken, barbecue pork ribs, and several other choices that I can't remember right now. We both ate so much we could hardly even breathe! I think Shawn's card was on green most of the night:) Since it was a special occasion, we decided to go all out and get dessert, too. We ended the dinner with Shawn's favorite, creme brulee. Before we could get in the car to go home, we took a quick walk around the mall to try to digest some of our food. Our night ended with both of us falling into a food induced coma watching our favorite show, Grey's Anatomy. And since you can never hear the birthday song too much, here goes one last time until next year:


Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday, dear Shawn!

Happy Birthday to you!



This picture is Shawn eating a piece of fruit that looks like an eyeball when he was in Thailand earlier this year...we forgot the camera on Thursday night:)

Richmond Outreach and Brazilian Lunch

Saturday was a very busy day for us. It was the first Saturday in I don't know how long that Shawn didn't have a freelance project to work on because he turned in the final installment on Thursday!!! It would have been nice to stay home and enjoy the time together, but we planned a day full of things to do. First we met up with our Sunday School class to do an outreach project for a widowed woman in our church. We spent the morning raking leaves, spreading dirt, cleaning out gutters, and eating! She had enough breakfast food there to feed a large army! Just like a grandma...always wanting to feed the young 'uns! One of the guys drove over a wrench on the way to the house and got a HUGE hole in his truck tire. There were many attempts to put enough air in the tire to drive a few miles, but eventually the truck had to be towed home. Oh well, a minor inconvenience in a day of good fun and hard work.

After a few hours at home, we headed to my friend Myrna's house for a traditional Brazilian lunch. In a house with 11 adults, we were the only ones that couldn't speak another language fluently...us selfish, egotistical Americans! She made Feijoada...essentially beef (or pork) cooked with black beans, served with rice and a side of collard greens (kinda). Since Myrna knows how picky I am, she also made some chicken nuggets in case I didn't like the feijoada. Shawn loved everything, and even put some of his favorite Sriracha sauce on it...I liked the beef and rice, stayed away from the beans, and ate quite a few chicken nuggets! Dessert was Key Lime Pie...delicious! Conversation was good for the most part...things got a little tense the few times that politics came up. Someone always graciously changed the subject though, and time at the Brazilian lunch flew by. We were so full when we got home that we didn't even eat dinner. I think that is a first for Shawn!!

Now that we are planning to adopt a baby from Colombia, I guess I'm going to learn how to cook some Latin American dishes so we can introduce our child to his or her birth culture. Maybe I won't start with Feijoada...I'm not sure how I would explain the chicken nuggets on mom's plate!!

Pumpkin Carving Fun!

Carving Halloween pumpkins has become a Hendricks' family tradition. Shawn cuts the lid off and scoops out all of the nasty gunk on the inside, I design the eyes and nose, Shawn designs the mouth, I carve out the face, put a candle it in and we have a perfectly designed pumpkin in one hour or less!