How do you celebrate a "paper pregnancy"?

We are "paper pregnant" (with a 4-6 year old girl)!  
Our dossier was mailed on Friday, January 14!  We are now tracking it as it makes its way to Ethiopia.  From this point we could get our referral call at ANY time.  It could be this week or months from now.  We (AWAA families) are praying for a flood of referrals in the near future.  Things were very dry/slow for a couple months (November and December), so it seems to be time for a flood and the trickle has started!  We could be part of this great flood!  We'll see...

So to celebrate our "paper pregnancy", we went out with friends (their family of 4 + our family of 4) to an Ethiopian restaurant called Queen Sheba.   As we walked through the door of this very nice restaurant we were greeted with new smells.  The spices used in the food are different from anything we had ever smelled before.  It made us all think about the new things LG will experience here.

We ordered the Queen's Dinner: the perfect way to try everything!  The meal started with ceremonial hand washing.  Good thing as you eat family style with your fingers!

The platter included chicken and lamb dishes, vegetables and beef in the center.  Our friend's son hit the nail on the head when he described the beef as taco meat!  It was ground beef with finely chopped jalapenos.  Yum! Everything is eaten with a bread called injera.  Injera is a thin, spongy, sourdough that come out rolled up like a tortilla (Can you tell I am a true Texas girl that loves her Mexican food?).  The food was WONDERFUL!  I just may have to take my own fork to Ethiopia.  The slightly soggy injera bread is just not my favorite way to get all that great tasting food into my mouth.

Did I mention the honey wine?  It is the most beautiful color; it tastes and smells like drinking honey.  What is not to like?  After dinner we had an assortment of desserts that included baklava and Ethiopian coffee.

It turns out that we like Ethiopian food, but it may take our stomachs a few times to get used to it.  All those new spices were a little hard to sleep on.  All in all it was a great experience that was so nice to share with friends (3 hours!).   I believe we also gained a deeper understanding of what LG will experience with all of the new foods when she gets here.

Thank you Lord for good food and good friends!