Wozspace.org

Click to open the album

Clicking the picture above will take you to an album with Tess at ballet.

(my apologies for the photo-shopping. Light was bad and the camera was new, but I did my best and tried to salvage the bad photo and learn a bit)

The photos below are simply posted here and do not link to a larger size or album

Here is Tess with Jeanne – these photos were taken June 12, 2008 in Ghana, but Tess later continued with ballet classes in Phoenix.

Welcome to the re-born Wozspace.org!

This is the first post at Wozspace.org.   Things will change  as I learn how WordPress functions, and to host all the parts myself, but you might notice changes right away:

Our address. Technically we are at blog.wozspace.org.   You will be redirected, so you don’t have to remember that, but it will help you find us if you bookmark that link.

The imported content from our old blog.  However, much didn’t make the jump (i.e. sidebars explaining our move from Ghana to Ethiopia via New York, Wyoming and Arizona).

We can’t see most of the imported items from inside Ethiopia anyway. You should see the old photos etc, even if we cannot. (old photos are hot-linked, and remain physically at the old site).

There is a Gallery page with more pictures of our kids for their grandparents – our primary mission – without boring everyone else with every single darling messy face picture.

The template vaguely approximates the former graphic style and colors for continuity, but gives us a new look.

The Amharic title, to reflect our location linguistically, is  just a transliteration of Wozspace – no guarantees for it’s accuracy

(Update 2/22/09, it appears that I have slightly wrong phonetics  – correction coming)

It was still over 100 degrees most days after school and the sprinklers turned on at 5:45 pm. (you will need to click on this photo to fully appreciate it)

During our recent trip to Cheyenne, Gramma and Grampa introduce Claire to chocolate ice cream at the Dairy Queen.

Nancy attempts to remove too large a bite – gets a big bite herself (remember you can click on the photos to see full sized images)

We spent about a week on the East Coast with a trip into NYC for the American Museum of Natural History, but spent most of our time at Nancy and John’s up on their little piece of heaven outside of Cold Spring.  We saw bald eagles, hawks, turkeys, deer and big black snake, all while were out picking wild raspberries, and a few black berries and blue berries too – this was a nice re-introduction to the US

We unfortunately were stuck in JFK airport for nearly 36 hours for delays of various reasons, but when our final flight was canceled after 1:00 am for weather, we were advised that Delta Airlines would not be helping us in anyway, and no hotels were available, so there we went with 2 crying kids and our little baby without further food or diapers to find a quiet gate to sleep by until our first chance for stand by the following night.  I understand that weather and things are not their fault, but with few exceptions, we were treated quite poorly by Delta Airlines staff – like “Why don’t you pack more burn medicine for your daughter?, or food or diapers for the baby etc” Uh, over 3 oz, we had enough for the first 29 hours, but really – as one of their frequent fliers and sitting there on the floor with 11 thousand dollars worth of tickets I am really questioning why I should ever trust them again.

Heck, I even have a picture of one of their planes I used to think was nice looking a couple of entries down.  I know we have had just over a thousand visitors to the this blog, but like us many of you are around that 100,000 miles a year mark for the airlines so, I am urging you to think twice before purchasing airline tickets from Delta.

We missed nearly all of Frontier Days, but took in the last parade and a few minutes of rodeo and carnival – Cheyenne is a bit sleepy and slow, but nice for us to rest up and let Tess heal up a bit from her urban camping complications from the floor at the Delta terminal in JFK.  Cheyenne has great new library, named library of the year by the National Library Assoc., and one of the 10 best on National Public Radio. So, this is our office for the next couple of weeks

We will likely be moving to Arizona very soon and getting the kids started in school – it starts this Monday Aug 4th!  But the big question right now is wether we drive or dare to fly.

We attended a birthday party recently and Tess’s bathing suit was in the exact color scheme as the water-slide.

We just hope you can find her. Jeanne captured these photos.

This was actually much more exciting than it sounds. We really saw quite few fairly exotic looking animals, plants and even some fungus. We set out well armed with bug repellent, radios, flash lights and cameras and recorded what we could.

(update: The gallery didn’t import well so I removed it – It is still on the original page and can be seen at:

Wozpics.photoshop.com.

Jeanne, Claire and Tess were on this 767 when I took this picture. This is the Delta flight, Accra to New York, that flies over our house most days of this week, but today I had a reason to snap it’s picture as it passed by.

They’ll be heading down to Washington DC, in the morning, but I will spare you the photo of the Chevy Impala or whatever the rental car is, but I thought this photo of their plane came out much better than expected.

Marie’s son Believe is looking quite handsome. (An update May 24, 2008: Believe is quite sick and is in the hospital in Togo. He has malaria, but it wasn’t likely the cause of his illness, which remains unknown. Our prayers and concerns go out to him and his family. Please pray for his speedy recovery.)

He was in the hospital about one month, with some issue surrounding his kidney function, but the cause was never exactly determined, however he has been here in Ghana for about a week and recently celebrated his birthday with us and seems almost back normal, just a bit skinnier.

Jacob’s school held its first bedtime reading week this past week, culminating in “Dress like your favorite book character” assembly.

Jacob is Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean (interestingly, from a post-modern point of view, a theme-park ride character turned into a movie character turned into a book character).

As usual, if Jacob does something, Tess has to do it too, so here is Tessie the Cowgirl at the assembly too.

Here is Patrick with his two girls early (pre-coffee!) on Easter morning. Note Tess is eating her rabbit!

We had a great time dyeing eggs and celebrating with friends and lots of kids. Claire really took it all in.

Jacob and Anaïs showed how to get the best colors

Tess and her friends get a pre-egg hunt mission briefing

Thank you all so much for your support and your prayers.

Tess is making a remarkable recovery and at the hospital she was able to play a bit with her family at the playground.

Still lots of visits to doctors and therapists, but you can see in her face all the progress she has made.

Both Tess and Jacob have been spending a fair amount of time at the local library where this picture was taken.

We are very happy to welcome Claire Elizabeth to our family. She was born Dec 4th and was a healthy 7 pounds 7 ounces.

The kids had a joint birthday bash, Tess is shown here giving her Island Rose piñata the first bash.

Jake and seven of his pirate crew for his seventh big day.

He did a great job designing and painting his piñata too.

Tess a few days earlier broke out her cowboy boots and a raincoat to do some shopping with Sarah.