No News.....

I talked to our case worker this morning and she said that they had not received any correspondence from Ethiopia over the weekend. They were going to call and attempt to get verbal confirmation of our court decision but were unable to get through. So we wait for another day and hope that around noon tomorrow we hear something. Wait, wait, wait………..you would think we would get used to it by now but it doesn’t seem to get any easier.

The Sweetest Big Sister

Today we did some crazy early post-Thanksgiving shopping and put up our Christmas tree. Once we were finished, Emma stepped back, took a look at the tree and with her hands on her hips exclaimed...."it's perfect". Then, immediately followed with "baby brother yike this!!....he be happy!!!" (She came up with it all herself as we had not talked at all about him seeing the tree) I think we may have to leave the tree up well into January so that baby brother can enjoy Emma's handywork. Fine with us. We LOVE CHRISTMAS.

We are still hoping for some good news on Monday and travel dates to follow soon. It looks like as of now, leaving on Christmas day may be a possibility but we won't know anything until at least the end of next week.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Second Court Date Tonight

We go to court again tonight in Ethiopia. We are praying that the letter that was missing from our last court date has made it to court and that the judge can make the final decision on our case. We do not expect to hear anything until Monday with it being Thanksgiving so please pray for patience and peace during our wait.

The reality of this delay did not really hit me until last week. I have been overwhelmed with feelings of dissapointment and sadness. Our baby boy will be spending his first Christmas in an orphanage due to a piece of paper not getting to where it needed to go. It has been a very long wait for us since referral and the good news followed by bad was very hard to take. Thank you for all of you that have encouraged me during this time. Hopefully we will get good news and travel dates assigned quickly so that we can move forward and bring out little one home safe ........

Showered with love and gifts in Greensboro.......

Last Thursday Vicki, Kristen and Stacey threw us a baby shower for Johnny. Emma and I had so much fun. We came home will lots of clothes and even a whole bunch of personalized onesies made for us at the shower. Thank you to everyone that came to celebrate with us!

Thanks to Alisa for the great pictures....

The Room is Ready

My parents came to visit this week and with them my mom brought Johnny's bedding she had been working hard to complete. I love it!!

John and Emma will be sharing a roon so we split the room down the middle, kept the green and added the blue. I think it turned out great and am very excited to have this room filled with two crazy kids.

Heartbroken

We got a call from our caseworker today saying that they were told wrong and that we had in fact not passed court on November 5th. In order to pass court we needed to have a letter from MOWA (which I think is like our social services) recommending us as adoptive parents. This letter did not make it. Our second court date is scheduled for November 26th. Johnny's birth mother was present at court and according to our case worker she will not be asked to go again. So it sounds like the chance of us passing the second time is very good but it also means that we probably won't be traveling until January. We are so sad. We don't understand why we heard one thing and got our hopes up and then a week went by and we didn't find out about the problem until today.

Our hearts are broken. We want to hold our baby boy. Each month that ticks by is another month that he is not able to be in our family. It has been long enough since we saw his picture, we want him home!!!

Still on Cloud Nine

I wasn't sure how I was going to feel after passing court. Physically, nothing has changed. We already considered him as part of our family so that didn't change. Would a government making it official really make that big of a difference?



YES!! I feel an overwhelming sense of relief. We are, of course, very anxious to go get him but now that it is official I no longer find myself holding my breath; preparing myself for the worst while hoping beyond hopes for the best. The hurdles have been overcome. He is ours and that makes a huge difference.



We don't have any news on travel and really don't expect to hear anything next week. The earliest we would probably hear something is the next week and that would be faster than they are saying. We are packing up our donations and I have begun the list making so that we are ready when we get the call. We will probably have a two week notice when we are given our travel dates.



Congratulations to the Easts, Shauna, Hensley's and McBrides! They are the first families to travel since the court closure have been given a November 23rd embassy date. This is great news and we are so happy for the families that are going to be meeting their children in less than two weeks!!

We Passed!!!

We got the call today letting us know that we have PASSED COURT!!! This means that Johnny is officially ours according to Ethiopian and American law. I am relieved and so excited that we are so close to bringing our baby boy home.

The only step we have left is our US Embassy date in Ethiopia. This is a date assigned to our agency when the families adopting are required to be there in person to get their childs visa to bring them into the United States. The time between passed court and embassy date used to be 3-4 weeks but now due to a process change they are estimated it to be 5-7 weeks. For us to get assigned an embassy date the following needs to happen:

• The court decree needs to be given to our agency representative in Ethiopia. This normally takes a week.


• Once this is received, a birth certificate and passport will be requested and a final medical review will be done on Johnny.


• This paperwork will be turned into the US Embassy and they will confirm our embassy date.

Right now the tentative dates given to All God's Children for December are for the 14th and the 28th. This would mean us leaving on the 11th or the 25th. There is no way to know which date we will be given as the processing time varies. We are of course hoping and praying for the December 14th date so we have him home for Christmas but probably won't know more until the end of November.

So we wait again....but he is officially ours.....so today we celebrate!!!

Ready to Exhale...Court Tonight

We go to court tonight!

Ethiopia is 7 hours ahead of us so when we are sleeping (probably not but hopefully) tonight, the decision will be made as to whether our son is officially our son.

From the time of referral to our court date I feel as though I have in a sense been holding my breath. In going through this adoption process we were warned from our social worker to not take anything for granted or see anything as a "for sure" until it was happening. She even went as far as to advise us to not refer to our baby as "ours" or "brother" or "son" as so many things can happen between referral and court. In short, she told us to guard our hearts from being devastated if something went wrong.

Though we loved our social worker and gained valuable information from her that we did take to heart, we completely ignored this advice. We dove head first into loving our sweet John T. at first sight. This is why I feel as though I have been holding my breath. In adoption, as is in life, anything can happen. So we hold our breath, hopefully for only one more night, until we hear word that he is officially ours to bring home.

Please pray for peace over our family as we wait anxiously once again.

Formula and Diapers

I have been storing the formula and donations that we have been given to take with us to Ethiopia in Johnny's crib. I thought it might be a good idea to get an idea of how many pounds we had both to gage how much more we could collect and to make sure we weren't going to damage our baby boy's future sleeping spot. As of yesteday we have collected.....

80 pounds of formula and diapers!!

This does not include the $250 in cash and gift cards we have been given to purchase more before we travel!! Thank you everyone for your generous donations. Special thanks to my friends and co-workers at SMC who donated more than half of the items and the Wenatchee Valley Senior Center for their cash donations!

Keep 'em comin.......We have been told that the airlines will often times waive fees for extra baggage in the case of adoption donations. We will plan to take the 150 pounds and then if we have more we will try to take that as well. If they deny us the luggage, we will pass it along to others in the area that will be traveling soon after us so either way they will get to the children.

4 Months Old

Our baby boy is four months old today. In three more days he will (if all goes well) officially become a Pell, though he was ours from the moment we saw his picture almost three months ago. I have meant to post each month and missed his two and three month “birthdays”. I think that part of me doesn’t even want to think about these missed days. I can’t pull out a calendar and mark down his accomplishments for the month as I don’t know them. I can’t write something he can read later about his personality or the things he is doing as I don’t know. My heart aches to know him. I remember this feeling when I was carrying my daughter Emma. The month before she was born I was so anxious to just meet her. I felt her, but I didn’t know her. When she came into this world it was instant love but it took a while to really get to know who she was. I feel the same about John. I haven’t felt him, but it is harder as I have seen him in pictures. Not the fuzzy ultrasound kind. But the real clear kind. The kind that changes with each picture that we get. The kind that reminds us that he is really out there getting older and we have not been there to watch this growth. I can’t wait for the day that we will meet. The day we will see with our own eyes our baby we have seen in pictures. The day we will begin to really know him. To know his unique personality. His likes his dislikes. His funny quirks, his gummy smile. Happy four month birthday baby boy…….