Expectation...Disapointment....Hope

Back in October, I was expecting to have our son home by now. I remember thinking, probably by Thanksgiving but definately by Christmas. Then Thanksgiving came and went, I went through the disapointment of not making the first travel group and found hope in being included in the next. Our court date came and and with it great news. We breathed a sigh of relief, our waiting was coming to an end. It was looking very good that we would have him home for Christmas. We waited for our travel call and instead were faced with disapointment again. It took weeks for me to feel like I had come to terms with the ramifications of our delay follwed by a week of hope that our wait would once again come to an end and then....disapointment again. Many have described adoption as a roller coaster of emotions. I would say this is a very accurate description of how we have been feeling. And so here we are....hope is starting to peek through once again......expectation of passing court on the third try is beginning to form......please Lord let it be followed with relief not disapointment.

We are praying for the miraculous. We are praying that whoever is responsible for our paperwork at the Ministry of Women's Affairs dreams dreams about our family tonight. That he or she can't shake us out of their mind. That getting that letter done is at the top of their list to do when they enter their office tomorrow (tonight for us). Please pray with us that our wait comes to an end and that if it does not, that we are able to give our disapointment to our maker that is able to bear it for us....I am no longer able to bear it alone.

Seriously?!?!?!

A representative from our agency went to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs today to inquire as to why we (and several others) did not pass court. They were told the MOWA needed more time to review our file and was not able to have the letter of approval to the court on time. Seriously?!?!?! They have had our paperwork for almost four months now. Someone is not doing their job or we are getting overlooked. They had four weeks from the time of our last court failure to review our paperwork. This is so frustrating. We have asked about contacting MOWA ourselves and our case worker said that she would advise against this as it could cause them to be annoyed with our persistence and put us at the bottom of the stack again. It makes me very nervous that our letter still hasn’t been written. There is no guarantee that it will be written and get to court in a week if it hasn’t been done by now. MOWA is aware that we have a court date on the 9^th but they were also aware we had one on the 6^th and 26^th of November. There is nothing left to do but pray that whoever is responsible for our case will get it done and to the courts in time for our court date next week. The emotional roller coaster we are on is getting pretty old............

Rescheduled for December 9th

For some reason our case was rescheduled for December 9th. We will have to go to court for the third time in an attempt to make Johnny our official son. We are so dissapointed by this news and frustrated that we feel so helpless in all of this.

Another family that has been walking this path with us also received the same news today. Our agency is trying to figure out what happened but has no explanation for us. I would assume the same letter that was missing for the first court date is still missing.

This means that leaving on Christmas is definately out and so it looks like some time in January would be our travel date. My heart is broken once again.

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....