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!!