We passed court today! The last MAJOR hurdle has been lept! It isn't exactly smooth sailing from here but the waters are much smoother now!

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We Have A Court Date...Back To More Waiting...

I feel like my life has turned into waiting, and then getting some news, and then waiting, and then getting some more news, and then waiting some more, etc. As suspected, the Ethiopian courts will be closing towards the end of August all through September. It was highly unlikely that we would receive a court date before that closure. But we had prepared ourselves for that. We received our court date of October 8th. However, 40% of cases do not pass the first attempt. I am trying to stay positive and believe that we will pass, but some people don't, and I don't want to get my hopes up. If we pass on the 8th, we could possibly travel around the first of November (just guessing, we haven't heard any tentative travel dates from our agency).

I feel like we get some news, and then it's back to waiting. We now have 2 months more to wait, to think about our court date coming up. Most days the waiting just goes by, some days are rougher than that. Because I am a first-time mom, I often times find my mind wandering to our son. What am I missing out on? How is he gonna look completely different by the next pictures I get? I will have already missed all kinds of stuff by the time I get to him. To help with this, we do get monthly updates from our agency and also the wonderful moms and dads that travel before us who volunteer to take care packages and pictures! We sent our first package for our baby with a travel group who left yesterday to pick up their children. So a big thank you to the Roger's family who will be doing that for us this week!

We're getting close, but then sometimes it seems we are still so far away. I am comforted by the fact that I know this is the son I was born to have. God picked him before I was even alive to be my son. So all things will work together for good. So until we get our next update, we will continue to hold to that hope and look forward to seeing our boy face-to-face...

On A Regular Wednesday...

"Nicole, this is Nicole...I have some exciting news for your family if you can give me a call back at your earliest convenience." That was the message I took from my phone at 12:53pm on Wednesday, July 22. I had been taking my phone with me everywhere and had it turned up at full volume. That day we had an inservice at work over lunch so I had turned my phone to vibrate, thus missing Nicole's (our family coordinator) call. I spent the next 5 minutes frantically trying to get her back on the phone. I was successful after what seemed like an eternity. She asked if my husband was somewhere where he could take a call. After conferencing him in on the phone call, she said "congratulations, this is your referral call." Wow, I can't describe what that felt like. To hear her describe the child that God had picked for us, I knew already I loved him. I hurried into work and as my co-workers looked at me funny (since I was crying)...through tears I said "we just got our baby." Unfortunately, I had to finish my day at work, which wasn't very successful because I was completely scatterbrained. So after months of paperchasing and waiting we have gotten our baby we have been so looking forward to adding to our family. The day was crazy and by the time John and I called our families and talked and looked over the pictures we received in an e-mail, I was worn out! It was such an emotional day. So much so, that it has taken me almost a week to post this blog. There have been so many emotions since that day, it will take another post to describe it all. For now, we wait on further news from our agency for things like a court date and travel dates. We are definitely excited to continue to prepare for our guy! He is absolutely adorable, however, we can not publicly post pictures until he is officially ours through the court documents. Oh, how we are waiting for that day...

Month 5 Down...

One more month down in the waiting process. New referrals are continuing to come in every several weeks. The last referrals were for people with DTE's of October. While we have been waiting this past month, we have been on both of our missions trips with our kids. The junior high students went to Dayton, OH for 5 days to serve at Gospel Mission doing some yard work, and cleaning up the grounds for their community night that was coming up. They also had a great time at Kings Island riding all the old stuff and the new coaster they have for the this summer. Shortly after getting back from that trip we packed up and headed south with our senior high students. We completed 2 decks for people in Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. We camped for the week at a National Campground and tried to avoid the bears and ticks. All the kids learned how to rough it, including making all their own meals. On the last day there, we went caving in Buffalo Cave. It was a great time of crawling through tiny holes and in between huge rocks. All in all, it was a busy month. One that made the time fly by. Which is good, although John and I are no closer to having the nursery ready for Yoshi. We keep thinking we should start that, but apparently we are both better procrastinators than doers. Maybe next post I can post some progress has been made...

A Saturday Research Project...

Here are a couple pictures of our experience at Ras Dashen! In the first picture is our food/table. Traditional Ethiopian eating is done around a basket holding the pizza pan size dish you are served. Each person orders an entree which is a meat of some sort. Then, as a table, you are served 3 sides and also extra injera, which is the bread with the meal. The food is served on a flat layer of injera. This is a very spongy, sour tasting bread. Not a bread that I would eat by itself (although I'm sure Ethiopians do and love it), but the injera serves as bread and utensil. As you look at the picture, in the "6 o'clock" position is one of our sides. It is buttermilk cheese, very good and soft. Definitely a homemade cheese, not bought in any dairy section! The dark brown meat to the top of that is John's beef entree. It was a traditional spicy Ethiopian dish that made John's nose run:). To the "3 o'clock" side of the cheese is some of the injera. My lamb entree is above John's beef. I ordered a dish that was not labeled as spicy although it still had some spice to it, which I believe most Ethiopian food does. To the left of the lamb is a lentil/pepper side dish and to the right is green bean/squash

side dish. Everything was very good. As you can see from the next picture, everything is eaten with your hands. No utensils, no napkins! It's one thing to eat a hamburger and french fries with your hands...it's another to scoop up saucy meats and small sides with a piece of flimsy bread. It's not pretty, but then again, everyone else in the restaurant is doing it as well. At the end of the meal you do get a wetnap:) All in all, it was a great experience. Hopefully one we will get to do again at some point before we travel. I have hoped to cook Ethiopian at least 1 night a week once we have our child. After being at the restaurant, I am encouraged but also realize it might be quite a task to master. The good news is our child will have never actually eaten Ethiopian food before he comes home to America with us. So, hopefully, we will be able to convince our kid that the food I cook tastes "just like authentic Ethiopian food". We'll see how that goes...

I Should Have A Baby Bump By Now...

We are now 4 months along in our waiting. The last group of referrals given out were for people with DTE's in August. Our DTE is in February, so according to that timeline we will have to wait for the people in Sept-Jan to receive their referrals before we will. We received an e-mail update several weeks ago with some disturbing news from Ethiopia. Apparently, the government there caught a police officer turning in children to orphanages stating they were "abondoned children". This was not the case, as some of the children had homes with families that had not, in fact, abandoned them. Unfortunately, this has led America World (our agency) to no longer refer any of the children in their system labeled as abandoned. We were not led to believe that this is a forever situation but until they can review and investigate the children they currently have, they do not want to put families into a situation where they are referred a child, and then the court does not pass the adoption due to the abandonment question hanging over children's heads. America World stated in the e-mail that up to 25% of their children come from "abandonment" so we are expecting a decline in the number of referrals for the coming months. However, we are still encouraged as referrals are still coming out and we are moving up on the list.

On a brighter note, John and I recently had our first authentic Ethiopian experience. We drove to Chicago over the weekend and ate at Ras Dashen. Pictures and more explanation to come!...

In A Holding Pattern...

May 5th marked the end of month 3 of waiting. April had a total of 28 referrals for infants, toddlers and older children. So, congratulations to all the families who have recieved word that they will soon bring home their children to their "forever families". John listened to the latest conference call for all of us still waiting. Right now, America World is saying the wait for infants will not change. Even though there have been many more referrals in the past couple months than even they were expecting, that will not change the infant wait time of 9-11 months. Furthermore, they explained that court dates are taking anywhere from 8-16 weeks to receive once your referral is obtained. So, once again it looks like our "best case scenario" is being pushed back. Although, we are dissapointed that it could be even longer before we bring our baby home, we are becoming better at waiting. This past month, John put in an attic ladder so that we can start moving things out of the office and we can actually start putting the nursery together. I figure at the rate we are taking care of that, we will still be waiting for the paint to dry by the time we get our referral in 6 or 7 months!:) So, to answer everyone's question of "How's the adoption going?" We are waiting and still waiting and still waiting. Much like an airplane circling in the air...we're in a holding pattern...