It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like CHRISTmas!

Hello all!

I am finally feeling like I am accomplishing some of the Christmas season tasks. Tree up-CHECK. Outside decorated-CHECK. Christmas cards designed & ordered-CHECK. Stamps ordered:CHECK! Shopping finished: (almost)CHECK!

Part of my work to get the Christmas cards done was finally taking some pics of AlinaJayne in her Christmas dress. I finally did that today. It took a lot of work, since she is always moving and saying "Merry Christmas everyone, Happy Birthday Jesus!" But I think they turned out okay.

Hmmm....next year I will have two schoochy kiddos to take pics of! Something tells me it will be worth the struggle :O)

 

Giving Thanks............

On this day of thanks, I have so many things to be thankful for. First and foremost, I give thanks to God for always proving me all that I need-I have more blessings than I deserve-in fact, I cannot begin to list them all here.

I have recently found myself giving even more thanks than usual for our daughter. Although I have had "scholarly" articles published nationally, I cannot ever seem to find the words to express my thanks for our daughter AlinaJayne. My cousin sent me a link to this article today-on Thanksgiving no less, and I just had to share it.

I listen to NPR many times each day, and I had no idea that one of my favorite correspondents (Scott Simon) has children adopted from China. He also mentioned Oromia (in Ethiopia) where our youngest daughter (waiting for us) is from.

I will defer these words of thanks to Mr. Simon.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Signed, Sealed Delivered!

......well, on its way at least!

We made it to the Notary, signed all of the forms, completed a questionnaire and scanned all of the documents (oh, wrote another check too), and the official referral paperwork is on its way to our agency's office.

Now what you ask? Wait. And wait some more. Now we are waiting for our day in court. Which could be a few months from now. I try not to think about it too much, but the *real* wait truly starts now. We know who are daughter is now, and it is so hard to know she will be there for another 9 or more months until all of the red tape is done and she can come home. Agonizing.

We are supposed to send her a "welcome bag" containing a shirt, a couple small toys and a photo album-it all has to fit into a gallon sized ziplock bag. We ordered a soft photo album tonight (we got the same kind for AlinaJayne when we went to China), and a T-shirt that says "Special Delivery From Ethiopia." Now I need to find some pics. I need about 12. The problem will be choosing 12 from the thousands I have taken! I'll be working on that this week.

So, this was not a lot to report, but I wanted to share this small step in the long journey to bring our daughter home.

Check back soon.

Signing the referral paperwork

REFERRAL ACCEPTANCE!!

We are beyond thrilled to announce that on 11/16/09, we officially accepted the referral of our second child! Praise the Lord!!

Chaltu is from the Oromia Region of Ethiopia. She is "about 2 years old" (her actual birthday will be decided by the judge at the hearing) and is tiny. She is about 30 inches tall and only about 22 lbs. What a contrast to the AlinaJayne the Chinese Amazon! She is described as a good sleeper who eats well, loves her bath, and rarely cries unless something really traumatizes her. She plays well with others and walks by herself. She has been in care since early October. Due to Ethiopian adoption law, we cannot post a picture of her until after we pass court and are her legal parents. In the meantime, let me just say she is a cutie-bald as can be (shaved-so much for AlinaJayne being able to do her hair right away), but adorable. Big chunky cheeks and huge soulful eyes.

The next step is a court date, which *may* be filed in the next month or so. I know there have been many delays and failed court hearings for babies referred from this region due to new, stricter guidelines. In fact, we were approved for a baby aged 0-30 mos, and the agency called to say we need to update our homestudy to reflect that we are approved for a baby as old as 4 years old-we JUST updated it on 10/23 (sigh). So it looks like they are anticipating delays!

We are not making this public on Facebook for privacy reasons. In all honesty, not all of my FB friends are privy to this info. All updates will be posted here on the blog as soon as we receive them.

We are expecting to receive the official referral package tomorrow. We are hoping for some more pics-we only have one! Deciding on a name now. we thought we had it figured out, but now we are back and forth between two.

The wait has a whole new twist now!!

Praying that the Lord will keep her safe until she can be home forever.

Check back soon!

A year?

I haven't been posting a lot on this blog lately. I guess there has not been a whole lot to report, so I have just avoided it so I would not have to be reminded of this seemingly interminable wait. However, I was reminded by a friend today that I needed to update this blog (thanks for keeping me in line Katie Jo), so here it is :O)

Saturday 11/14 will mark the one year anniversary of our DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia). Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that we were paperchasing to bring our second child home-but at the same time, it feels like an eternity. We've already had a homestudy update, and we just received a reminder from our agency that we will need to be re-fingerprinted soon-and that we'll need to file for an extension on our I-171 if our child is not home by May. MAY?!!!

We have watched as the wait for a referral gets longer (like in did when we started in the China program in 2005), other families receive referrals, court dates, travel and get settled in at home. Here we still are..........

I do want to share some info. A few weeks ago (11/2), we received a referral for a beautiful 2 or 2 1/2 year old girl. We accepted her file for review, and discovered some potentially significant medical issues. After a lot of talking, e-mails back and forth between the agency and more talking, we decided we had to decline the referral (referral/declination #2). We asked for more medical info on her, but could not easily obtain it. The agency director e-mailed us and asked us if we wanted to wait for more medical updates on this child, or start waiting for another referral. We said we just wanted to wait for another.

However, we could not get her out of our minds. Yes, it appears she has some major health issues-a few of which Matt and I are unlikely able to provide for (and we may not even have been approved for), but we felt that maybe the Lord was placing this child and our "second guessing" on our hearts for a reason. We had already told the director we could not proceed, to put us "back on the list," but it just did not *feel* right (keep in mind I am all about trying to control EVERYTHING). We e-mailed the director and asked her to not refer a new child to us right now, and that we wanted to wait for more testing/results, and a consultation with an International Adoption Physician before a final decision was made on this child. The physician will be reviewing the medical records this weekend.

Please pray for us as we prepare for the report from this physician. Pray that the Lord will guide her and give her knowledge as she reviews the complex medical facts. But most importantly, please pray for this child in Ethiopia, and for all children in need of forever families.

Please also consider supporting one of these organizations that provide orphan support. It isn't about one person giving a large sum-but about many people doing a small part.


Love coffee? Check out how you can support an orphan in Ghana, China, Ethiopia or Thailand . Find out how you can help orphans in Ethiopia, Colombia, Vietnam, Russia or India. Or HIV positive orphans.
Need Angel Gear? Just need to do some last minute Christmas Shopping?

We do have one request. If you are also on Facebook, please do not post any public comments to our wall with specific info about this or any other referral. That's not to say that general comments about the wait, etc, are note welcome-they are! Just no "specifics." We are trying to keep details private. Detailed private e-mails and private FB messages are great!

So there is the update. Thanks for dropping by and check back soon!