Please Read and Help us collect donations!!!!

Short update:  Our court date for November 11th did not bring us good news.  It simply did not happen.  This is pretty much the norm.  While it is disappointing, it is what we expected.  We are now waiting for consent or a new court date for our file to be viewed and approved.  We have become professional waiters!  LOL!  

As we wait, we would could use your help preparing for our trip.  Adoptive families generally collect donations to take and donate to the orphanage that has been caring for their child.  We will be doing this.  There are a couple of different ways you can help us.  We have set up a Go Fund Me account for anyone who simply wants to donate money.  I promise you 100% of donations will be used for supplies for the orphanages (we have 2 to buy for), gifts for the children, and/or extra baggage fees on our flight.  We are able to check 4 free bags.  If you would rather donate supplies, we will be accepting powdered formula, diapers, infants/children's tylenol and/or motrin, diaper rash ointments, neosporin, bandaids. I may be able to add more details later as I find out exactly what the orphanages are in need of.  Formula is always something that they run low on.  If you are interested in donating or know of a business or church that would be interested, please share this with them or let me know.    If anyone has an old suitcase or large bag that they would like to sell cheap or donate, that would be greatly appreciated to.  We will most likely not get our donation bags back.   We would really like to  be able to provide a nice donation for each orphanage.  Please consider helping our family provide supplies!  

Below is the link to our gofundme page.  

https://www.gofundme.com/orphanage-donations

November update...

Tomorrow is kind of big day for us.  Our first court date is set for tomorrow.  Now..I say this is a big day meaning it is one step closer to going to our girls.  In reality, it is likely that nothing will happen tomorrow.  The day will come and go and our case file will not be touched.  This is most common.  I am asking for prayers, happy thoughts, whatever it is that you do that we might get consent for our case to move forward tomorrow.  If not tomorrow, hopefully it will be soon.  

Tomorrow is also a special day for a beautiful little girl, we haven't yet met, living on the other side of the world.  Our daughter will be 5 tomorrow!  We will not be able to celebrate with her.  We will not be able to give her gifts, cake, ice cream, and most important...we cannot give her birthday hugs or kisses.  She may not even know that it is her birthday.  We will certainly be celebrating her in our hearts.  

We did get an update and a new photo of the baby yesterday.  She is growing so much and looks like she is very healthy and doing well.  We have not received a photo of her since July.  She has changed just a little!  She will have her 1st birthday next month.  Our update stated she weighs 17lbs and is 24 inches long.  I can't imagine that length is correct.  She looks bigger than that.  She is chubby and very healthy looking.  She has the most beautiful eyes!  I can't wait until we can share her photos with you all.  

We got "THE CALL"!!!!!

Our family is growing by TWO!  After 2 years and 11 months, we finally got that call we have been waiting so long for.  Monday, the day after Mother's Day, our case worker called us with some really great news.  She had referral for two little girls, ages 4 years and 5 months.  It was around 3:30 and the kids had just gotten home from school.  I told them to please be quiet while I took this call.  I really couldn't believe what I was hearing.  I hung up the phone and clapped, jumped, screamed, and whooped.  Kait looked at me with big eyes and asked, "Mom!  Was that THE CALL?!!!  It was the call!  We received the referral information, looked through it, and of course, we said YES!  The girls are just perfect!  We can't wait to meet them, hold them, hug them, and love them.

I haven't shared much about what has been going on so I will give you a little update.  It has been a long road with many ups and downs.  This time last year, May 1st to be exact, we received a call from our agency informing us it might be best to explore other options.  Adoptions had slowed so much in Ethiopia, our agency was not going to be able to stay open much longer unless things changed.  Our agency had some cases still open but at that time the plan was to eventually close the Ethiopia program.  At that time, we were #10 on the list.  It was really devastating news.  We had waited 2 years.  We could stay on the list and keep waiting, hoping referrals would pick up, look into other agencies, or not adopt at all.  We did end up deciding to leave the program.  We did some searching and ended up signing on with another agency in their Uganda program.  We were immediately matched with two children in Uganda, a girl age 6 and her brother age 2.  Again we waited and waited.  We had learned that Uganda had passed some new laws and some travel requirements had been changed.  We still did not have an official referral.  We decided that we could not live in Uganda for 10-12 weeks or risk getting stuck in the new law that families had to have a 1 year residency in country to obtain guardianship.  It was a tough decision, but we pulled out from that program.  Rewind a couple of months....I had received an email for our case worker at our first agency stating they had picked up some and were opening up the wait list to families that had been advised to move on in May.  We did not accept the offer at that time.  We had a match in Uganda and had expected to travel in October/November.  After leaving the Uganda program, I reached out to our Ethiopia program case worker.  We were able to pick back up on the list where we left off at #10 and we were expected to have a referral within a few months.  Now we have one!!!!!

We are beyond thrilled, excited, nervous...you name it, we are probably feeling it.  What's next?  More paperwork!  I'm not exactly sure what the process is after referral acceptance.  We will be finding out soon.  I do know it has been taking on average about 6-8 months for families to get a court date and travel.  It is going to be a long six months!