Four months....

Four months we have been waiting for a precious, sweet face to come across our email.  Four months we have been waiting for a name.  Four months have passed since we sent in our dossier to Ethiopia.  Wow - it doesn't seem like four months at all.  Time sure has flown by.  We are half-way through the low end of our expected wait time.  With that being said, we are half-way to seeing a sweet, precious, beautiful face that God has already picked out for us.  I hope the next four months go this fast!

After a lull in our agency referrals, passing court, and travel dates, it seems thing are picking up again.  That is good news! Four families received "On Deck" emails on Friday.  Three families have received referrals in the last few weeks.  Many families have passed court and a few have traveled to pick up their kids.  Things are moving along and that is good news my friends!

Until we see your sweet face baby girl, please know we are praying for you daily.  Your big brothers can't wait to have you home.  They have lots of things they want to teach you.  Your daddy can't wait for you to have him wrapped around your finger.  And me baby girl, your mommy, can't wait to hold you, rock you, love you, bathe you, feed you, and care for you.  But most importantly, right now, we know that Jesus is holding you close and taking care of you.  He is preparing our home for you and you for us. Until we meet face to face, I will live to love you.

An answered prayer

Amidst all the controversy of the healthcare bill, adoptive parents have seen a positive tax credit for adoptions finalized by 12/31/2011. Thank you Jesus for answering prayer! I have to admit I was scared about emptying our savings account to adopt our baby girl. We were obedient and GOD is providing again. I know I shouldn't doubt because He always comes through. Thank you Jesus!!!

I've been a bad blogger lately....

I've been a horrible blogger lately - there I confessed it!

Not much has been going on but we've been super busy!  Garrett finished basketball last week and we have moved onto baseball. Opening ceremonies fo baseball is March 27.  He is on the Tigers this year.  We are looking forward to a great season!

Ryan has just been going to preschool, hanging out with dad in the shop, and going to Staci's when dad is working.  Last week, Ryan helped dad start working on the Dakota that dad is rebuilding for a rock crawler.  Dad sold his Jeep to help pay for the adoption.  He just can't handle not having something to work on so he bought this Dakota for pretty cheap.  He'll just take a few years to rebuild it.

We have been busy working in the yard, getting the fence up, and just regular every day stuff.

Some news on the adoption front is that we are now going to be taking two trips to Ethiopia instead of just one like we initially thought.  Ethiopian courts have changed their process and require the adoptive family to be present at court instead of signing over Power of Attorney to the AWAA in country staff.  Since we will be meeting our daughter prior to court, she will be entering the US on an IR3 visa which allows her to be a US citizen once she touches down on US soil.  Readoption is not necessary but is highly recommended.  Readoption will allow us to get a US birth certificate for her which will be easier for school and sports activities.  Plus if we were to lose her Ethiopian birth certificate, the chances of them finding her Ethiopian birth certificate again would be hard.  The hard part of this is going to be meeting our daughter and playing with her, holding her, feeding her, and bonding with her for a week and then we will have to leave her for 10-12 weeks until we can travel again to pick her up.  This will be HARD! It will probably be the hardest thing we will have ever done.  Please pray for us!

We have been DTE for 3 months now and are anxiously awaiting for the referrals to start flowing.  There have been no referrals in our agency since the end of January.  We are praying that referrals start flowing soon.  I know the in-country staff is working to see how the new requirements will work out and once that is figured out, I believe there will be a flurry of activity.  Until then, pray for the AWAA families.

My heart aches to hold this baby girl more than you can imagine.  I know the Lord is preparing all the details and they will all work out in His timing.  I can't wait to see what His timing is.  Until then, I pray the Lord finds me faithful and honoring of raising His precious daughter along with His sons he has given me!

Waiting and more waiting...

Waiting has taken on a whole new meaning to me.  We haven't been waiting long when compared to other AWAA families.  We have only been waiting three months since submitting our dossier but sometimes it feels like FOREVER and other times it feels like yesterday.

I'm not a patient person anyway, never have been but God and adoption have a way of molding me into one.  Isaiah 64:8, "And yet, O Lord, you are our Father.  We are the clay, and you are the potter.  We all are formed by your hand," brings new meaning to my life as we anxiously wait for a referral.  God is making me into what He wants me to be.  I never imagined I would adopt a child, yet alone from the other side of the world.  I didn't know a single orphan and honestly didn't care about them.  Now don't get me wrong, I love kids, love teaching them and playing with them but that did not involve orphans.  God used Compassion International to change that.  I will never forget standing at the sponsorship table looking at all the precious faces who needed sponsorship.  How do you pick just one? I asked the compassion advocate for a little girl from Guatemala.  He couldn't find one but found one from Ethiopia.  Looking back a year later, I now know why he couldn't find one. God wanted to lead us to Ethiopia.  I can't wait to travel to pick up our daughter and meet my sponsored daughter too.

Ethiopia is on my mind all the time! God keeps putting Ethiopia in my path.  A co-worker of mine hired an employee who spent time in Ethiopia in the Peace Corp.  She has friends in Ethiopia and she is going to teach us some Amharic.  Amazing that this is happening in Southeast New Mexico, I think not.  It is absolutely positively God's hand at work in all the details of this adoption.

Follow along as we wait to bring baby girl home.

Making a difference one child at a time.....

Would you helps us bring our daughter home? Would you like to help an orphan? We are selling t-shirts as a fundraiser.  Shirts are short sleeve chocolate brown with eggshell print for $20 each, sizes small to 2xl.

If you would like to make a difference one child at a time, send me a message or post a comment.  Thanks for helping us.

Roller coaster ride

As I look back on the week, I realize what a roller coaster ride we have been on.  Brent's dad, Max, was put in the hospital on Friday night, (2/5).  He was admitted with pneumonia and was transferred to UNM hospital on 2/7.  Brent's dad is one sick guy.  He has had a heart attack, quadruple bypass surgery, kidney transplant, and is now on dialysis.  He has also lost his vision.  He is very weak.  Because of all these illnesses, he has been in and out of the hospital a lot.  So we thought this would be no different.  We were wrong!!!!

Brent and I took his mom, Carolyn, up to Albuquerque on Monday, 2/8.  There was a storm moving in and she didn't want to drive up there in it.  Brent and I decided that she needed to be up there with his dad so we took her.  We came home on Tuesday praying that the doctors would be able to find out what was wrong.  At the time they were treating him for hospital acquired pneumonia.  He has been being treated for pneumonia since November.  The doctors finally found that he had cryptococcus and meningitis.  It is a strange, rare fungus and it was growing in his lungs. They started treatment and on Thursday, his blood pressure got dangerously low, he was non-responsive and the doctors did not think he was going to make it through the night.  This was between 10 and 11 on Thursday morning.  We left as soon as we could and by the time we were getting into Albuquerque he was doing so much better.  He was eating and was talking.  He still wasn't out of the woods.  He has been doing better but today, he was taking a turn for the worse. They did a spinal tap.  His pressure on his brain was up to 190 and 120 is normal.  They have told us he will be in the hospital from 4 to 6 weeks.  I pray that he heals.  I pray that it happens quickly but I know that all of these things happen in God's timing and God's timing is not our timing.

I hope and pray that he will be well enough until we receive our referral.  I can't wait to tell him about his granddaughter.  I would love for him to live long enough for us to bring her home.  I know that God is in control of this but sometimes it gets very hard.

My in-laws are the best.  They are great grandparents to my kids.  My boys absolutely adore them.  Ryan loves his grandma so much.  It is so hard for him when she is in Albuquerque.  He wants to see her every single day.  He cries for her.  My Garrett is so sweet with his grandpa.  Since grandpa can't see, he makes sure that grandpa doesn't trip or run into things.  They have such a special relationship that I worry about him when grandpa isn't here anymore.

Please pray for my family.  It is hard.  Pray that God gets the glory in all of this and that we all accept whatever He is going to do.  My prayer is that He hurries up too! I know that He is going to do whatever He wants in His timing, but hey it doesn't hurt. :)

Thanks for all the prayers that have already been given on our behalf.  We appreciate it more than you know and can feel them.

Two months.....

So baby girl, we passed our two month waiting anniversary.  We really want to celebrate each month that we wait for you to come home with cake.  We didn't get to have cake this month because we were in Albuquerque.  Your grandpa is very sick and on Thursday (the day we would have celebrated with cake) we had to make a mad dash to Albuquerque.  Your daddy called me at work on Thursday morning to say that the doctors had just told Grandma that they didn't think Grandpa would make it through the night.  I rushed home from work, stopped and checked Garrett out of school, came home and threw our things into the suitcase.  I was so frantic getting things together, that I forgot my make-up!  Although we didn't get to celebrate with cake, we each had a desert from Sweet Tomatoes after dinner that night.  We did celebrate a little just not like we would have had we been home.  We love you so much and can't wait until the exact moment that God has planned for us to meet you. We can't wait to see your face and hear your story.  We can't wait for your story to change.  It will change so much from what you know but know this, God is in control of it all and has you already picked out for our family.  Your brothers can't wait to play with you. They already talk of everything they are going to teach you.  The boys better watch out if they pick on you because you have two big brothers who will defend you to infinity and beyond.  They already do and they don't know you!!!

Counting down until we meet you!!!