I forget.

Ok, all you ladies who have born your babies, and have claimed to have lost some brain cells.... it's not just the birthing of the babies that does it, because, holy cow... I am flittering around like a crazy person. Ok, part of it is nesting, big time, but I am not ALL THERE, if you know what I mean.

Maybe it is the overwhelmingness of motherhood. Like, who thought it was a good idea to put ME in charge of small people? I've taken "classes" so that I can be "certified" so that I can "raise children", yet I know when they get here, I'll be in over my head. Hats off to you all who have gone before and set good examples for me... I'm gonna need ya' later.

Food for Thought

We received this information recently about the children's diets.

"For breakfast the children eat traditional Ethiopian bread and drink hot tea. Lunch can be a variety of things. Our side items are usually steamed spinach, cooked vegetables (beets, carrots, potatoes), or salad (lettuce, tomato, onion, peppers). The main dish is pasta with tomato sauce or meat sauce, rice with veggies and sauce, or injera with a lentil sauce. The children usually have a snack around 5:30 pm, which is bread with honey or fruit. Dinner is eaten around 8:30pm, and they eat the same thing as lunch. "

Timeline

For all the people who asked if anything was new since 3/7, and you received a vague answer from us... we apologize. We did have information, but could not share it because of confidentiality issues concerning minor children. But, OH, did we want to tell people.

3/7 Received call from AWAA regarding 2 children who were a little older than what we were looking for, but would we be interested in seeing a full referral? We did not think we'd be hearing anything so soon since our paperwork had only hit Ethiopia in December. We said sure, send us the info. There was not a lot of info, but enough that we wanted to see a full referral. There were pics attached, and dang, were they beautiful. They told us it would take 4 - 6 weeks to get the full referral.

3/26 We were home for Spring Break when we got the official referral call. We were in shock, since it had only been 3 weeks. We had a week to decide if we'd accept it. We contacted a Dr. who specialized in international adoption medicine, and sent him the docs we'd received.

4/7 We officially accepted the referral. We had lunch with Lee's folks that day, and then started making phone calls. The past few days have been a blur of phone calls, paper work, and, in general, feeling overwhelmed and "scarited". (which is a word coined by a co-worker for our situation: scared+excited.)

So Little and So Much

We really have so little information about the children... some of which we CAN share... some is for the children to share if they want later. We're so overwhelmed that we haven't had time to sort through all the (not much) info and post anything. Thank you all for your patience as we try to disseminate info. I promise there will be more. Holy Moly, but there's a lot to process.

How Can We Afford it?

How can we not. I'm not suggesting you donate there, but do the calculation... it's eye opening.

Good News!

Praise God and pass the Glory Hallelujahs!

Finally, we have adoption news. We have received and accepted a referral for a 9 year old boy and his 6 year old sister. Their names are Habtamu (boy) and Yordanos (girl).

Here is the process as we understand it from this point on…
Our people (America World) will contact the Ethiopian agency to let them know we’ve accepted the referral.
Our power of attorney man in Ethiopia will start setting up court dates and get through most of that paperwork on our behalf.
We have a few documents to update (sigh) here.
When the court/paperwork things are done, we will work with the travel coordinator to obtain visas and schedule and book flights.

Once things start moving… they really go, go, go…

Our Dossier is in Ethiopia!

I'm a dope. I thought Frankfurt, DE was in Delaware. It was Germany. Now it is in Ethiopia waiting to be picked up. Very exciting!

Dec 11, 2007

12:00 AM

Int'l shipment release

ADDIS ABABA ET

12:00 AM

Held at FedEx location for recipient pickup

ADDIS ABABA ET

Package available for pickup at: HIGHER NO 21

Dec 9, 2007

1:09 AM

In transit

FRANKFURT DE

1:09 AM

Arrived at FedEx location

FRANKFURT DE

Dec 8, 2007

6:09 AM

Departed FedEx location

MEMPHIS, TN

1:37 AM

Departed FedEx location

MEMPHIS, TN

12:14 AM

Arrived at FedEx location

MEMPHIS, TN

Dec 7, 2007

9:24 PM

Left origin

HERNDON, VA

4:47 PM

Picked up

HERNDON, VA

2:30 PM

Package data transmitted to FedEx

It's Away! Our dossier is on its way!

Dear Families,

Your authenticated dossier will be mailed to Ethiopia today! The FedEx tracking number is xxxxx. I will also mail your photocopies of the authentication pages today.

As you track your dossier, please keep a couple of things in mind. First of all, do not be worried if the package makes stops in European or other countries for long periods of time. This is normal, and I've seen this happen often. Also, when the FedEx office in Ethiopia receives packages for our in-country staff representative, they call him to pick up the package rather than deliver it to his office. Because the FedEx office is not in close proximity to our staff member's office, it often takes him a few days to pick up the package. If you see notes that the package has arrived in Ethiopia but not been picked up, this is why.

Congratulations on the completion of this portion of your adoption process!

From our adoption coordinator

Hi Chris,

I wanted to let you know that I received your certified birth certificates, marriage certificate and I-171H today. We will authenticate your documents this week and will hopefully mail them to Ethiopia by the end of the week. I will send you an email confirmation when we mail your dossier.

Blessings,

Laurel

Another week, another round of paperwork...

So, you know those State certified documents that needed State certification I was talking about? Well, apparently, as much as *I* can't wrap my mind around it, both Michigan and Illinois have a procedure for creating such documentation. (We just had to make a written request to the Department of Redundancy Department. -JK) Anyway, we received both sets of (Super-Certified?) paperwork in the mail this week, and shipped them to America World that night. Fed-Ex dropped them off on Friday and we're hoping that's the end of the "Upon further review..." phone calls.
I can't remember if we mentioned this before, but the first of our paperwork expires January 1st. However, once our application is accepted in total, we would only have to upkeep a couple documents (like our homestudy,) and most of it won't need to be renewed. So I feel like even if we do need to resubmit something, at least we've got about a month to do it.

So we'll see...