Merry Christmas!

Hopefully at this time next year there will be two more smiling faces in front of our Christmas tree!

Predictions

We often get asked "So, when do you think you will hear something?" Usually we don't really know what to say, but now we may have an answer. We have spent the last few weeks perusing other Ethiopia adoption blogs. The blogs vary from families who have just started the process to families who completed their adoption more than 3 years ago. We have (or more specifically one of us has) gone through each of the more than 50 blogs we found and recorded the milestone dates. Finally, an average of the time between each milestone was calculated. Based on all of that, the predicted, projected date of our referral is...(drumroll please)...March 23, 2011.

For those who might be interested (although who knows why you would be) here are the milestone averages we came up with: agency application to dossier submission - 149 days; dossier submission to referral - 168 days; referral to court date - 79 days; and court date to home with child - 39 days. The average for the entire adoption process is 428 days. It is highly doubtful that these numbers are in any way statistically accurate or relevant, but finding them gave us something to do while waiting for our referral and now gives us a day to plan toward.

Feel free to comment with your own prediction or best guess as to when the referral date will be. The person closest may win a prize, or at the very least the opportunity to babysit for us one of these days.

Updates

• We are now number 10 on the waiting list. This is a little disappointing, as we have only moved up one spot in a month. This is also expected because the courts in Ethiopia close from August to October, so now that the courts are back open, our agency expects referrals to pick up.

• Current best guess for our first trip: July to October 2011.

• After 3 weeks as a server, Joy quit. No one was surprised. :-)

• Thanks for continuing to pray with us!  Happy Thanksgiving!

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I put my hope.  Psalm 130:5

Beds!

We bought some cutie toddler beds off of craigslist today. This will probably guarantee that we get two infants! 

Let the Madness Begin!

It’s official. We might be crazy. We both got second jobs in anticipation of adoption expenses. There’s also the slight problem of needing a new car, which our neighbor boys kindly reminded us of when they knocked on the door last month to tell us that our car was on fire. They apparently didn’t know the difference between "a little smoke” and “on fire”. All the same, good to know people are looking out for us in case our car ever is on fire.

Anyway, Jon is delivering pizza for Papa John's and Joy is a server at Genghis Grill. We drew a thermometer to color in as we earn tips. Working towards a goal is more our thing, unlike some of our other blogger friends who seem to enjoy deadlines. :-) We may have been a little ambitious when we made the thermometer, though.  We got it out to color it for the first time tonight and realized we hadn’t even made it up to the first notch. Alas, still freezing.

I will blame this crazy schedule on Dave Ramsey and his debt free propaganda.

National Adoption Month

It is hard to believe that today is already the first of November. Today is also the start of National Adoption Month. If you have never taken the time before, please sit down sometime this month and consider what you would be willing to do to "look after orphans...in their distress" (James 1:27).

Just Facts - Traditions and Celebrations

There hasn't been much to report lately, as you may have guessed by the lack of recent posts. So, we have decided to once again regale you with some facts that you could probably find for yourself through a simple google search. But seriously, who would want to do that when we are telling you everything right here? After the first installment of "Interesting Facts", no one is under the illusion that the facts are THAT interesting. The segment has thus been downgraded to "Just Facts", and today we will be focusing on a few Ethiopian traditions and celebrations.

Ethiopians love to celebrate, whether important events in their history, major landmarks in the religious calendar, or simply special family days. Best clothes are worn, food and drink are plentiful, musicians play, and people dance and sing. There are a number of major celebrations, several of which are state holidays as well. Some of these include: Genna [Ethiopian Christmas: birth of Christ] on January 7; Timkat [Ethiopian Epiphany: baptism of Christ] on January 19; Adwa Day [commemorates the victory over Italy in 1896] on March 2; Siklet [Good Friday] and Fasika [Easter] in April; International Labor Day on May 1; Patriots' Victory Day [celebrates the end of Italian occupation in 1941] on May 5; Derg Downfall Day (or National Day) [celebrates the downfall of the Derg, a communist military dictatorship, in 1991] on May 28; Buhe [the transfiguration of Christ] on August 21; Enkutatash [Ethiopian New Year] on September 11; and Meskel [finding of the true cross of Christ] on September 27.

With the numerous holidays observed by Ethiopians, one might think that birthdays would also be a time of great celebration. That does not seem to be the case. Birthdays tend to be relatively small events, if they are celebrated at all. In many of the rural areas, where families are less likely to adhere closely to dates and times, a birth might be remembered simply based on the season or time of year without an exact date. However, with the growing influence of western culture, particularly in urban areas, people are becoming more likely to celebrate in a western style with cakes, candles, and gifts.

And finally, here is an interesting Ethiopian tradition. When a child loses a tooth, they will throw it onto the roof and recite a poem about a bird coming to take it away. If a bird picks it up, it means a new, strong tooth will take its place. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find much more information about the tradition or the poem, but we did run across this book - Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions from Around the World. I don't think it mentions Ethiopia specifically, but apparently several other countries have the same tradition. So, if one day you happen to see us throwing a tooth onto the roof, please understand that we are following a tradition, not just being weird.

Fun New Things to Learn

Here is a super cute blog that we found called Happy Girl Hair.

In other fun news, all of our paperwork is now somewhere in Africa!  Good job, Assistant Stork!

Out of Our Hands

Today is the day that the paperwork portion of the adoption process is finally over. We just sent our completed dossier to a courier service in Washington DC. It is cleverly named The Assistant Stork because they help adoptive families by delivering adoption paperwork to various places in DC. They will first take our dossier to the State Department and wait while each document is authenticated. Then they will drop off the dossier at the Ethiopian Embassy so that everything can be authenticated again. I guess that can take a couple of days, depending on how backed up things are at the Embassy. Once all of that is done, they will send the dossier to our agency, and from there it will be sent off to Ethiopia.

Having the dossier submitted means that we will officially be on the waiting list to receive our referral. Right now, it looks like we will be at #11 for our agency. Several of the families ahead of us on the list want a child of a specific gender (we are open to either gender) and some of them are requesting children in a different age range (ours is 0-3). Most are only adopting one child, but at least three families are adopting two. Because of all these factors, it is hard to guess when we can expect a referral. We are just glad to have all of the paperwork behind us. And now we wait.

Making Progress

Our paperwork is currently being authenticated in Austin! Hopefully we will have it back sometime next week. After that, it will be time to send it off with a courier to go to D.C. and then to Africa! It is almost officially out of our hands. The internet (and our adoption agency) tell us from the time we send off our dossier to the time we are home with kids is 6 to 16 months. This seems really soon (kids in March?!?!) or really far away (we still have over a year to wait!?!?). Hopefully it will be somewhere in the middle. 

In other news, we have started name hunting. If you have any good ideas, post 'em!

Notarizing Nightmare

You wouldn't think getting things notarized would be that big of a deal. Especially when it is at the bank where you have your money...a place where you've even gotten things notarized in the past. And you would be wrong. It turns out that our bank has some kind of "policy" that prohibits them from notarizing personal documents. But isn't pretty much anything anyone would ever get notarized personal, at least to that person. Maybe it was just a woman on a power trip, but needless to say, if they didn't give us such a good interest rate, I think we would be moving our money elsewhere.

And the first place we would think about moving it is to the bank where we DID get our documents notarized. Turns out the notary there didn't think notarizing our 8 documents was a big deal. She was even excited for us and the fact that we are adopting. And we got it all taken care of Saturday morning, allowing us to have a relaxing weekend without worrying where we were going to find a nice notary.

So the bad news is that some people at our bank aren't very helpful. But the good news is that there are other nice people willing to notarize our documents. We just sent off copies of everything, all 33 pages of our dossier, to our agency for them to review. Once we get their okay, we will just need to get 2 of the documents certified at the Texas Secretary of State office in Austin, and then the whole thing will be off to Washington D.C. and then Ethiopia. We are one step closer.

31 out of 33...almost there!

After spreading out all our paperwork on the living room floor yesterday, it looks like we are only missing 2 of the 33 papers required for our dossier! After we get those, it will be off to the bank for one more mass notary signing session. Then we will get our paperwork authenticated and sealed and sent with a courier service to DC. After that, it is sent to Ethiopia for translation and we will begin waiting for Ethiopian approval and then our referral. We have heard that once the dossier is submitted, it will be anywhere from 6 to 16 months until we are home with our children. Thanks for praying with us!

Approved!

We had just been mulling over the next installment of "Interesting Facts", but it looks like you are in luck as we have some MUCH more exciting news. Today we got the following in the mail: "It has been determined that you are able to furnish proper care to an orphan(s)." Our Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition has been approved by the US Citizenship and Imigration Services! Next step, compile the documents for our dossier and keep this train a-rollin'.

Monday Morning Excitement

Well, good news...the fingerprinting is officially over. It went pretty well. Good, not great, as some might say. Here's the story. On Friday afternoon, I (Jon) went to the assigned location to have my biometrics (just a fancy word for fingerprints) taken. The office was empty, so I had no wait. The friendly fingerprint guy filled out my paperwork, scanned my fingers on the fingerprint machine, had me fill out a comment card about how my experience had been, and I was done. Ten minutes, tops. No problems whatsoever.

Ok, fast forward to Monday morning. I'm at work, sitting at my desk, checking my email, messing with a spreadsheet...the usual Monday morning stuff. And I get a phone call from my lovely wife.

"Hey, how did your fingerprinting go this morning?"
"Baby! I passed out!"
"You what??? You passed out??? At the fingerprint place???"
"Yup."

It turns out that if you have fingerprints that are hard for the machine to read, you might be standing there for a while. After the friendly fingerprint guy has no luck, then the friendly fingerprint gal gets to try (apparently she is better at it). And if you lock your knees while standing at the fingerprint machine for an extended period of time, you will, in fact, pass out. Fortunately, the friendly fingerprint folks are quick on their feet and can catch a suddenly unconcious individual before they even hit the floor.

After a few more tries (and remembering not to lock her knees), Joy's fingerprints were successfully captured without further incident. I'm guessing that the fingerprint folks, not to mention the waiting room full of people, probably had a pretty good story to tell when they got home. Who would've expected such an exciting Monday morning?

Fingerprint Dates!

Just when we thought it was time for "interesting facts", we have some real news! In the mail today we got a few letters from USCIS...one stating they received our application for an orphan visa, one for Jon with a fingerprinting date, and one for Joy with a fingerprinting date. We are pretty excited because this is about 3 weeks sooner than we expected! Jon is getting fingerprinted on July 30th at 3:00 and Joy on August 2nd at 8:00 (apparently, failure to show means "your application will be considered abandoned"). Yeesh...what a bunch of sticklers.

We are really thankful to hear back so soon. Keep praying the rest of the process is just as quick!

Interesting Facts #1 - Addis Ababa

There isn't really anything new on the adoption front. We are still waiting to hear back from the USCIS about when we need to get fingerprinted. While we wait, we are continuing to get paperwork together that we will submit for our dossier once we have USCIS approval. We are also "fixin' to" (as they say here in Texas) apply for several adoption grants.

But since there isn't much to report, we thought we would start a series of posts to provide you with some "interesting" facts, primarily about Ethiopia or adoption. We will warn you that what we (or perhaps just one of us) might think is interesting you may instead find dull and boring. Consider that our disclaimer and feel free to stop reading at this point.

For those of you still reading, thanks! Today we will be enlightening you with facts about Ethiopia's capital city. Addis Ababa means "New Flower" and is the largest city in the country with 3 to 4 million people. The city was founded in 1886 by Emperor Menelik II. It is located in the foothills of Mount Entoto at an elevation of 7,874 feet. Because of its high altitude and proximity to the equator, the temperatures are very constant from month to month. The average monthly highs range from 69 to 77 degrees and lows range from 46 to 54 degrees.

Addis Ababa has several sister cities around the world, including Beijing, China; Beersheba, Israel; and San Francisco, California. Some tourist sites of interest include the the National Museum, Africa Hall, the National Palace, Menelik Mausoleum, the National Library, Trinity Cathedral, and Mercato (one of the largest outdoor markets in the world), among many other interesting attractions. Hopefully we will be able to visit some of these attractions when we are in the country. After that we should be able to offer better suggestions of places to see and whatnot. For now we will just have to base everything on what we can find on the ever-reliable world wide web.

Well, we hope that you have learned something today (and maybe even found it interesting). Be on the lookout for more "interesting" facts coming soon!

USCIS Paperwork Sent!

Yay! We have sent in our paper work to the citizenship and immigration services department!

A Bit of News

Last week we were able to try out a different Ethiopian restaurant with some friends in Kansas City. The food was pretty similar to the one in Dallas, but the atmosphere wasn't quite the same. We still enjoyed it though. Now that we have had the food a couple of times we should probably try making some of it ourselves, don't ya think? We'll see how that goes.

We had a bit of good news today. Almost 3 weeks after our home visit, the home study report is in the mail. So, we should have everything ready to send off to USCIS sometime next week. Yay!

Home Study Completed

On Saturday, our social worker from Dallas came to meet us and interview us for the home visit portion of the home study. It went great! First, she interviewed both of us together with questions about our philosophy on parenting, on discipline, and about our home life. Then she interviewed us each seperately and asked questions about our immediate family and what it was like for us growing up. It all went very smoothly, and we were finished with everything in less than 2 hours. We think she will be a great ally and resource for us through the adoption process.

One of the things that we talked about was some of the common health problems that she has seen in her experience with kids adopted from Ethiopia. She said we could pretty much expect our kids to have parasites and scabies, but attachment disorders, institutionalization effects, and fetal alcohol syndrome are not very common in kids from Ethiopia, which is great to hear. It will take about two weeks for us to receive her written report. Once we have that, we can submit our paperwork for USCIS approval to adopt. Please join us in praying that the approval process will be speedy.

We had a great weekend with being able to complete this final part of our home study as well as having our friends from Colorado come and visit us. They brought homemade Ethiopia-shaped sugar cookies and they were delicious! Fortunately she took a picture when she was making them because we had eaten most of them before we even thought about it...that is how good they were. Thanks friends!

That is a pretty good resemblance, don't you think?

Your Questions Answered

Will we travel to get our baby/babies?

Yes, we will actually make two trips to Ethiopia. The first trip will be to go to court in Ethiopia to gain legal custody. The second trip will be to take our little ones to the US Embassy for visas and then bring them home! We don't really know how long it will be between the first and second trip. Ethiopia recently changed it's laws so that two trips are now required, and no one is sure yet how long the time between will be.

Boy or girl?

We have no preference on the gender, so we have no idea! Maybe one of each?!?

How old does "baby" mean?

On our application we said that we would be happy with the age range of infant to 3 years old. It is completely possible that our kids aren't even born yet!

Have we thought about names?

We are not sure on names. Right now we are thinking we would give them a first name and maybe keep their Ethiopian name for a middle name or even pick out a different Ethiopian name. Or maybe we will stick with giving them family names like Hans or Fritz :-)

____________________________________________________

If you have any more questions, just let us know and we'll get them answered.

Now here is some fun news...our good friend Pearl in Colorado made cookies in the shape of Ethiopia and will be visiting us today with her boys to personally deliver them! We may post pictures (if we don't eat them all first).

A second piece of fun news...our home visit is tomorrow! We'll let you know how it goes.

Our First Ethiopian Meal!

We spent Memorial Day weekend with some friends in Dallas. While we were there, we decided that it would be a great opportunity to sample some authentic Ethiopian cuisine.

Pretty much everything was served with injera, a spongy, crepe-like bread that is a staple of most Ethiopian meals.

We tried several appetizers including kitfo, which is ground tenderloin beef tartar with exotic spices and butter rolled in injera.

We also tried several different entree combination plates. This is the vegetarian plate and includes missir wott (pureed lentils), shiro (pureed yellow peas), yataklet alitcha (cabbage, potatoes & carrots), and gomen (sauteed spinach and onions) all on a large piece of injera.

We finished the meal with a cup of Ethiopian coffee. What a great weekend and great meal with friends!

Summer School?

School's out for summer! So why are we still taking classes? I guess they are more trainings than classes. And there are no tests. We are just doing a few hours of online courses required by our adoption agency. The topics range from Child Attachment to Race and Culture to Discipline and are geared toward preparing us for some of the issues that may arise after the adoption is completed. So far they have been interesting and got us thinking about some things that we may not have otherwise. I guess that is the point. They actually go pretty fast. Only a few more evenings of training and then we can get back to the paperwork. But hooray for summer!

Home Study Time!

We are well on our way with the first of three big paperwork phases…the home study. The home study is done to educate and prepare, as well as evaluate, the adoptive family. A social worker from Dallas is scheduled to come on Saturday, June 5th to spend three hours getting to know us. After her visit, it should take about two weeks for her to complete the home study report. Then we can move on to the next step.

We are already getting paper work together for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), but we’ll need a notarized copy of the home study to send in with that so we have to wait until it is finished before proceeding. Our goal is to have everything for the second phase mailed by the 4th of July. Supposedly USCIS approval can take one to six months, so we are already praying it will be closer to the one month side.

The final phase will be for us to complete the dossier (pronounced doss-see-ay), which contains the official papers that get sent to Ethiopia, translated, and then given to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) within the government. The dossier includes, among other things, both a notarized copy of the home study as well as the forms from the USCIS, which explains why it is the last step.

We are hoping to get everything on our end finished as quickly as possible. We’ll keep you posted!

Need Notary...Will Pay

We have definitely begun. We are buried in paperwork. A notarized letter from the police station? A notarized letter from our bosses? Okay, these are a little out there, but at least they are understandable. The one that is really getting us is that we need a notarized letter from our doctor. The instructions explicitly say, if your doctor's office doesn't have a notary, you need to bring your own to the appointment. BYON? Not sure we have built up that kind of relationship with Kay at Lubbock National Bank yet.

We've Finally Started!

Welcome to Our Ethiopia Adoption blog. As you may or may not know, adoption is something that we have been contemplating for quite a while. Ever since the question "What do you think about adoption?" was posed on our first date on October 1, 2003 (who brings that up on a first date, anyway?), we have been thinking about adoption. Since then, God has continued to strengthen our mutual desire to adopt. And now, 6 1/2 years later, we finally feel like the time is right to get started growing our family through adoption.

The first step was to decide where we wanted to adopt from. We have always had a desire for international adoption, so after much research and prayer we chose to adopt from Ethiopia. We picked Ethiopia for several reasons. First, it was a country where we met the minimum age and income requirements. Second, it was a country that met our criteria for being able to adopt an infant. We are also hoping to adopt more than one child, and this is a country that would allow us to. We are super excited to be adopting from Ethiopia!

The second step was to choose an agency. After much more research and prayer, we made the decision to go with Adoption Associates, Inc., based in Michigan. Through our online research and a phone question session, we determined that the folks there seemed to be very knowledgeable and experienced with Ethiopian adoption as well as having enough personnel to give our case the necessary attention. We mailed off our formal application on Tuesday, May 11, and the estimated timeline is anywhere from 12 to 18 months, so the countdown is on.

Thanks for visiting our blog! We are excited to have you share this journey with us!