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 :-)

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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.