New Back Yard Art

Trip to the North

The landscape changed quickly as we left the capital.  Our elevation climbed as we saw mountains and beautiful scenery. 

Here is what we would think of as a scenic overlook in the states.  We stopped to see something described to us as the “Ethiopian Grand Canyon”.  It was very beautiful, but as you can see we were quickly ambushed by school-aged children wanting to sell us baskets.  They had great English and were proud to point out where they went to school, and told us that they were trying to raise money for school supplies this coming year.  We all bought a few baskets, but something tells me that they wanted to sell us more!  J 

We met so many kids in the north that were simply asking us for pens.  They shared that they needed to get ready for school in September, so rather than begging for money or candy, they were asking for pens.  It broke this teacher’s heart when our van full of 7 Americans could only scrounge up two or three pens from our backpacks.  I wish I would have known of this need before traveling! 

Houses were also quite a bit different outside of the city.
   

We didn’t see any fences; rather people were always out with livestock, including some very young kids. 

We began our descent from around 10,000 feet (thanks GPS!) to see more farmland, lots of monkeys, and our destination:  the Nile.

We got to walk over an old bridge and saw lots of monkeys down by the water.  I’m not sure if they were washing, playing, or drinking, but it was neat to see “wild life”.  Our Ethiopian friends were about as impressed as Americans would be in a park full of squirrels.   

Just looking at these pictures makes me miss the cool weather, the beautiful scenery, and most of all our sweet boys.

In an adoption related update, all our boys’ paperwork will be submitted to the Embassy tomorrow (August 11^th), so I’m going to guess that we will be given our travel dates in a week(ish)!

Falling in Love with Ethiopia

After a good night sleep we headed up to the fifth floor for breakfast.  They had this great breakfast buffet with fresh omelets and a wonderful balcony with an amazing view.  We even saw some wild green parrots on the balcony!

We then met up with two other families to take a trip to the north. This was our first foray into the city during the day and we began to get to know Ethiopia!  We saw fruit stands, shops everywhere, crazy construction, livestock in the road, congested traffic, and people, people, people!   

This post was meant to be about our trip to the north, but there were so many sights just leaving the city, that I couldn’t resist!

On Our Way

It all started at the Dallas airport...2 eager travelers and 5 suitcases, none of which were over 50 lbs! This was quite an accomplishment considering how much formula and baby food we ended up bringing. As our trip was extended 5 days in country, we could have used a little more space for some extra clothes! Jon later said that we should have taken a picture of ourselves every morning so we would know what day it was by what we were wearing when we looked back at the pictures. This of course was a joke, because by that time we had worn so much of our clothes multiple times. :)

The layover in Frankfurt was not as exciting as we had hoped.  We didn’t really get to look around much as the airport was divided into several different terminals with security checks between each and we could only get to an area that included our gate, as well as a few others, plus a McDonalds, a couple of restaurants, and some duty free shops.  My ever-intrepid geocacher was bummed because we could not get to terminal A, which had a geocache at one of the gates.  If we fly Lufthansa next time, maybe we’ll have better luck. 

After cleaning up a little, walking around, and a quick nap, it was time to board!   
  

After 24 hours or so of travel, we had made it!  We navigated our way through the airport, got our visas, changed some dollars into birr, found our driver, and collected our luggage.  Now on to the hotel for a good nights sleep!

Our Boys!

 Ok, so we have been home for a week.  Surely we are rested up and back to normal enough to post, right?  Well, here are some pictures of our sweet boys. 

A few days of stress and court craziness was definitely worth it in the end because now they are officially ours (so that means we get to post pictures and more importantly, go back for them in a month)!  

On a side note, I dreamt last night that we were actually adopting 4 kids at once.  I was pretty much yelling the entire dream about how crazy we were. 

It Is Official!

Today was our best day in Ethiopia...today is the day we became parents! The last piece of paperwork we had been waiting for arrived at court on Monday and we saw the judge today. It was actually a bit anti-climactic, but after answering a few questions it was still great to hear her say "The contract is approved. They are yours."

Although we had a couple of stressful days, in the end it will be totally worth it. Since we were able to get our MOWYCA letter (which is what has been slowing adoptive families down lately) we will be able to come back and get the boys to bring them home probably in late August or early September instead of in October or November. Our only wait now is for the US Embassy in Ethiopia to schedule an appointment for us to get their passports and visas. God has been so good to us!

Thanks so much for your prayers and support. We will share photos as soon as we get back to a good internet connection and look through the 2,500+ that we've taken!

Thanks

Thanks so much for all of the prayers and comments. Today was much better. Things still aren't completely taken care of, but this is a good start. We received a recommendation letter from a doctor here which we took to the Ministry of Women, Youth, and Children's Affairs in the hopes of hurrying along their letter to the court so that the judge will see us. After waiting for for the person in charge at the MOWYCA office, we were told that they would write the letter, but not until Monday.

This is good news, but will require us to change our flight to stay a few more days here in Ethiopia. Please continue to pray that the letter will actually be sent on Monday, that the judge will agree to see us, and that we will pass. Once all that happens,the children will officially be ours. We will need to return for our US Embassy appointment in a month or so, but that time we will be able to bring them both back with us. Thanks again for your continued prayers. We look forward to sharing pictures of our boys soon.

First Bad Day in Ethiopia

We are sorry to be posting about something negative since our trip up until now has been nothing less than amazing. We will have more about that later, but right now we would really appreciate your prayers.

Today started on an exciting note as we headed to court to legally be granted custody of the children. We met a number of other adoptive families, but as the morning wore on and the waiting room full of people slowly emptied we started to think there might be a problem. It turns out there was. For some reason, the judge refused to see us. We were told that our adoption file is currently closed and will not reopen until we receive our MOWYCA letter. For the past few months, many families have successfully passed court without the letter and have received it a month or two later. Apparently the government has changed their policy without warning and we are the first to experience this.

We are still trying to pull some strings and maybe get the letter hurried along, but even that is looking a bit unlikely. We are scheduled to fly back on Saturday, but we may need to extend our stay in order to go to court next week. Unfortunately, we may just have to return home without going to court and come back after the court has received the MOWYCA letter, which may not be for a couple of months still. Please pray for a successful day tomorrow as we try to get the letter that we need. Thanks.

We Made It

After many hours in the air we have safely arrived in Addis Ababa. We had no problems at all with our connecting flight, getting visas, changing money, or navigating 2 foreign airports. All of our luggage arrived safely as well. The only thing I can think of that went wrong is when we got to our hotel, the room they gave us hadn't been cleaned since the previous guests left. But they simply moved us to another room, so no problems there. We do have wireless Internet here at our hotel, but out laptop has malfunctioned and will connect to the network but not to the Internet. If someone has a suggestion for fixing that, drop us a comment. Otherwise we will do a couple of short posts using my iPhone and save the pictures and other details until we get back. Thanks for your prayers. A few hours of sleep and then a whole new adventure tomorrow!

Nesting!

Despite having an extensive to-do list before we leave, I thought it would be a good idea to start some projects this week.  I was trying to make the days so full, that they would zoom by.  It’s sort of working…

My parents (soon to be grandparents!!) came down for the action. 

Thanks to my wonderful husband, who hung up the beadboard and the gutter/book ledge.  It turned out great!