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!