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!

One Week!

It is hard to believe that one week from today we will be in the air and on our way to meet our boys. We have kept pretty busy the last few weeks putting together a picture book for each of the boys, getting gifts for their caretakers, collecting our final round of notarized documents, gathering as much formula as we can to donate to the orphanages, and getting immunizations and prescriptions for yellow fever, typhoid, and malaria. Now comes the task of packing everything (and trying to stay under the 50 pound weight limit). We are also looking forward to getting out of this triple-digit Texas heat and enjoying the moderate 50's, 60's and 70's of the Ethiopian rainy season. After spending a week there with our boys, I'm not sure we'll want to come back!

We're Going To Ethiopia!

We got the call today! Well, email actually (it is Saturday after all). We are currently on vacation visiting family in Washington DC and had just finished having dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, of all places. I checked our email on my iPhone after we left and as soon as I mentioned it Joy started screaming (and hasn't stopped yet)!!!

We don't have all the details yet, but we do know that our court date will be July 21. That means that this time next month we will be in Ethiopia meeting our kids for the first time! We expect a call from our agency on Monday to give us more information. Looks like we will have a lot to get done in the next month, but I can't think of a better Father's Day present.

Thank You!

We are so grateful for having such wonderful friends and family members in our lives! The flood of loving phone calls, emails, facebook messages, and blog comments have made this awesome experience even more unforgettable. Thanks to everyone (especially to those of you who started screaming when you found out)!

Our paperwork was submitted to Ethiopian courts yesterday, so our next stage of waiting has officially begun! In 4 to 8 weeks we should have an assigned court date. We are praying for a court date before the court closure.