Slight Change of Plans....(for now)

Today Joel and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary-wow I can't believe how time flies! Luckily Joel is off on Thursdays, so I took off as well-we had a fun day together-mostly eating:-)
Now onto other news, which most of you already know- I am almost 2 months pregnant!!!!!! I found out 2 weeks ago-the news was very shocking,exciting,etc. but also broke our hearts for our Ethiopian adoption-which will have to be delayed. We will remain at #1 on the waiting list to make sure everything progresses okay with our pregnancy. Referrals are going to those on the list behind us. We would have recieved our referral on the 29th. That was the hardest day I can remember having in a long time! I find comfort in the fact that the baby boy is going to another loving family who desperately wants him. God is always right on time though! I can't imagine having recieved a referral and then finding out I was pregnant. I know this child is a miracle from God as well. The Drs. told us that we would probably never be able to get pregnant "naturally". Therefore, it was a complete shock to us when we found out! And yes I can't even tell you the number of times we've heard "adopting is the quickest way to get pregnant!" In reality statistics show that only about 3to 5% of those with fertility issues that are adopting get pregnant during or after the process.
So far everything is going well-I had my first ultrasound on the 22nd. The baby is due on Valentines day-one week before my birthday! They were able to see the babies heartbeat, which the Dr. said greatly lowers my chances of having a miscarriage! Luckily I haven't had any morning sickness yet, although I know it is still early.
I guess our blog will be about my pregnancy now. We plan to hopefully get back on the waiting list after our baby is a little older.
Please continue to keep us in our prayers!!

CAN U BELIEVE IT??

Most of you probably already know that we moved up the list FOUR spots yesterday and are now #1 !!!!!! Everyone wants to know what happens now so I'll try to explain the best I can:
Any day now our caseworker will call us and say they have a baby boy referral for us! She will email us pictures, medical info., etc. on the baby and we make the decision if we would like to officially accept the referral!
After we officially accept the referral we wait to be assigned a court date. A representative who lives in Ethiopia and works with our agency will go to court on that day to represent us. Lots of things have to be in place for us to pass court. If we do pass, the baby will officially be ours in the eyes of Ethiopia!!!
Then we wait to be assigned an embassy date, which is when we will be allowed to travel to Ethiopia to pick up our precious baby boy!!
Therefore, the waiting is far from over but we are getting sooo much closer:-)

Everyone pray that everything continues to move quickly and smoothly as it has so far. There is so much that is out of our control so we must leave everything in the hands of God. I know His timing is perfect. Time and time again throughout this process He has shown me His love for us. Just yesterday I was praying all day for God to give me some comfort and reassurance that we are following the path He has laid for us. Then I find out we had moved up to #1! List movement RARELY occurs that rapidly. I am in awe of His love for me and His faithfulness!

#5

We moved up to #5 today:-) I get so excited each time we move up the list. As excited as I get each time we move I'll probably pass out when it comes time for us to get a referral:)
The only bad thing about the place we are in right now is that it's possible we could get a referral right before the courts close in Ethiopia in August and September. This means we would have a much longer wait to go to court than what is "normal". Referrals will still be going out while the courts are closed but no cases will be heard in court, obviously. Therefore, the courts we be backed up when they reopen in October. For instance, if we get a referral in June or July we probably won't get a court date until mid October or later. If we passed court the first time we would probably travel sometime in Nov. or Dec. This obviously means our baby will be at least 4-6 months older before we get to bring him home. From talking with other families waiting on court dates the wait is hard enough without any delays. I just hope and pray we get a referral by the end of summer-it would be soooooooo awesome to have our baby home by Christmas!!!
Anyway, I have included some photos of my little garden and some of our flowers. The flowers that are flourishing were planted by my grandma last year who has the greenest thumb I've ever seen:) I found the daisies growing wild in the backyard.







Photos of my family.

Sister-in-Laws Wedding

Just wanted to let everyone know we are now at #6! We've made it halfway from where we started just over 2 months ago!

Do Something Now

This is a song my mom used to play and sing when I was about 5 or 6 years old. For years I have thought about the lyrics of this song but had no idea what it was called-my mom couldn't even remember playing it. I still remember how I felt everytime I heard it. When Joel and I started discussing adoption and what countries to consider these lyrics ("down in Ethiopia, the children are crying") kept coming to my mind even though I hadn't heard the song in probably 20 years.
Warning-this video is very 80's :)

Guess what came in the mail today??

Joel called me on his cell phone as he was leaving for work and said there is something in the mail box you might want to see. He had to go on and leave because he was running late (as usual:)) but I stayed on the phone with him. As soon as I saw the envelope from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services I knew what it was. I didn't want to open it outside because it was raining (like it has been for the past week:() so I started running into the house and then I fell - and the letter and my phone went flying through the air.
Miraculously the letter was unharmed:)
Anyway, it says "It has been determined that you are able to furnish proper care to an orphans or orphans as defined by section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act." It also says that "your advance processing applicaton has been forwarded to the American Consulate or Embassy at : Addis Ababa Ethiopia via the national visa center."
So exciting!!! Now if we could just move up another spot (or 7) on the list Mothers Day wouldn't be so bad:D

I 171h

We haven't moved up the list any in 2 weeks. I had a feeling this would happen since we moved so quick in the beginning. But who knows it could start moving rapidly again. Good things have been happening for other families with our agency-several passed court this week and some received an embassy date (to travel).
Speaking of traveling Joel applied for his passport last week. I was going to as well but can't find my birth certificate. I have ordered 3 and can't remember where I put them! I guess I'll apply as soon as I find them or order yet another one. They said it takes about 5 or 6 weeks to get a passport back so we should be ok unless things start to move SUPER fast.
Our home study agency called Thursday and said US Immigration has our application ready for approval but they want a statement from the vet saying that our dogs are good tempered and would be safe around children (don't worry Rebecca the vets never seen NayNay around you LOL). The vet says she will fax the statement to me on Monday so hopefully our approval will be complete very soon.
We're still hopefull to get a referral by this summer. Unfortunately, the Ethiopian courts close in August and September so I'm not real sure but this could possibly put a delay on things. It's all in God's perfect timing!! Below is a few pictures of our beautiful little neice Katie-hopefully she will have her very first cousin REALLY soon:)

Seventh Heaven

We officially moved up to #7 on the baby boy wait list! A family accepted their referral of twin two month old boys-congrats Outmans!! We are still patiently waiting for our I 171h form-I called to check the status today and noone could help me except to say we could go to the office in Louisville and ask -thats only a 3 hour drive just to ask a question ;( Guess we'll just wait a little longer-maybe we can stop by the office when we go to Louisville for my sister-in-laws wedding in May if we haven't heard anything yet. Things will probably slow down for a while as far as referrals go but I pray that they don't. We are so blessed to have moved up 5 spots in a little over a month!! God is awesome!!!
Everyone continue to pray that referrals continue to come quickly, that other families waiting pass their court dates the first time and that those getting ready to travel have safe, wonderful trips!

Moving on Up

This week was a very exciting week for our agency-several people passed court, others received referrals and some received court and travel dates. As for us we moved up to the #10 spot for a boy!! That's a total of 2 spots in a little over 3 weeks!! At this rate we could possibly have a referral by this summer!!
Here's a couple more things I've been working on this week for people.

Waiting

Nothing new and exciting happening. We are just patiently waiting-still at #11. Unfortunately no referrals came in this week:( I have been a lot less stressed the past couple weeks since our paperwork has been finished. I am anxious to receive our approval to bring Baby Sanford to the US(approval of our application for citizenship and fingerprints we had done in Louisville). Hopefully the coming week will be filled with lots of good news for families who are waiting to receive referrals, court dates, and travel dates-it seems the waiting never ends! I am still working on products for my new web store and a local boutique also wants to display some of my stuff so I am pretty excited about that:) I can't wait to start on Baby Sanfords room but that won't be happening for a while! I love decorating though so I have tons of ideas going through my mind of what I want it to look like. The pics are some of the things I've been working on for the boutique.

What Happens Now??

Everyone keeps wanting to know what happens next and exactly when we will have our baby home. I know it is all very confusing to those who haven't been through the adoption process. That is one reason I am so happy to have found such a great online group of people through our agency that are there to give advice and support. One family through our agency posted a list about what happens after you have completed paperwork and are on THE LIST. With her permission I copied (and revised a little for our time line) her list to help everyone understand:


1. After being added to list with our agency we wait until we are #1 on the list (moves as other families ahead of us receive/accept their referrals). Our agency works with 2 (I think) orphanages in Ethiopia-which means as children come into those orphanages they are referred out to waiting families.
2. Receive referral. A referral is when our agency calls to tell us that they have a specific child for us. We receive a picture or two and some limited medical information like height and weight, a blood workup and test results for major diseases. We'll also receive any background information that is available.
3. WE PRAISE THE LORD AND THEN FREAK OUT!
4. We have a doctor look over medical records.
5. We formally accept the referral.
6. Our Dossier (enormous stack of all paperwork revealing our life story and then some) is then translated and brought to MOWA (the Ministry of Women's Affairs) along with the child's dossier and they officially match us and give us a court date, probably 2 months out or so.
7. Wait and pray to pass the first time. Its very common not to pass court for various reasons your first time.
8. If we do not pass, a new date is given about 1 month out.
9. If we do pass court - this is when the child legally becomes ours and they schedule an appointment at the Embassy in Addis Ababa. We travel around this date.
10. Make travel plans, go buy baby boy clothes, pack and....
11. Go get our son!!!


So as you can see there is no way to know for sure exactly when we will have our baby/babies home as it depends on many factors. All we can do is wait and pray for things to go smoothly and quickly!

Number 11

It is only our 2nd day on THE LIST but we have moved up one spot!! We are now #11! I talked to our IAN worker today and she said that we would have started at #11 but someone elses paperwork arrived just before ours! God knows exactly which baby/babies will be ours and he is timing everything just right-that is why we had to go to Frankfort twice.
"A Man's Mind Plans his way but the Lord Directs His Steps"

Let the Wait begin!

We are now officially on the wait lists!!!!
We are #12 for a baby boy and #9 for siblings.

Our dossier will be reviewed on Wednesday to make sure everything is correct. Please everyone pray that we don't have to redo anything!!

One More Tiny Little Step

Nothing major to report but we did get an email from our placement agency worker saying that they have reviewed our home study and it looks great! I forwarded the email to our home study agency and social worker so they can get our original finalized and ready to be sent off with our dossier! Hopefully we can have our names on THE LIST by next week-just in time for my birthday next Saturday-what a great birthday gift this would be!
More good news from the placement agency online group-someone received a referral for a 1 month old baby girl! Our worker says there are 10 people on the baby boy list but some of them are on more than one list (girl, sibling, etc.). Like my Dad says God knows which baby He created for us and we will get him no matter what number we are on the list or how long it takes!

Update on Progress

So we finally got all of our paperwork ready for certification except for our home study. The people we had notarize all of our forms happen to have their notary paperwork bonded in different counties. This means to have everything certified at county level we have to go to 4 different counties. So since Joel was off work yesterday we drove to 3 counties and got all of our paperwork certified. Now we just have to wait until our home study is notarized and certified by our local agency then we can take all the paperwork to Frankfort to be certified at state level. The bad thing about this is it costs $5 at county level for each page as well as $5 per page at state level and as you can see by the picture there are plenty of pages! I just hope and pray everything is done completely correct and nothing has to be redone!

Fifi's haircut

As everyone knows adopting is not cheap so we are trying to save money where we can. So today I decide to groom (bathe, haircut, blow-dry)FiFi at home since it's hard to pay more for your dogs haircut than for your own. Let's just say she's not too happy with me right now and we may need to look into cutting back in other areas:)

Remorse

This video makes me remorseful for ever complaining. Nothing I have ever experienced in my life even compares to the hurt these children must feel. It is within my power to keep one child from experiencing this kind of life and no matter how many people question our decision or make fun of us we will never be regretful.

Minor Accomplishments

Today was overall a pretty successful day in wrapping up the final details in preparing our dossier. I met with our social worker yesterday and she says she should have our home study written by Sunday. Tomorrow is our trip to Louisville to fill out the citizenship form and get fingerprinted. I'm excited because I found an authentic Ethiopian restaurant we are going to try. Below is a picture of the food.
I went to apply for a passport yesterday but couldn't because they need a certified copy of our birth certificates. The ones we have are getting ready to be sent to our agency with our dossier so I had to order more copies which means more waiting and more money!! Anyway I got a
3rd copy (and hopefully the last)of Joels physical exam today. There were problems with the notary and typos on the first two. The Dr. has been really nice about it though. I also got more of our forms notarized and ready to go! I talked to the manager at Walgreens as well and told her our situation on needing so many passport photos-she said if we came in on Sun. she would give them to us for free!!!!! I wish Joel didn't have to work so much so he could help me more..oh well-at least things are moving along fairly smoothly at this point. I don't know what I'll do with my time once I'm finished preparing paperwork! Well, hopefully we'll be on the waiting list within the next couple weeks and then I can lay back and take it easy for a little while :)

Mischevious Dogs

Today I am feeling really frustrated because things are not going like I want them to in completing the dossier.One thing that keeps me busy is my two mischevious dogs. No matter how I feel they always find a way to make me smile (and/or scream). When I finally get out of bed this morning I go into the bathroom and NayNay is in the laundry hamper-how she got in there I'll never know. I hear a lot of noise going on upstairs so I go up to find FiFi sitting in the middle of a torn up paper plate trying to look very innocent. I picked up the camera right away.