ACTUALLY, our court date will be JANUARY 14th! Five days earlier that previously expected. I realized that this is exactly 3 months to the day from when we received our referral. Possibly we will be traveling by the 14th of Feb....too early to tell, but not too much to hope for!

It never fails, just when I think I am going to go crazy from the wait, I get the next 'piece of the puzzle.' Meaning, we got our court date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unless otherwise notified, it will be on January 19th. PLEASE PRAY FOR A SUCCESSFUL COURT DATE.

It was great to finally receive that email (after checking practically every hour for the past 2 weeks). Now, on to a fun and relaxing weekend!

Our second medicals have been accepted and the CWA staff will be preparing our documents to request a court date! I am so thankful for the Pediatrician that we found. He has tons of experience in international adoption and is an adoptive parent himself. I sent him an email yesterday with our new medical information and he emailed back by the end of the day! The next thing we will be waiting for is the scheduling of our court date. :)

WAHOO...THE EMAIL ARRIVED! Just checked for the zillionth time and it was there! I forwarded it to our wonderful doctor for his medical perspective.

A WATCHED POT NEVER BOILS. And a checked mailbox never has mail! I had a random question for our case worker and sent her an email this morning. Well, just minutes later I had a response and also included in that email was the fact that she has our 'second medicals' and as soon as she reviews and verifies that the information is for our referral, she will send them to us.

So, this is VERY EXCITING for me, because this is the next step we are waiting for. After we get that information and review it - it takes, per her email, a week or so to get our scheduled court date. Now there are always good chances that the court date can be delayed or rescheduled, but at least having that would give us a ballpark idea of when we would travel (4-5 weeks after). I know, and God has shown, that His timing is perfect. I have also learned from experience that may mean not until the 11th hour. BUT, I am now EXTREMELY EAGER to get that email.

So what I am wondering is, what did she mean by telling me she would get that info to me soon? Does that mean that would be in an hour, by the end of the day, by the end of the week? Of course for me I want it to mean, now!

I have heard from other adoptive parents and read on many other adoption blogs (which by the way are WAY more high-tech, but that is another issue altogether) that the waiting you go through once receiving the referral is the hardest part. THAT IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. I am an 'all or nothing' person. If I can't do it all, I do nothing. And that goes with thinking about what I want/need to do. I am either thinking about it all the time, or I forget it. So, can you guess what this means?

It means I hope to get an email today or my husband won't be able to put up with me this evening!

Hope to post good news soon!

We are almost done with our vaccines. I feel partly to blame. I perused the CDC website only once and felt confused about what vaccines we actually needed and decided that our doctors would know. Well, Jamie and I go to the same practice but have different doctors and wouldn't you know it, we got different vaccines. Very frustrating!!!!! Or as Mrs. Bennet would say "You take delight in vexing me!"

That of course forced me to do a little deeper research online and I think I may understand better what we need (??). Just another thing to add to my mental rolodex. Luckily, besides having "John McCain" arms for a day or so, I had no side effects. My darling hubby however either had some side-effects or a coincidental illness the following days.

We are definitely looking forward to Thanksgiving and Jamie desperately needs some rest. The weather has been quite chilly, we set a record this morning of 16 degrees for this time of year! Christmas music is in the background and I think we may get the decorations out of the attic today.

We hope all our friends and family have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! We appreciate your continued prayers for our son and all the workers at his orphanage.

Whew! Stop teaching for a while and you quickly forget the exhaustion you feel at the end of the day!!! I spent an absolutely wonderful day with fourth grade and BAM, felt like a truck hit me all of a sudden at 3:30.

Quick update...no new news...hahaha

Our immunizations are scheduled for next week. We are waiting to get the second medical reports and to hear when our court date will be.

Oh, and if you haven't left your house in the past few days, Christmas is upon us! I heard the man in the red suit is already at the mall. Although I'm not really complaining...I've been playing my Christmas music for a couple weeks. :)

I guess I need to start thinking about what baby stuff we actually need. People keep asking if we are registered yet. We actually went to Babies R Us to register, but quickly left. It was too surreal and overwhelming! (This coming from a former shopaholic)

Oh well, life is still great!

The big wait is here...the wait for news on our son...the wait for his second medical reports...the wait for a court date...the wait for a successful court completion...the wait for an Embassy date. We figure our wait will be somewhere around the 4-5 month mark.

Some things we're doing while waiting:
*Taking our 8 hour online class to meet Hague requirements (esp. fun for Jamie who has 2 other "classes" - the one he teaches and the grad school one he is a student in)
*Getting vaccinations (I need to call the Dr. tomorrow...why do I keep putting that off?)
*Reading too many books about "what to buy baby" and "baby bargains" and realizing there is a lot of STUFF out there (my mom claims she was told to put us in a dresser drawer lined with a blanket)
*Trying to figure out how to put the stuff from the former guest room, now baby room into the already crammed office, now guest room/office

And through it all, realizing that we are pretty blessed! Our problems are really not life threatening. In my bible study this week (we are doing the Beth Moore study of Daniel - AMAZING!) she quoted from another author who said if you were reading his book at that moment, then you are among the wealthy of the world. If you could #1) afford to buy a book and #2) had the education to read it , then you are at the 'top of the barrel' , globally speaking.

And so we wait... patiently.

Now the real fun starts! Called the Dr. today to check about starting our immunization shots for traveling to Africa. I looked on the CDC website and saw there were many. Now I'm not a baby about getting shots, however that last one I got (penicillin when I was sick) kinda hurt! Does the the doctor still give out lollipops??????

It has been a week since our referral. We excitedly accepted our referral and look forward to the day we can share pictures with our friends (not until after our court date). I have been busy the past few days finding out about this next and final stage of the adoption process.

Our dossier was sent to Ethiopia yesterday. Wooh Hooh! When it is received there, it will be translated and then several things happen before we travel. Among them are various approvals and it all culminates with a successful court date. A power of attorney was sent with our dossier, and someone from CWA will actually attend the court date for us. It will likely be a 3-4 month process for this to occurr. After our court date we will receive a date at the American Embassy in Addis Ababa. I am told that this is approx. 5 weeks after the court date. This is when we travel!

So I guess that means we are waiting for 4-5 months. I hate waiting. Especially when I have these cute photos of our adorable little boy and all I want is to be the one taking care of him! I guess God's not finished teaching me about patience....not one of my better traits. So for now, I will just do what I have been doing the past few days....carrying my little pile of pictures with me downstairs and upstairs and keeping little baby Hall close to my heart.

Referral!

Well I am shocked and amazed to be writing this...but yesterday afternoon, around 4:30, we received a call from our case worker and she had a referral for us! We can't say much about it, but I will say it is a boy... :)

Please pray that paperwork and court dates will go smoothly, and whatever else. I hadn't looked too closely at this step yet, because I thought we were just finishing with the dossier and were settling into a little wait time. But, we KNOW that this is all a part of God's timing. We certainly weren't expecting this so soon, but are OVERJOYED and will keep you posted!

Dossier on its way

We mailed off our dossier today! We overnighted it to Caring Hands, a courier service that will actually walk our dossier to the US Department of State, wait for the papers to be authenticated and then take it to the Ethiopian Embassy for authentication there. They will pick it up when that is finished and send it back to our case worker, who will send it to Addis Ababa. We are very excited that all our paperwork for this phase is finished!!! Now the wait for our referral begins.

One more time

Well, those two documents that we had to get authenticated at our state office in Raleigh were given the wrong paper! Thankfully, this is a mistake on their part, and not mine. It does mean that I had to send them back to the Secretary of State to get re-processed. Hopefully they will be just as quick as they were the first time and we will get those back next week.

Our case worker is sending us our final two documents to put in our dossier, so when we get both of those, and our correctly authenticated documents, our dossier will be off to the US Dept of State and then the Ethiopian Embassy, both in Washington D.C.!

Almost there.....

Dossier hopefully done!

Today I went to the post office and sent off the (2) copies of our dossier to our case worker at CWA. Since today is Friday and I sent it priority, it should be there Monday! She will review it for any mistakes. HOPEFULLY NONE. We are one step closer to finishing this "paper pregnancy"! Incidentally, when I made copies of our dossier (3 total - 2 for our agency and 1 for us) I had to make over 170 copies! Thankfully we have a Staples store near us and I didn't have to feed nickels and dimes into the one at the library! Pray that all our ducks are in a row and I won't have to re-do anything so we can get this thing movin' to D.C.

Speedy Gonzales!

Talk about fast! I sent our POA to Raleigh last Thursday to be authenticated and guess what arrived in the mail today, Tuesday?? You guessed it! I was so excited to see my self addressed stamped envelope in the mail. Who says rainy days are gloomy?!

Almost...

Well, I know many people have asked us if we have sent in our dossier yet. And our answer is.....almost. Unfortunately, we had a little hiccup at the same time. One of our very important papers in our dossier just so happened to have an upcoming expiration date on it. This was not anything in our control, but our adoption agency was waiting for their renewal of their license (or something else similarly official) and this date is on our POA (Power of Attorney). SO....we had to wait for their new one, which now doesn't expire until 2012, re-fill it out, then have it notarized, then send it to our state for Authentication. So that is where it is. I expect it should get back to us by next week and then we should be ready to move on. Hooray!

Quick explanation of what moving on means. (And this is all according to my understanding of it, every time I read my directions I seem to pick up on something else!) I will then take all my dossier documents (minus two that CWA sends me) and make two copies. I then send the copies (and that all too precious big check) to our Case Worker and she reviews for any mistakes, etc. Then she sends us the two important papers needed to officially complete our dossier. From there we courier our dossier to the US Dept of State in D.C. Then they authenticate it and whatever else they do to it and we have it couriered to the Ethiopian Embassy in D.C. Somewhere in that process it is put in a really pretty binder and looks all official! Then it goes back to our adoption agency, CWA, where it is FINALLY sent to Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia). Also, somewhere during that process it is translated into Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. Although I have also learned that there are actually over 80 languages spoken in Ethiopia, with hundreds of dialects - Amharic is the official.

Hope that clears it up for those of you that are following this. From there we hope for a "two to four month" wait time for a referral. We'll see...we know God has His hand in all of this, so it's really up to Him.

Injera Anyone?

I know it's kind of hard to see, but here we are at Meskerem Restaurant in Charlotte, NC. It is an Ethiopian restaurant that Jamie's sister, Allison, discovered while eating at a similar one in Boston. Who knew we had such cultural gastronomic fare! We went there this past Labor Day weekend with Jamie's mom and two of his sisters, Lauren and Allison. It was a fun adventure to share while they were visiting from Florida and New York.

If I would have thought ahead, I would have had a picture taken of the food - it is certainly presented and enjoyed in a much different manner.

The way it works is the main course is placed on the center of the table. There is a large communal dish and at the bottom is injera. Injera is like a spongy, type of thin bread. We thought the closest thing to describe it for an American palate would be a pancake or crepe w/bubble holes in it. Injera is made from teff, an Ethiopian grain. They then put the entrees on top of the injera. We ordered Meskerem Tibs (lamb), Doro Wat (spicy chicken), Chicken Tibs (less spicy chicken) and a veggie combo that gave us a little Miser Alecha and Miser Wat (both lentils), Shro Wat (chickpeas) and some cabbage and string beans and carrots. For all you "southern food" lovers, there were also some collards! The dishes had various seasonings and were all really tasty. But the really fun part is how you eat it. NO UTENSILS. They bring a side plate of injera, rolled up, kind of like empty soft burrito shells. Then you break off a piece of the injera and scoop up the food you want to eat in that bite. Delish! You also can break off the injera that has been at the bottom of the meal, it has soaked up all the flavor and sauce from the food that was on it. Unfortunately by the time we got to that point we were all stuffed. Going there with a group of 5 definitely made it more fun, as we got to try so many different things.

Jamie and I look forward to going back and bringing new friends to enjoy the experience! It definitely takes any nerves away about what the food will be like when we actually travel to Ethiopia.

If you're up for a new dining experience, let us know! :)

USCIS approval

Hooray! Last Friday we received the all too important I-600, which basically is our "official" approval from the U.S. Customs and Immigrations Services to bring an orphan into the U.S. We started on this at the beginning of our adoption process and, true to the estimate, it took about 6 months. We are excitedly getting the last details together on our dossier so we can send it to Washington!!

School has begun! Jamie is adjusting to life back in the classroom and I am adjusting to working in the house. Undoubtedly his is harder! While I will work as a substitute, three days last week already, I am relishing the opportunity to organize at home and take on some of the more "traditional" responsibilities of a stay-at-home-wife. Jamie will pick up with his graduate work next week and I look forward to doing as much as I can to make his life easier. It will be no small task for him to commute 1 hour and 20 minutes (one way) for a night class immediately following his regular day driving a bus and teaching!

Last week we received our official notarized copy of our homestudy report, which is a key element to our dossier. My job this week is to finish up loose ends so we are ready to send the dossier to CWA. We know God provides in His perfect timing, and are believing that He knows when we need to send everything in so that we will be matched with the child He has for us. If I had to write my autobiography right now it would be titled "Patience: A work in progress"!

Summer

Summer Vacation is finally here! And now time to get down to the paperwork. Jamie and I started the process of adopting a baby from Ethiopia way back in February and I hate to admit that I am still working through all the paperwork needed for the Home Study and Dossier. It is a lot of lists within lists and that just doesn't work with the way my brain is programmed! Fortunately all my Kindergarten darlings are off for their summer adventures and I can put all my mental energy into getting this stuff done! When we started, everyone told us to make sure and start our I-600 paperwork right away because it takes a while to get the official government approval/paperwork to bring a child from another country into this one. Ha! Just take your sweet time with the myriad of other details and it will be ready before you are.