Trading Tea for Elephants

Our second home study meeting with our social worker (or as our son says "sokal worsher" ) went wonderful. She will talk with our references this week and then we will get the final approval to begin our dossier for Ethiopia....woohoo!! So many steps and so much paperwork, but we are getting there. Our two beautiful neices were over for a visit yesterday. As the four children gathered in the kitchen, Kevin and I enjoyed listening into their conversation from the next room. Our oldest - "This is where our baby lives" (obviously at the map where he has drawn his baby on the country of Ethiopia), my neice - "That's Africa, Kody", my other neice - "It's called Ethiopia, it is a country in Africa". So our adoption is also giving the children of our family lessons in geography :).

We just received word that Kevin's 03 charge will NOT affect our adoption and that it should go through just fine in Ethiopia as long as it is all explained in great detail. We are SO excited that we can continue to move forward!

I love life with two little boys! Today we spent the morning running errands with foam swords. While at Target, my son set our entire experience to music including a loud song entitled,"I am a warrior."

So our first Home Study meeting is officially complete and it went great. Our social worker is working with the Ethiopia team to ensure that our adoption will be accepted by the judge in Ethiopia. Specifically, Kevin's charges back in 03. We continue to place our hope and trust in the One who is able. Please join us in prayer that we would have favor with the Ethiopian government.

When we began this journey, God led me to a verse in Ephesians 3:20 "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!" We began to pray that God would work in ways beyond what we could imagine, especially in the area of finances for our adoption. We desire our adoption to call others to adopt as well and many of the reasons we hear for not adopting is the cost. Well, the coolest thing happened at A.C.Moore. All morning was spent shopping for the holidays and after picking up my son from preschool we had one more "quick" stop to make at A.C.Moore. The check out line was halfway to the back of the store and with two hungry and tired children it was not much fun. As I was unloading all of our items into our car I noticed that we had missed two bottles of glue. My mind began to play through all the s

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!! We are beyond excited that we finally got the go ahead to begin our homestudy! The social worker will be coming to "visit" us on Monday. Crazy time of the year in general...but God's timing is always perfect. We had already planned for the boys to be at my mom's for an overnight visit tonight and Kevin is in SanDiego and his sister can come Monday to help with the boys because she is off of work. I love being a part of this and watching all the details come together! One step closer to our beautiful little one!!

Well, I am trying this out through another source. So the Shutterfly experiment didn't work out so well. I hope this will prove to go better. Mostly this is to help update our family (those who were born related to us and those friends who have become our family) about what's going on with us without having to fill up everybody's inbox. And it also gives me an outlet to write about our wonderful life! To catch up, God has called us to adopt a little princess from Ethiopia. We are in the process of paperwork, paperwork, paperwork and currently waiting, trying to do it patiently, for approval from the Virginia Child Protective Services. Once we get the green light on that, then we can move ahead with our Home Study. At present we are expecting that we will actually go to Ethiopia to bring home our sweetheart spring/summer of 2010. She will be somewhere between 7 and 16months old. Our hearts long for her more everyday and can't wait until we get to snuggle her fac