Blogging Again.

So, the blog has been dormant for a quite a while. But I am ready to get started again, particularly because now that we are in the home stretch of our adoption, I want to have a place where we can keep people updated on what's going on....

Here's a recap of the last 1 1/2 years:

• December 2008--submit an official application with Bethany Christian Services for Ethiopian adoption.


• January 2009-August 2009--PAPERWORK!! That pretty much sums it up! Lots of paperwork and lots of READING!


• August 2009--all paperwork is complete--Dossier sent to Ethiopia.


• August 2009-April 2010--WAITING, WAITING, WAITING. We had originally been told that we would wait 1 year to 18 months for a referral, so we were really surprised when we receive a referral in April 2010.


• March 2010--We receive word that Ethiopia is changing it's procedures (effective April 9th) to require families to be present at court--which means 2 trips to Ethiopia...not in our original plans! There's not a lot of information so it's mostly just questions! Will we have to travel 2x?


• April 7, 2010--We received a call and email from our specialist notifying us that we were matched with a 16 month old baby girl named Desalech.


• Over the next few days we prayed and talked to some friends and decided to accept the referral!


• Receive word that the deadline for 2 trips is moved to May 9th....we may be able to get in under the wire and only have to travel 1x! Praying we don't have to travel 2x. We don't want to meet our baby and leave her there!


• We decided to modify Desalech's name to Desalee Rae Demessie Poe (Demessie is her given last name)


• April 2010-May 7, 2010--more waiting...for a court date. This time it's a much harder wait, now that we know who our daughter is. Also continuing to wonder if we'll beat the deadline and only travel 1x. May 9th is rapidly approaching!


• May 7th--With no court date scheduled, we are pretty much resolved to the fact that we need to prepare to travel 2x to Ethiopia. BUT...we receive a call from our worker that our paperwork is submitted and that all paperwork submitted before the deadline will be grandfathered in under the 1 trip rule! Yay!! We now know for sure that we will only have to travel 1x to get Desi and BRING HER HOME!!!


• May 2010--we moved Emily into her big girl bed to prepare her to give the crib to Desi...she did great! Hopefully she'll do as good at sharing her room with her new little sister!


• May 17, 2010--Received word that we have a court date scheduled for June 9, 2010.

Now we are just praying that we will pass court on the first try....a lot of court cases do not pass on the first try (30-40% are rescheduled!) This is our main prayer request...passing court! Of course that Desi would be healthy and safe too!

I'm going to do my best to keep the blog updated as we receive updates on Desi and our process. I also plan to use the blog as a place to post pictures when we are traveling.