Court-PASSED!!

Praise God! We passed court! Desalee is really really ours now! Officially!

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us! We are so relieved and excited!

The next step is to get her a Birth Certificate, then after that a Passport. With those documents we can be assigned an appointment at the Embassy in Addis Ababa. Hopefully that appointment will be on July 20th, which will put us traveling from about the 14th of July until the 22nd.

Now to start thinking about travelling to get our baby girl and bring her home!

I'm gonna sleep much better tonight!

This is it!

This is it! The time is here! Tonight as we sleep, the Ethiopian courts will be in session and our case will hopefully be heard and approved!

We may have to wait a couple of days before we hear the news....I'll definitely post as soon as we get word.

PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!

Love, S

PS: check out my cool new Ethiopian time and weather widget on the sidebar! Now we know exactly what time it is and what the weather is like where our little girl is.

As Wednesday and our court appointment near, I am feeling so anxious. This was a big court week for our agency....11 families will have court before the week is out! Praise God today, 4 out of 4 families that had court passed on the first try! This is wonderful news, especially for those precious children who are now officially adopted into loving families. As I watched the discussion forums online, there was so much joy and encouragement...I hope that this will be the same way on Wednesday, when myself and 5 other BCS families will have our cases heard.

And yet, a close friend who is also on this journey learned today that her family will have to wait longer....they now await their 5th court date. I can't understand it. I am praying for their family because I know that their hearts are hurting. It's so hard to wait.

I won't lie...MY HOPES ARE UP! WAY UP! I know that it would not be unusual to hear on Wednesday that our court appointment has been rescheduled...I will come crashing down! But I know that whether it's pure joy or anguish this week, that God is there for me, along with a lot of other people who love us and are praying us through this!

I really don't think that it's about God's favor for us at this point....to believe that would be to insinuate that those who don't pass somehow are not in His favor? I know that's not right. So I just believe that it is His timing...which I don't always understand, but still, He knows what He's doing.

Last year for Mother's Day I got a beautiful hand-made bracelet, with charms of the initials J and E...my little treasures.

I knew, last year that it was missing a charm, I just didn't know who that charm would represent. So a couple of weeks ago, I sent the bracelet back and had Desalee's charm added. Now it's complete. And it's a reminder to pray for her and for J and E whenever I wear it. It also reminds me to be grateful for the blessing of my kids. I love them so!Thank you to everyone who's been praying...keep it up for Wednesday! Ethiopia is 8 hours ahead of us...so start early!!

Less than 1 week until Court!

We are less than one week out from our first scheduled court date! I am so anxious, I can't wait for it to get here! I've been surfing around on some online forums for our adoption agency...browsing the conversations about various adoption and travel related topics. It may be hurting more than helping. Aside from being more obsessed with the discussion boards than I am with Facebook (if that's even possible) I'm getting some good info, but at the same time, it gets me balled up in a bundle of nerves!

I did figure out through the forums that if we pass court on the 9th, then our Embassy date will likely/hopefully be July 20th. It looks like most families travel the Thursday before and come home the Thursday after. It's good to have an idea of when we'll be travelling. Another source of stress? The immense cost of airfare to Ethiopia this time of year! YOWZA!!! I think I need to sell a few more kitchens!

It also looks like there are about 10-11 other families with court dates on our within a day or so of the 9th, so these will be the families that we travel with (if we pass court). I hope that the forums are a way to get to know these people a little better....we are going to be sharing one of the most amazing experiences of our lives with them, afterall!

an Aha! moment...kind of.

As I unpacked the groceries it hit me..."I forgot to buy hot dog buns! arrgh!" I had used a coupon to buy some "new" natural hot dogs and here I was with no buns! I hate buying hot dog buns anyway, because they always get wasted and I hate how they fall apart while the kids are trying eat them, which usually means a stain or mess for me. So maybe I subconsciously meant to neglect putting the buns in my cart. Who knows?

So that leads to dinner tonight...hot dogs but no buns...hmmm. Then it hit me, aha! I'm sure I didn't actually invent this, but I like to think I did at least for my house....the Grilled Cheese Dog. See picture.....

I've never seen a recipe or suggestion for this kid-friendly treat, so I was feeling pretty proud of myself for coming up with it. The kids actually liked it! They cleaned their plates...no uneaten half-a-bun on the plate to guilt-ily throw away. yay!!

it seems kind of silly to post a "recipe" but here it is:

• 1 slice bread-light buttered on one side (I use Olivio Light Spread)
• 1 hot dog cut lengthwise (the hot dogs I had were kind of long, so used 1 dog for both kids)
• 1 slice cheese
• place bread butter side down on a griddle or skillet set at medium heat
• Layer cheese, dog, cheese and fold in half
• Grill each side until brown--I also grill the folded end

VOILA! LOL.

Nesting

I guess I'm going through what all expectant mother's go through...nesting. It's really all I can do, since we are just waiting. Waiting for our court date to arrive (June 9th, please pray we pass!), waiting for any new information: an update, a new photo....we are, in fact, still waiting for all of the above. It's hard to wait.

But I have had a bit of fun in the mean time....working on the bedroom that Em and Des will share. That's where the majority of the nesting comes in. Em had been sleeping in the child's daybed stage of the convertible crib, so we knew she would have to transition out of that. Des will have to sleep in the crib. We felt like sooner would be better so that she didn't feel that this new baby took her bed. So we found some good deals on a twin bed and mattresses. She transitioned seamlessly into her new bed and is totally "on board"with giving her old one to Des. Thank you, God!

I've also been getting the room more personalized for the sisters. I love this part of it, and it really helps me feel like I am getting ready to have Des here with us. I found some letters to spell her name that are in the exact same font as the ones we've had for Em since she was born.

So, nesting is really all I can do at this point. So I'll just keep nesting...and waiting. It's really so close now, I can hardly believe it. I just noticed that I'm blogging about nesting and the theme of the girls' room is owls...how appropriate!

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.