So, it's been a while...

since the last post. I know. I kept waiting until I had something interesting to write about and have now realized the only thing that does is alienate those who are trying to walk through this with us from a distance. I'm sorry. We've hit a waiting time earlier than I thought...and it's, unfortunately, not a productive waiting time. It's not as if we are waiting on a referral, or for a court date, or for travel plans to be cleared up...we are waiting on emails and government offices and the postal service--just to finish our dossier. That's right. It's been this long and we are STILL not paper-ready.

The good news is that we are closer. We have every document completed except the employment letter and that, hopefully will be completed and emailed by next week. The next step for us is to send our home study to USCIS here in Rome, and mail all of our original documents to Georgia for the final compilation of our dossier. So today, Friday the 11th, will be devoted to printing out, signing, and addressing all of the mail that needs to go out and hopefully Monday we can get it all in the mail (that is, if we receive the employment letters by then). After this step, we don't know what's next. The dossier has many steps to go before we are cleared to wait for a referral...as far as we know right now, it has to be approved by two offices in the States and then submitted for translation, before it will be approved by Ethiopia. We are still so vague on the details. I know by the end of this we will be experts...

Thanks for checking back in. I'm not sure I will be great at updating when I have nothing to say, but I will try. And hopefully, very soon, we WILL have things to say :-). Be sure to keep praying for our daughter, we don't know her, but most likely she's been born or is soon to be...

I-600A...check!!

So, we right after taking the kids to school this morning, we headed out to catch the trenino into the center. We knew the trains would be packed and they were. Fortunately, Judah still fits in the sling, so that's good news. We got to the Embassy at the appointed time...thankfully we weren't late--they are sticklers for that kind of thing. And thanks to some great advice from friends who had done the Embassy thing a couple of weeks before, we packed light and made it through security without a hitch. It took us an hour and a half or so to get all the fingerprints and papers filed...but they are FILED! That's one less thing that we have to do. All that is left on our list are the medical letters and Italian police clearance. We're working on figuring out how to get those completed.

Thank you for praying for things to go smoothly today--they couldn't have been better! We were back in our neighborhood by 12:15pm...CRAZY! We appreciate you all for how you support us with your prayers....I don't think we waited longer than 5 minutes for ANY train today (and we were on 6)...totally God! Praise Him with us!

Home Study Interview is Finished!

So we've checked off the toughest part of our home study completion--the interview! Our social worker was super sweet and very relaxed and laid back so there was no pressure or awkwardness. Jared met her without a hitch at the airport and things got underway on time and we finished on schedule and she was back to the airport in plenty of time to catch her flight home to Germany.

So that's huge relief. She has already been working on the draft so she figured that once the police clearances come in and she's able to add them to the report, we should have our completed home study in a couple of weeks.

Please join us in praying for the paperwork to be collected speedily--we've mailed our police clearance form to OK from Rome and then they will mail the clearance to Jared's parents' house in Hollis and then Jared's parents will then turn around and mail the clearances on to GA to our agency and they will fax them to our Social worker in Germany...so there are a LOT of steps that could easily get bogged down and add more time onto the waiting. So please pray against hang-ups.

When the Home Study is completed we will be finished with the first of three big steps in the adoption paper trail. The next step is to pass the USCIS approval...we go to the Embassy here in Rome on Wednesday morning at 10. Please pray that we are able to get in and out of the offices very quickly because it takes about an hour to travel there and we HAVE to pick our kids up by 2pm from school. Once our Home Study is completed, it will be submitted to USCIS and they, hopefully, will approve it quickly and then it can be added to the dossier. We're hoping to have a completed dossier by the end of October...we'll see!!

Thank you all for being faithful to pray for us on this journey...we are one step closer!!

the preparations are underway...

So, we are gearing up for a crazy day of cleaning and organizing so we can fully make room for that sweet girl who is closer to being ours.

Our social worker flies in tomorrow at noon and we'll spend a whirlwind 4 hours in interviews and paperwork shuffling an then she flies back to Germany at 7pm.

We've got great help offered from Taylor and Heidi who have volunteer to spend the day with our kids thankfully so that, hopefully, things can go more smoothly.

Please pray for us tomorrow. Pray that we will have quiet and peaceful hearts and that our minds are clear, enabling us to be articulate and genuine.

Thank you all.

just thought this was neat

Happy Birthday!!

I know that some of you saw the photos on Facebook but I wanted to post them here too :-)

On my birthday (Saturday) the kids and Jared took me to an Ethiopia restaurant here in Rome...actually it's Ethiopian/Eritrean.














When we got there we asked our waitress if she could recommend a traditional Ethiopian dish for our family. She picked out the same dish but with two degrees of spiciness, a mild one for the kids and a more spicy one for the adults. She warned us that Ethiopian food was "hand-eating" food. (and then about halfway into the meal she brought forks--Iliana and Judah were excited about that--I really thought they would get a kick out of eating with their hands!)












The flat bread was a little more sourdoughy than I had expected and the food was WAY more delicious than I had expected...it was SO good!




Elijah really liked it,




























Jared was sold on it, Iliana and Judah (and Elijah, of course) were ecstatic when our waitress brought a surprise plate of french fries toward the end of the meal...We really enjoyed our experience! I've looked up a couple of general recipe sites so that I can get a feel for ingredients in Ethiopian food...but I haven't settled on a recipe that I will be able to:

1. FIND all of the ingredients here
2. reproduce without help

Check them out! http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes/ethiopian and http://ethiopianrecipes.net/ and http://www.ethiopianrestaurant.com/recipes.html

ENJOY!!!

just 'cause

So we had a little celebration for the home study date being set...they didn't know it, but Heidi and Taylor came over last night to help us celebrate :-) ...and we ate mexican and cheesecake (and the prototypes for Iliana's birthday cheesecake pops) and were festive :-).

Today we went to the beach and generally frolicked...then crashed for naps after lunch. I keep trying to picture our life with one more...at the beach, as I was putting sunscreen on my little pale kids, I kept getting this picture in my mind of dark, chubby little arms and legs streaked with the lotion, and me, being able to tell when the lotion isn't quite rubbed in because of the obvious streaks left on the chocolate skin...I know it's not profound or anything but it made me teary, happy--and impatient.

We wait...God sustains us with little glimpses of her sweetness--reminding us to pray for our sweet baby girl...please don't forget to do the same...