Thankful!

We have so much to be thankful for this year. We are very lucky to have an amazing family and group of friends who have all been so supportive during our adoption process. The obvious highlight of our year (so far) came a week and a half ago... most of all this year we are thankful for our little man.

On our way

We recieved notice from our agency today that they have recieved our official paperwork accepting the referral of our "little man." Now they will have thier staff in Ethiopian begin processing our paperwork to get a court date. It will still be several weeks before are notified of when our court date will be, but things are moving along!

Stay tuned for more news as we move through the rest of the process...

It's a...

...BOY!!! That's right, today was THE day, we got our referral call! We were #24 on the overall list, but we knew we would probably be getting a boy and that we were probably getting close (because most families ahead of us have requested girls or siblings). But we were still SHOCKED to get the call, we figured it would be AT LEAST a few more weeks.

He is PERFECT... I know all parents say that, but seriously he is the cutest baby ever (no bias - just honesty :) ). He is 11 weeks old, born on August 27, 2009. Currently 8.5 lbs and 19.7 inches long.

Sorry we can't post photos of him online yet - not until we pass court in Ethiopia, which should (hopefully) be a couple of months. But, rest assured we have seen photos and he is BEAUTIFUL!!! We can't wait to show him off to the world... stay tuned.

Aunt Kyla and cousin Blake came over after we got the call to see pictures of the little man, and they brought him something special...

So, tonight we are celebrating with something we have been saving for just THIS occasion.

Slow & Steady Wins the Race

By our count we are now number #29 on the waiting list! Little by little, inch by inch we are getting closer to meeting baby Haney.


What else have we been up to, well...

Some close friends of ours got married yesterday. The wedding was beautiful and the weather cooperated perfectly. Congratulations Misti & Johnny - we are so happy for you!












We also had a chance to spend some time with Ben's Aunt, who was here for a week from NJ. We spent an afternoon at the pumpkin patch with some of our family. It was so much fun!

Ethiopian Federal Courts Re-Open!!!

Every year the federal courts of Ethiopia close for the rainy season - this usually happens at the beginning of August and goes through the end of September. During this time families can still receive a referral, although referrals do typically slow way down. However, no adoptions can be finalized during the court closure.

We received notice from our agency that the courts re-opened this week - Yea!!! They expect the first few weeks to be pretty slow due to the back log, but adoption cases will start being heard by the courts again!

In other news - there were more referrals this week... we are now #31 and counting!

Another Milestone...

A little background information: Almost a year age we submitted our dossier (aka six months worth of paper work detailing our lives) to our agency. Since then it has been stored in thier main office in St. Louis. The process is to forward this information to thier facility in Ethiopia (House of Hope) when you get closer to a referral. This is truely just a filing space issue - we are still in the same place on the waiting list whether it was here or at the House of Hope. However, we recieved notice today that our dossier was officiall sent to Ethiopia last Friday (September 25, 2009)... Yea!!! We are so excited - it may seem like a small thing, but it's another step forward and we are very happy to be getting even a little closer to meeting Little Haney!

33 and counting!!!

We're movin' on up! This week there were five referrals - all the families waited between 11 and 11 1/2 months. Last December, when we initially got on the official waiting list, we started out at about 100, now we are 33 on the waiting list. Well, more or less... it's not an exact science since there is only one list and not all the families have the same criteria (boy/girl, single/siblings, healthy/special needs).