Henry, Monica, and Grandpa Buzz painted M and E's bedroom today. One thing down, 99 to go to get the house ready for our new additions to the family. We're one month away from the court date and we still have a lot to do. Nothing like a deadline to spur one to action.
We just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We are spending Christmas with Henry's parents, sister Sarah, and our niece Eowyn. We're having a nice visit.
We have several family members serving in the military overseas. Sarah's husband Daniel is serving in Iraq and he is missing Eowyn's first Christmas. My little brother Jeremy is in Korea, missing his first Christmas with his wife Stephanie and step-daughter Hailee. My baby brother Josh, his wife Kim, and daugther Autumn are in Germany. You are all in our thoughts and prayers and we appreciate your service to our country. We love you all!
We got an update on our boys and a new picture from Gladney yesterday, just in time for Christmas. :) Here is part of the update...
“M and E are doing well. M is now more outgoing and seems comfortable with his housemates and surroundings. E can still seem shy, but that goes way in a few minutes. As I am typing this, he is pulling on my goatee and trying to type on my computer. They are sweet little guys! I hope you have a very merry Christmas.” -R
We can't post their names until we pass court. M is the older one and E is the little guy.
Merry Christmas to all!
I was listening to Third Day's "Christmas Offerings" at work and when this song played I had to stop everything. This song hit so close to home that I almost cried. It's so hard to wait now that we have the referal and the court date.
I was so surprised by a call from our case worker today since we weren't expecting to hear from her for at least another week. She said that we have a court date on January 27th! That happens to be my niece's first birthday. What could be better than two new cousins for your birthday? We're hoping and praying that all goes well on the first court date, but we know to expect delays as well.
We need to speed up the getting ready process now! :)
We are so thankful for all the love, support, and encouragement we have received from family, friends, and the on-line adoption community. It means so much to have so many people sharing our joy and excitement with us.
Thank you so much to all of you who offered to look through photos from your Ethiopia trips for pics of our boys. I think we e-mailed everyone who offered and was in Addis after our boys were there. We appreciate so much the time that some of you took to do that for us and we loved having a few extra pictures shortly after our referral!
I can't believe it has already been a week. It went by quickly, but I can already tell that this part of the wait is going to be much harder than the wait for the referral. I keep looking at their pictures and want so badly to meet them now. At least for now we have so many things to do to get ready for the boys that will keep us busy for awhile.
Today, we reached 6 months on the wait list. We had convinced ourselves that we had another month or two to wait so we were taken by surprise when our caseworker, Jessica, called with our referral- two adorable little boys! They are 3 1/2 years old and 2 years old and so precious! We are beyond excited! :)
As of Monday, we have completed six weeks of our wait for our referral. This weekend, we also celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary! So we are moving on to week 7 of the wait and year 7 of our marriage, hopefully the year our family finally grows...
