Court Date!!

Yay!!! We finally have a court date in Ethiopia...April 24th! After 13 months on this adventure, we're finally towards the end. If we pass court this first time then we will travel a few weeks later! Thanks for all your prayers and patience with us as we've been consumed with talking about "adopting" this past year. Our prayer is also that some of you reading and hearing about our adventure will consider how you may help orphans. For some of you it may mean sponsoring a child, giving money to help others adopt, traveling on mission trips to help orphans, or maybe even adopting a child yourself. God's heart is for the orphan. We want to have God's heart. We want to be challenged to stretch beyond our comfortable American living/ideology and see how we can make a difference in the lives of those who cannot stand up for themselves. May God put an idea in your heart to help these children that will not go away. That you will know without a doubt that He's calling you to do SOMETHING. That's our prayer.

She's A Thumb Sucker!

It's official...our baby girl is a thumb sucker! We just received another picture of our Ethiopian Princess and she was laying in her crib sucking her left thumb! What a cutie! She will be welcomed into a family of girl thumbsuckers. Both of our girls sucked their thumbs when they were little. We were determined that our son would not suck his thumb...and he doesn't...he sucks two fingers! :) Still waiting for that court date. I was a little grouchy today because it's been over 8 weeks and no court date...but the picture will help me make it through the weekend!

More pictures

Yesterday we received a CD from our adoption agency with hundreds of pictures of Ethiopia. The end of January/beginning of February, a group of Board Members and Staff travelled to Ethiopia and took tons of pictures. They visited the orphanage in Durame, the transition center in Addis, and a Medical Clinic that our agency is renovating to help women who are giving birth and need care for their babies. It was great to see so many pictures of the children and people of Ethiopia. Somewhere in the middle of the hundreds of pictures we found two pictures of our Ethiopian princess! She looks adorable and healthy, and we can hardly wait to go pick her up! Please pray that we get a court date soon. It's been 7 weeks and we still have not been notified of a court date. Please pray that once we get the date, that we will pass the first time and not have to wait 4-6 weeks for another court date. Thank you to everyone for so much support and encouragement. It has been an adventure, but has drawn us closer to the Lord and to so many others. Praise the Lord.

New Pictures!

Today we received an update about our baby girl and got 4 new pictures! I can't post them here, but let me tell you she's the cutest, smartest, and sweetest baby you've ever seen! She's smiling in 3 of the pictures...it's going to be hard for all of us to not spoil her! Those big brown eyes are going to get whatever they want! :) She'll be 9 months old next week and weighs 15 pounds, has 4 teeth, stands by herself, and is about to start walking! I have a feeling she's going to keep us busy! Please pray for a quick court date and that we'll pass the first time. We are so ready to go get her!

Waiting for a court date

I haven't posted in a while because I keep hoping I'll have new news. Well, no new news yet. We are still waiting for a court date. Please pray that we pass court the first time. When we pass court then baby girl is officially ours. We will travel anywhere from 2-6 weeks after the court date. It's getting closer but still seems so far away. I don't want her to grow up any more until we can have her home! Another HUGE prayer request is that we will be able to use air miles gifted to us by our great friends, the Thompsons. This will save us around $4,000! The catch it going to be the airline allowing us to use the miles with only a few week's notice. Please pray for a miracle!!