Papers are off!!!!

Well we have now had 2 days to let the news sink in and well.......................
we are sooo excited still !!! Today we met with our social worker (Leah) and finished all of the acceptance paperwork. She said she would overnight it to Grand Rapids (which is Bethany HQ). Once it gets there I'm not 100% sure what they need to do but mail only goes out to Ethiopia every Friday so I'm REALLY hoping that we will make it in this weeks bunch! So now we ........

WAIT

More waiting but now we will be waiting to hear that either the team in Ethiopia has secured her birth certificate (which we may not be informed of this step) or that our paperwork has been submitted to court. After that we will wait for the court system to appoint us a court date, which should be for about 4 weeks later. Then we book our tickets and we're on our way! So pray with us that all of our paperwork and her birth certificate will be pulled together quickly. This phase of waiting can be anywhere from 2-4 months. The Ethiopian courts just reopened several weeks ago so there is still somewhat of a backlog in the court system. But we are hoping that once we get submitted that the bottle neck will be all cleared up.

Yesterday we were talking with another family that we met on the adoption forum and they are going to meet their little girls. Well they offered to take pictures for us which we were REALLY excited about. But we just realized that our daughter is not at the same orphanage as theirs are. So we won't be getting any new pictures until we get an update which comes about once a month. This was a huge let down as the only picture we have of her she is really sad in, which doesn't help this mommy's heart=(

We are still in the planning mode for the Both Hands Project. We have 2 weeks and 1 day till the project! We have had several more families ask to help with the project! So now we have to organize the project and who is going to be doing what and supplies and everything else that is needed. We saw Ione at church on Wednesday and told her our good news and she was so sweet and excited for us! We can't wait to do this project. It's going to be soooo much fun!