Crazy two weeks

The kids and I officially have 2 weeks before we are leaving for Florida for my sister-in-laws wedding!

We are really excited about going since ALL of our family lives there. Its always fun to go home and visit with everyone, in fact that is the ONLY part about living in TN that I don't like. Stephen's sister is very special to us and we are so excited that she is getting married to her best friend=) Now seeing that I only have 2 weeks till we leave and the fact that I just got my dossier packet makes for 2 very full weeks. We sent off for our Birth Certificates in Florida and waiting for those to come back. Once they do we have to turn around and send them back to Florida to get them state sealed. We also have our Dr. apt, bank apt., Police apt., and fingerprinting in Atlanta, meeting up with our notary (Mrs. Donna=) and getting the clerk of court to notarize our notary=)!!!

My hope is to get everything done in these two weeks that I possibly can so that while we are gone we won't be wasting any time!! Just waiting on our I-171H to come then get state sealing. I have no clue how long it will take to get it back but I want to be ready so that is all we are waiting on. All this on top of getting ready to drive to Florida by myself with 3 kids and staying for a week and a half. So needless to say we are BUSY BUSY BUSY...But this is just another beauty of homeschooling. The kids are learning all about our government, notaries, Ethiopian culture and a myriad of other things all while we are driving from here to there practicing what the Lord calls 'Pure and Undefiled Religion'.

In our van there is always a conversation going on about why we are doing this or that and how it all works together. The van is one of my kids favorite places to ask questions and I love learning with them!! Better run and get dinner going=)
Oh did I mention we also are planting our garden this week...we will just have to pick a different time of life to sleep=)

Camping Trip 2010

"Why don't we do this more often"?..was the question we kept asking ourselves. We had a GREAT time camping. You would think that living out where we do that camping wouldn't be as much fun as if you lived say in the city. But we had so much fun. We met up with some friends of ours that live in OK and camped for 4 days and 3 nights. The weather was beautiful for us the entire time except the morning we were packing up to go home.

The boys thought it was great to sleep outside with mom and dad. They ate all kinds of 'junk' food that mama never buys at home. Stephen still is teasing me about buying Nitrate Free Hot Dogs=) We went hiking both days. The first for 3 miles that one was HARD lots of climbing up and climbing back down. The second day we went for a 5 mile hike which was not so much climbing. We had just a blast over all. Plus we got some adult time in the evenings to sit around the camp fire and discuss important life issues and talk about God's Word. Good friends are such a blessing!!

God knows=)

So my walk to the mailbox today FINALLY produced our letter from USCIS!!!! Our appointment is for April 26th in Atlanta=) It's a small step..but a step none the less=)!!!!!!

Oh the waiting!!!

I have never in my life been so excited to get the mail as I have been lately. We mailed our I-600A with our finalized homestudy and now have to wait till we hear something back from them about a fingerprinting appointment. So everyday I go to the mailbox (which is 1/2 a mile from our house) with great anticipation of getting a letter from USCIS!!! But thus far I leave the mailbox each time bummed. From all the research that I have done on how long it takes to get your final approval from USCIS it has varied from 1 to 3 months. I'm hoping ours is more on the 1 month side=)!! Once we get our fingerprinting appointment we will go to BCS and get our dossier packet and start working on that. At least then I will have something to channel all of this excitement into. But for now we just wait....

Adoption is a lot like a pregnancy...a REALLY long one. I always enjoy going to the Drs. to check on the baby and feel like each appointment gets me one step closer to holding my baby in my arms. Just like with this letter I'm waiting for, feels like one step closer to being united with our daughter!!
God continues to be so faithful to us in this journey !! I think sometimes we miss what the Lord would have for us because of fear and the unknown. He is a mighty God and we are so blessed to be a part of what He is doing in this world through adoption!!

Spring time in Tennessee is my favorite time of the year!! We got our new batch of chicks that are now 5 weeks old. The boys are having a good time in their new fort that stephen built them. We are getting ready to string up the zip line on a new part of the farm. Our onions are in the ground and the rest of our seeds are on their way. This years garden will be much the same as last years but this year I am planning to be in it much more since I won't be 9 months pregnant=) We are still in the market for a calf or two and we are thinking of getting a puppy when we come back from our trip to Florida. Samson needs a friend=)

We are leaving this weekend to go camping with some of our best friends. We are meeting halfway and camping in western Tennessee. Spring time in Tennessee is so beautiful and I can't wait to get out there and enjoy it=)
I just know that our letter is going to come while we are gone!!!

2 Trips

Well not much has happened since my last update. We are waiting for our homestudy to be finalized then onto our dossier. But as I said in my last post that Ethiopia was considering requiring two trips to complete your adoption we now know that this is the new law. Once we are referred our daughter we will fly to Ethiopia to attend the court hearing that makes our her legally ours=) Then you head back over there between 1 and 3 months later to bring her back home!! We are currently thinking that just I will go for the second trip. From all that we have heard from other adoptive families they really felt safe in Addis Ababa and I know of several other moms who went alone. We will continue to pray about it and see where the Lord leads us.
In the meantime we are very ready to get our other necessary documents to send over so that we can start our wait!!

New News

Our home visit has come and gone!! Everything went really well. I'm sure I went overboard making everything clean and perfect but it was a great catalyst to deep clean my house=) Anyways we only have one more document to turn in and then we can get going on our dossier!!
Stephen finally finished his Hague Training which I was VERY happy about. But during that training we both started to get concerned about this issue and that. So we just started praying and AGAIN the Lord confirmed to us that we are supposed to keep on. Stephen was on his way to work. His drive is about 40 minutes so he has a good amount of time to pray and just seek the Lord in quiet. On this particular day he was listening to love 89 and was about to turn it off so that he could focus on some different issues that were on his heart, namely our adoption. When he really felt impressed by the Lord to not turn the radio off. So he decided to leave it on. Shortly after a short bible message came on. He said the message was a very vague one but the gist of it was, if the Lord has called you to do something and it's getting hard, keep on. Don't give up!! He said he knew after that that he was free to turn off the radio. That the Lord had again spoken to him that this adoption is from Him and He alone will see us through. We are so blessed to see the Lord's hand in this and so thankful that He would use us to change someones life FOREVER and that He would bless our home with another precious child. To become a deadly sharpened arrow sent out from our quiver to change this world for the glory of God!! Praise the Lord~

PS. If you guys would please be in prayer about our adoption. We just found out from our coordinator that the Federal High Court in Ethiopia is debating on making 2 trips mandatory for each couple. The first trip would be to meet your child and attend the court hearing there that officially makes the child yours. The second trip would be to go get your child. We are not against getting to see our child any earlier, on the contrary I would LOVE to see them as soon as possible. But the cost of a second trip half way across the world and extra time off of work are what we are concerned about. I also would have a VERY VERY hard time finally meeting him or her and then leaving them there for several months=( All this to say, please pray that if this does go through that the time off of work and everything else will just fall into place!

Interviews

Well our interviews went great. It was actually a lot of fun to sit and talk about this adoption. The boys sat in the opposite room and Bethany sat on the floor in front of us playing with her toys. Stephen jr. was very curious after we left about all that we had talked about. They both are very excited about adopting and they also have tons of questions. So now our home visit is scheduled for the next week!!