Almost done packing!!!!

Well we are almost ready to go!!! Donations are almost all ready (still need to do the final weigh in). I'm all packed and ready, and holding to his nature Stephen is still not packed=).



It's finally sinking in that we are leaving for Africa to meet our little girl FOR REAL! These last few weeks have been a blur of preparation and planning. It's amazing how much has to be done to travel and not to mention getting everything ready for your kids while your gone.
My stomach is starting to do flips everyday when I realize how much closer we are to leaving. The only thing that I'm still struggling with is leaving our kids here. I have never been away from them for more than 2 or 3 days (Bethany only 1 day!). I am going to miss them sooooooooooooo much that it just hurts thinking about leaving them. Yet I'm also looking forward to spending so much alone time with Stephen.
The kids are SO excited for their Papa and Barbie to come up and stay with them. I know they will do just fine, it's just this mama's heart that HATES being away from them!

So the plan is that we are leaving here Friday morning to catch our plane to Chicago at 12:00. We then have a 3 hour layover in Chicago till we get on our next flight to Frankfurt Germany. Once in Germany we have a 6 hour layover until the last leg to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia! We 'should' be getting in Saturday late in the evening. We're hoping to attend the Ethiopian church the next day, but really we will have to see what the entire week holds once we get there.

We will be meeting 'A' Monday morning (middle of the night on Sunday for you), if you think about it pray for us Sunday night that our first meeting would go good and that she won't be afraid of us. We have been waiting a long (7 months) for this day and we are just so excited that it's almost here!!!!

PS. I also plan to blog from Ethiopia if I'm able to! So check for updates while we are there!!

Trying Ethiopian food for the first time....

A while back we made plans with our best friends to go and eat at the Gosh Ethiopian Restaurant. This was my family's first time eating Ethiopian food. We were really excited to be eating the food that 'A' eats every day. I went into it a little nervous (I'm a bit of a picky eater). But the food was GREAT! Stephen and I loved it! The boys ate some of the food but they weren't huge fans of it (but we're going to work on them=). It really was a great night!

11 DAYS!!!!

Postponed

So our case was supposed to go before the judge yesterday to have one aspect of it settled....but.... our date had to be rescheduled due to a conflict of scheduling.
We're really bummed because we really hoped that this one aspect of our case would be behind us when we travel for our court date. As it stands now the judge is going to review everything the day of our court date. So we are praying that it all gets finalized that day and that maybe, possibly our letter could even be there that day?!
With how things are working right now this is a big prayer, but I have faith that if the Lord allows it than it WILL happen!
I can't go into much detail but please join me in praying that all will be worked out on May 19th!

Mwangaza Children’s Choir

We had the privledge of having the African Childrens Choir come and preform at our church last week. What a treat it was. Those kids were such a blessing to everyone there.
They told us all about their ministry.
This only whetted our appetite for Africa all the more! We are so excited to go knowing that there is a sweet 2 year old little girl there who we can't wait to meet!

EASTER!

We had a great day celebrating the resurection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Our church family was able to again meet ALL together at the Bijou Theater in downtown Knoxville, which was a blast. Stephen was able to get up on stage with the kids and do their song, he was soooo cute! Isaac and Bethany both decided that they were tired and just passed out half way through. Then we had our best friends the Sams and Shields over for lunch and fellowship. The guys got to go out and shoot and us girls got to gab (which we're real good at=). The big kids had fun playing with the littles. What a blessing they are in our lives!


A few Easter pics....

(PS. I'm not yelling at Isaac in the picture above=) We were hammin it up)

He is Risen!!! He is risen INDEED!!! Come Lord Jesus COME!!!

Update!

Yea we got an update this morning! We really were unsure if we would get one or not. The social workers over in Ethiopia typically start doing updates every other month after the child turns 2. Well 'A' turned 2 a few months ago but we have still been able to get an update each month! I'm so happy we got this because even thought they say she is 2 she is still not walking by herself. We found out in this update that she is starting to cruise along the walls and taking a few steps by herself! This is so bittersweet. I'm so happy that she is growing and progressing but it hurts that we are missing these milestones in her life (espcially since we have already missed so much of it). The social workers continue to tell us that she is a very sweet little girl. I can only laugh when i read about her getting upset when another child takes away her toy and how she goes to the nanny to 'tell' on them with a sad face. We got about 12 new pictures of her, some of which she is wearing boy clothes which our boys think is rather funny. 38 days till we leave!!!!

We booked our tickets to AFRICA!!!

After going back and forth on a few different flights Stephen and I decided on one and booked it a few days ago! We are so excited and so happy to finally see things moving along. We will be leaving Knoxville on Friday May 13th and will return on Saturday May 22nd.

We chose this flight because it will put us in Africa on Saturday and give us Sunday to recover a bit before we get to meet our little girl on Monday. Then we are hoping to get to see her each day during that week. As a rule the orphanage will only allow you to stay for a few hours so we are excited to at least have a full week to spend with her. Our court date is on Thursday but we still hope to get to see her maybe after that. We are keeping our expectations in check, knowing that things don't always go 'as planned'.

So now we are just working on our 'To-do before we go to Africa' list, which just seems to grow everyday. This next month is pretty full so hopefully that will help time to go by fast! At least that's my prayer.

Only 42 days to go!!!!!!!!