Awassa

Yesterday, we traveled from Addis to Awassa.  The trip was incredible!  The countryside and its people are very beautiful!  In our book, Ethiopia must be home to the most beautiful people in the world! 

We met with our children's aunt yesterday.  This was more emotional than we were prepared for, but was one of the most amazing moments of this process so far.  Although tomorrow we will be picking up Sofie and Sam from the orphanage, so it only gets better from here on out.  We can hardly wait!

 

We started today off by attending the Festival of St. Gabriel (outside St. Gabriel's Church).  There were tens of thousands of people there.  It was hot, and very packed, but it was an emotionally moving experience. After lunch we headed south to a coffee farm.  Let's just say that driving in Ethiopia is near-death experience.  You are constantly stopping or swirving to avoid farm animals, bicyclists, pedestrians, or vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road.  There is almost no traffic control at all, so it is certainly an adventure!    While at the coffee farm we trekked through  the forests and toured a cave, which was once a five-year hideout for the former emperor's daughter during the Italian occupation. We followed this by having Machioto's in a beautifully crafted coffee hut.  
 
Sorry, for the short posts, but the internet is too slow when it does work.  We will post more details and pictures when we get home.  We will TRY to post some pictures of our children when we get back to Addis.

Incredible Ethiopia

Just wanted to drop a quick post and let everyone know we are here and safe. Sorry for taking so long to post but the internet is not very cooperative here. Ethiopia is incredible! The people are beautiful. As we drive down the streets there is an incredible mix of poverty, joy and beauty. On the same corner you will see homeless children and wealthy business people. Some are dressed in rags, others in traditional ethnic attire, and others in the most expensive business suits you would find in the US. We had an extremely busy day today. We went shopping, toured two museums, and went to an amazing traditional Ethiopian dinner with dance displays from all over Ethiopia. Africa has made a terrific impact on us so far. We have never seen such a mix of beauty, joy and despair in one place.

Tomorrow we will be traveling to our children's home town of Awassa where we will have a chance to meet our children's aunt. When we are on our way back to Addis Abbaba, on Monday, we will stop and pick up our children from their orphanage which is about an hour outside of the capital. Once we have them back we will not be able to leave the hotel with them until we leave on Friday.

The power has gone out in the middle of trying to send this email so I will save the text and send it when the power comes back on (I am now posting this Saturday morning).

Next post.... from Addis Ababa

Well there are only a few last things to pack and a lot of travel lies ahead of us, but it is a great feeling that our next post will be from Ethiopia!! I am sure we will get as much sleep tonight as we have every other night for the last week or so (NONE) as we wait in anticipation of the wonderful journey that awaits us. We will try to keep our blog updated with pictures.

Only days are left!!!

When you start the adoption process, the timeline starts off being measured in years. After the paperwork is complete, you count the waiting in months until you receive a referral, then in weeks until your court date, and there is always another countdown. Well here we are in the midst of our final countdown, only days away from holding these beautiful children in our arms! It is hard to believe it is really happening. I find myself looking at their bedrooms wondering what it will be like to finally fill our home and complete our family. I can not wait for our quiet home to be filled with the sounds of children.

We are going through a whole range of emotions. We are very excited to meet our children for the first time. We also have all the nerves of first time parents with the added anxiety of the potential communication problems and the emotions of the already complex lives that our children have endured. How will our children react as we swoop in and turn their lives upside down once again? In the end we try to remain confident in our preparations and the love we share for our children.

Through it all, our family and friends have been very supportive. The community that surrounds adoption continues to amaze me. Our lives have been enriched through this process in so many ways. Everything we have learned has lead to a deep love for Ethiopia and its people.

As we prepare to travel, it has been difficult to sleep as I have been going through checklists in my head of everything that needs to be finished in the house, the final pieces of paperwork to gather, the preparations for being off from work (Colleen for three months), talking to our school district, getting the last of our shots, making sure the children are added to our insurance, making doctor's appointment for the children, making travel arrangements..... and the packing. But when I do sleep, I often dream of our children. Soon I won't have to fall asleep to see their beautiful faces. Our life is about to change in ways we can only begin to imagine and we can't wait!!!

Best Chirstmas Ever!!!

If anyone ever asked me before now, how I would feel about spending all day Christmas Eve and all day Christmas on an airplane, I know my response would not have been what it is today. Today as our plans have been finalized and we now know that we will spend Christmas on an airplane, my answer is... there is no place I would rather be. This will go down as the best Christmas ... so far!!! I can only begin to imagine the joys of spending the holidays with our children.

As the new year dawns here in the US we will be hunkered in a guest home in Addis Ababa enjoying our new beginning. I still have to stop and remind myself every once in a while that I am now a father to two beautiful children!!!

Praying for a confirmed embassy appointment!

Hopefully we can confirm our embassy appointment tomorrow and then we will be able to post our travel dates. The wait between referral and travel continues to be difficult for us. We find ourselves hanging on every bit of information we can get from those who have travelled to Ethiopia and met our children. We can not wait to hold them in our arms and see their beautiful country!

In the meantime here is a great video I saw on another blog.

New pictures!

Our adoption agency program director travelled to Ethiopia last week and took some new pictures for us.

We are close to having travel dates set. We have airline tickets on hold but are waiting for firm confirmation of our embassy appointment. Of course, if we do not have a firm confirmation by the end of the week we are going to have to book the tickets anyway. Luckily, adoption fair tickets can be changed and are refundable.

Well here are the pictures:

We are officially PARENTS!!!!!!

Well today is turning out to be one of the best days of our lives. At 11:35 am this morning we got the call that we passed through court today!!! So we are officially parents of Sofie and Sam! I will post some pictures. We have been waiting for so long to be able to do this.

4 days until our court date and a lot to be thankful for!!

We are truly starting to get excited around here. Our court date is only four days and while we know that we may not pass on the first time it is still a huge milestone in the process. The outpouring of love and support from our family and friends has continued to be absolutely overwhelming. I will be posting a lot of pictures below but have not perfected posting pictures with captions on blogger so I will describe he pictures here. Some of the first photos our from our most recent meal at Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant in Ferndale. As you can see our family has been amazing in supporting us through this process and learning all that they can about our children's culture and heritage.

Then there are photos of our shower that Colleen's sister held for us with the help of our cousin's. I can not even begin to think about this shower without beginning to cry. The care and love that was put into this event was amazing and beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Maureen has spent so much time to learn where our children have come from and then passed that knowledge, passion and love on to the rest of our family in a way that we never could. She has provided more of a gift than she will ever know. Her efforts and love will help with Sofanit's and Samson's transition into this incredible family. We will never be able to thank everyone who was involved in the planning and attended (especially those that suprised us by traveling from as far away as Florida) this event enough for their amazing generosity, support and love!!

Finally there are some pictures of Samson's room which is now complete. If you haven't noticed from the pictures of Sofanit's room in previous postings, Colleen is an amazing artist!! It is rare that I get to see these paintings before they are complete but when I see their beginnings and then get to witness the detail of the final product, I am always blown away. I don't know how she does it because I couldn't draw a stick figure without someone making fun of it, but I wish she was not so shy with her talents because she never ceases to amaze me.

Venting!!!

Today was a bad day in our journey. We found out that the ringworm infection on Samson's scalp has resurfaced. Upon reading the medical report we realized that they had taken him off his medication two weeks early.... of coarse we are only now finding this out 5 weeks after he was taken off the medicine prematurely. I can not tell you how frustrating this is because all you have to do is type in the name of the medicine in google, and all you find are warnings about taking all of a prescription because the fungus appears to be cleared up before it is actually completely cleared up. We are absolutely beside ourselves. I can not tell you how horrible it feels to have your child suffering half a world away while you are so helpless to do anything to make him feel better or oversee his care.

At least we have a guardian angel. One of the other adoptive parents is a doctor and is getting more medicine to send over with our agency........Thank you!!!! All we can do is hope it is administered properly this time. Please pray for our son as even though ringworm sounds like no big deal, it is a much different story when it is on the scalp and it can lead to other infections beyond just the itchy soars and bald spots. At this point all that gives us some peace, is that Sofie is there to comfort him.

Two More Weeks Until Our Court Date!

We are two weeks from our court date and we are full of anticipation! We have finished Sofanit's room and are putting the finishing touches on Samson's room now. Here are some pictures of Sofanit's room.

We are looking forward to another get together with the families in our area who have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. We are hoping that the next few weeks will fly by as we have very full schedules.

1 month to go until they are ours!!!

Well, here we are. Our court date is one month from today. I wish I could say the wait has been easy and time is flying by, but it hasn't been. This has been the most difficult waiting of the process yet. I know... this is what everyone says and it is hard to believe while you are waiting for a referral, but it is excruciatingly painful. Sure, we have a lot to do to make sure that our home is prepared for these children, but it is hard not to look at the pictures and videos everyday and wonder if our children are being well cared for, if our son is over his infection, and if our daughter is beginning to think that we aren't coming after all.

For now, we try to keep ourselves as busy as possible. We are making the final preparations in our home and we pray constantly that our children are safe, well cared for and know that they are loved more than they could ever imagine by their family that they have not even met yet.

We are celebrating!!!!!!

Today was a wonderful day!!!! Not only did we get our court date but it was also Sofanit's 10th birthday. Our court date is November 24th so we are still hopeful that we get to travel this year. Luckily I checked my email right before we left for dinner with friends who are also adopting from Ethiopia. I had a feeling about today and checked my phone constantly but had not been able to check my email all day. It turned out that we had a lot to celebrate!!!

It really made us feel good to get this news on the day we chose for Sofanit's birthday. That is a story in itself. In Ethiopia, a birthday is not important like it is here. Sofanit's birthday was unknown and we had to choose it. We chose October 10th as her birthday a couple of weeks ago before the courts opened up and now it turns out that we received our court date on her birthday. This adds a lot of significance to the date we chose and in the future it will always be a wonderful celebration. We had felt a little weird about picking a birthday and waited until the last minute possible to give our agency a date. Today it just feels perfect!!!

Video of our Children!!

Today we received video of our children taken by Beth and Rico while they were in Ethiopia (Thank you!!!!). The video was amazing and our children are beautiful! It gave us so much more perspective than any picture ever could. It allowed us to see a touch of their personalities. And even these few minutes of video gave us so much hope and reassurance. It was incredible to watch Sofie smile and giggle as she looked at pictures of us, our family, dogs, home and their bedrooms. It was great to see that Sam has a good appetite. Which is important because he needs to take his medicine with a full meal.

Thank you so much Beth and Rico for the pictures, videos and your stories! Also, thank you Beth and Matt for taking Samson the medicine! Now we are just praying for a quick court date.

Mike-E, Ethiopian Born Detroit Recording Artist

Here are a few video clips from Mike Ellison a local Detroit recording artist who was born in Ethiopia. He has also been featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam. The third clip features Mike-E speaking about Ingida Asfaw an Ethiopian born doctor who lives in Detroit and is the head of a non-profit group to improve health care in Ethiopia.

Addis Ababa Bete (The Remix!)


Ethiopia - Everything Will Be Alright


Ingida Asfaw - Volvo for Life Awards Documentary

The courts are opening!!!!

We heard this evening from our agency that the courts are opening on September 30th! I guess now we will really be on pins and needles until we hear when our court date will be. We pray that it will be soon so we can travel yet this fall. We also want to get there as soon as possible since the children have already seen pictures of us. We do not want them to start to think we are not coming to get them.

Earlier this month, it was an incredible blessing for us to see the pictures that Beth P. brought back from Ethiopia for us. It was wonderful to see a genuine smile on our daughter's face! We can't wait until they are ours and we can post the pictures. We also got the chance to talk to Beth and Rico on the phone for two hours about the time that they spent with our children and their experiences in Ethiopia while they were picking up their son. It was wonderful to hear that our children are being well cared for and that our daughter was nonstop giggles and our son loves to eat. We were torn to hear that our daughter has a best friend in the orphanage. We are happy that she has a friend to get her through the transitions that she is experiencing, but our hearts ache for the loss that she will experience when she has to part with her friend.

For now, we spend a lot of time staring at pictures of our children, preparing our home, reading blogs and learning some Amahric from the Simple Amharic for Adoptive Families book. The community that surrounds adoption continues to amaze us with their support and friendship. We continuously hear wonderful stories and receive an amazing amount of support every time we mention our adoption. Colleen's sister and her husband even ended up sitting near a family on an airplane who were bringing two children home from Ethiopia during their return trip from Europe. We just can't wait until that is us bringing our children home!

Amended I-171H

This has been a good week for us! We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the families who traveled to Ethiopia this week as they took a photo album and medicine to our children and will be returning with more photos and video for us. Thank you all so much. You have no idea how comforting it is knowing that families have been in contact with our children.

When we got home today, we had received our amended I-171H in the mail from homeland security. Now all we are waiting for are the courts to open back up. I am sure the stories and pictures from Ethiopia will hold us over for a little while but so far the wait for a court date has been much more difficult than the wait for a referral.

Happy Birthday!!

Last night we got together with Colleen's sister and my parents at The Blue Nile Restaurant in Ann Arbor to celebrate our son's second birthday. We had a wonderful meal and a great time!

While we are busy preparing our home for our children, the waiting for a court date is almost more difficult than waiting for the referral especially while the courts are closed. We continue to pray for our children and those who are taking care of them.

We also hope that all of the families who are traveling at the end of the month have a wonderful and safe journey!

Referral Day!!!!!!!!!

Today we accepted a referral of a sibling group of a beautiful 10 year old girl and the cutest 2 year old boy!! So our wait was 5 months and 1 day. While we do not have any stories of unexpected phone calls, today is still one of the most exciting days of our lives. We have been working with our agency for over a month in order to be open to accepting a waiting sibling group. After some ups and downs, it all came together today and what a wonderful day it is!!

We want to thank everyone that has supported us and provided encouragement in this last month. We can't wait to be able to post more information but this will have to wait with the court closure starting this Friday. We will be asking some of you who are traveling to get some more pictures and give them lots of hugs from us!

4+ Months

I know people make fun of me for only posting once a month with the title stating how long it has been but oh well here is another. It is hard to come up with anything to post when there has not been much of any progress in our process.


I wish we could post about a bunch more referrals that have happened since our last post but they have not come. Our prayers go out to the families that are waiting for their court dates. We hope all of the court dates go through before the closing.



We had a great get together at our house this weekend with some of the same families that we got together with on Memorial Day weekend and a new family as well. We had a wonderful time and appreciate everyone coming over. It is great to feel the support of other families that live near us. We hope that these bonds will only continue to grow as we go through this process and hope that our future children also develop great friendships through these wonderful families. We also hope the group continues to grow!

3 Months......

Well it has now officially been three months since our paperwork arrived in Ethiopia. Since our last post there has been some great news... two referrals!!! Beth and Rico, who we met at the barbecue Memorial Day weekend, got a referral for a baby boy a couple of days after the barbecue. We are so happy for them as they were in waiting for a long seven months. Then this week a family from North Carolina got a referral of a boy also. We will be thinking of both families and praying for their children and that they get through court quickly before it closes in August. Two families also recently made it through court and will be traveling together to pick up their children.

It brings hope to us to see referrals coming after quite a while without any. Hearing other families' good news makes our own waiting easier. Our wish for everyone who is in waiting with us is that we continue to hear of referrals, successful court dates and travel stories on a regular basis.

Memorial Day Weekend BBQ

As we near three months in waiting, we had a wonderful weekend. We got a chance to meet six other families in our area that have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia and a family that adopted domestically as well. It was amazing to watch the children interact with each other and we also got a lot of great information about the process and traveling. It made us that much more excited about the journey ahead of us. We can't wait to get together again! It is so great to have this group of people so close to us. We hope that each time we get together the group gets bigger with the addition of children and families and that we hear news of lots of referrals soon.

2 Months

Well we have now been in waiting two months. Since the last post Spring has finally arrived! The warm weather keeps us busy doing yard work which helps to keep our minds off our wait. We keep hoping for a bunch of referrals to come through any day. We can't wait to here some good news from the other families ahead of us.

Last week was a good week. Colleen had a birthday and my sister graduated from U of M in nursing. She will be moving to L.A. We will miss her and hope she will be able to take a vacation from her new job to come back and visit when we finally bring our daughter home. Spring has been good so far but we hope it will get a lot better soon with news of referrals!

African Children's Choir

On Saturday we traveled to East Lansing to see the African Children's Choir. It was an amazing experience. If you ever get a chance to go see them, make sure you do! We also got a chance to meet Cindy and Steve another family who is working with our agency to adopt from Ethiopia. Apparently they had sat behind us at our agency's travel expectations meeting, but we did not really have an opportunity to talk with anyone after that meeting because we were speaking with our caseworker. They had also brought with them Tibebe and his daughter. Tibebe is from Ethiopia, is a professor at Calvin College and recently talked to families who have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia at Gojos (Ethiopian Restaurant) in Grand Rapids. We were not able to attend that event so it was great to be able to meet him and his daughter here. All in all, it was a great evening and it was exciting to meet another family who is just ahead of us in the process and to meet Tibebe as well. Hopefully the group will be able to do another get together with him in the future.

It was great to be able to spend a little bit of time around East Lansing too as Colleen went to MSU, but I wish the weather would have been better. It rained all day and while we were at the concert the rain turned to snow. I am so sick of winter. It is supposed to be 70 here tomorrow though. I can't wait!

1 Month........

Today we have officially been "in waiting" for one month. It has yet to be seen how many more will follow before we get to travel to Ehiopia to meet our daughter for the first time. This week there was a referral from our agency, but that was the first one that we have seen in quite a while. At the travel expectations meeting last week, our agency told us that they expected referrals to start coming again. In the mean time, we will just try to keep busy educating ourselves and reading other blogs and finding joy in their good news. Knowing that every other family that is completed, brings us one step closer to completing ours.

We are very excited for the growing network of families that have adopted from Ethiopia who live so close to us. It is comforting that we will be able to raise our daughter knowing other children born in Ethiopia that have similar experiences to hers. As we have moved through the process, one of the things that has impressed us the most, is the amazing sense of community that surrounds adoption. Everyone has been extremely supportive and encouraging. For that, we thank everyone that has read our blog and provided support through comments and sharing their own experiences with group posts and blogs. It will be a tremendous help in getting us through the months to come which I hope will be the quickest months of our life, but which will inevitably end up being the longest of our life.

We wish everyone a quick journey and hope to see a flurry of referrals all followed by quick and successful court dates! We also look forward to meeting more of you that our sharing in this incredible journey to Ethiopia!

Thanks For Visiting!

I wasn't sure if anyone was going to read our blog, but it is great to see that we have already received a great response.


Just wanted to take the time to share a photo of our Huskies. The black one is Niko and the brown is Mishka. They are brother and sister from the same litter. I am sure they will be very excited to have a new addition to the house. They love children and are pretty calm these days as they are turning 10 in a month and a half. We are a little worried that they may be jealous that our daughter will be stealing all of the attention, but I am sure they will adjust well.

First Post

I have never blogged before, so please be patient. We are setting up this blog to tell the story of our journey to adopt. We have chosen to adopt from Ethiopia and are well into the process which started all the way back in May of 2007. That was the point when we started attending open houses to decide which adoption agency we would use. After attending AAI's open house we were both drawn to their Ethiopia program for reasons that were somewhat unexplainable to us but as we sat in the car, after hearing about all of their available programs in the meeting, we looked at each other and in unison each said "I am thinking Ethiopia."

From there, we went through an international adoption awareness meeting, transracial/transcultural adoption training, and submitted our formal application in August of 2007. This began a very busy period in the process of gathering paperwork for our home study, application for a foreign adoption and dossier. Our home study was completed in October of 2007 and we sent in our application to USCIS. During all of this time, we were still tracking down all of the paperwork for our dossier. After a three and a half month wait we received our I-171H approval on February 14th, 2008. This made for a wonderful Valentine's Day gift and milestone in our process. We finalized all of the notarizations and authentications for our dossier and after bundling at the US State Department and Ethiopian Embassy it was sent to Ethiopia on February 28th, 2008. At this time we officially became a family "in waiting." This was another huge step in the adoption process.

While attending a travel expectations meeting in Grand Rapids, where our agency's headquarters is located, we learned that our dossier had arrived in Ethiopia on March 3rd, 2008. So we have officially been waiting for almost one month now. They tell us to expect a four to six month wait from the arrival of our dossier in Ethiopia for the referral, but of course we have high hopes that it will happen sooner than this.

Up until now, we have been very busy filling out forms, going to meetings and classes, completing online courses, tracking down paperwork and educating ourselves about Ethiopian culture and history. From this point on there is no more paperwork to chase down so we will try to patiently wait while we further educate ourselves on Ethiopian culture and raising our child. Hopefully working on this blog and posting will be therapeutic.

For now, I am overwhelmed by the thought that our daughter is living somewhere in Ethiopia and I hope she is being well cared for. I worry about the events that are unfolding within her birth family that will bring her to our family and am sad for all of their loss. All we can do is hope and pray for the best and for our journey to bring us to our daughter soon.