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!