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!