Purchase Tickets....Check!

All right, the tickets have been purchased! We're leaving on Wednesday evening out of Chicago and flying to London. We get into London in the morning and we have about a 12 hour layover so we're going to take the tube into town and see Big Ben and Parliament (hopefully not as many times as Chevy Chase did).



After a day in London we'll catch a 9:00 PM flight on Ethiopian Airlines that will make a brief stop in Rome and then head on to Addis Ababa. I think we get in around 8:00 AM on Friday.



We'll spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday experiencing Ethiopia with an amazingly generous family from Pennsylvania that is living in Addis right now. Using some connections at church, we've managed to Mennonite Our Way all the way to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We're very excited for the opportunity to spend a few days seeing Addis before we meet Jeremiah. Hopefully we'll get somewhat adjusted to the time change too before we start taking care of an infant.

On Sunday afternoon/evening we'll check into the Union hotel where AGCI has families stay. I believe there are at least 5 families in our travel group. Monday will be the big day when we meet Jeremiah for the first time and have our embassy appoinment. There will be other activities like shopping and a cultural dinner during the week. I think most families will head for home Thursday evening but we'll be leaving Friday at noon and flying to London. We have an overnight layover in London and then fly out in the morning to Chicago.

That's the gameplan. We're leaving in NINE days! Wow we have a lot to do. On Saturday Monica helped Target get off to a strong start for May sales. We've got a little more stimulating to do to the economy between now and when we leave.

Since we have three bedrooms and will soon have three boys, we've known that we needed to do some combining of rooms so Jeremiah had a place to sleep. The plan has been to put Sawyer and Brennan in the same room. We've known this for awhile but it took some time to figure out what we were going to do for beds. We decided to go with bunk beds and I would make them. It needs to be more of a loft at the beginning so we can just put Sawyer's crib underneath until he's ready for a big boy bed. So this past Saturday, with the help of my father and father in-law, the project took finally got off the ground. Here are some less than stellar shots I took with my cell phone. We're one light sanding and a final coat of poly away from it being done!

Tentative Travel Dates

We got our tentative travel dates today!  AGCI wants us there by Sunday, May 17th.  We're tentatively planning to go a few days early so we'll tentatively be leaving on May 13th or May 14th.  That means we're leaving in 2 weeks (tentatively of course)!  Wow!  Tentatively we will get home on May 22nd or 23rd.  One thing that is definite is that Monday, May 25th is Memorial Day which means I'll have an extra day to recover before going back to work.  Sweet!  I'll post more definite travel dates once we get our tickets booked.

I'm using this post to test out my ability to post to our blog via email, which would allow me to post while we're in Ethiopia (I guess you can't access blogger in Ethiopia).  A few families that traveled recently did this so hopefully I can figure it out too.  They even managed to get pictures on their posts.  I'll tackle that later.  Baby steps.

Two weeks people!!!

Donation Items

While I've got everyone's attention, we're hoping to take a bunch of donations for Hannah's Hope, Jeremiah's orphanage, when we go to pick him up. Their biggest needs right now are Soy Formula, Diapers, & Wipes. The diapers they need are the smaller sizes for infants. If anyone wants to donate something for us to take, please contact me. You could also just give us money and we'll buy the donations to take. The sooner you can get us stuff the better so we'll know how to pack.

Thanks!

Hopefully I'll have travel dates to post next week.

We passed!!!

Our case manager called Monica a few minutes ago and told her that we passed our court appointment earlier today in Ethiopia. Jeremiah is legally our son! We should get our travel dates next week. Our adoption agency needs to schedule our appointment at the US Embassy before they can give us firm travel dates. It will likely be sometime in mid-May. I'll post once we know more.

Court Date

Sometime tonight while we're sleeping or early tomorrow morning a judge in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia will review our case and have the opportunity to declare that Jeremiah is legally our son. Hopefully all the paperwork is in place and the judge will approve our case. Obviously we're praying that we can pass the first time through and go to Ethiopia soon to bring Jeremiah home. I'm not sure how quickly we'll hear results. It would be nice to know by the weekend, but I'm not counting on it. Sometimes it takes close to a week for people to find out if they passed or not. I'll post something as soon as we find out.

In other news, our case manager was in Ethiopia a few weeks ago and sent us this update about Jeremiah "B"...
"As I am sure you are well aware, B is such a sweet, handsome little guy! He was usually sleeping whenever I was around, but the few times I caught him between sleepy times he would look at me with those beautiful eyes of his and give me the shyest of smiles. I am so sad I was not able to catch one of these on camera! From what I could understand from the special mothers, he is a pretty laid-back happy baby, and they absolutely love taking care of him. It looked like there were two special mothers who primarily looked after him during the hours I usually visited, and from seeing how well he responded to being with him, I think it is a good indication to his ability to bond and attach. I am so excited for you to be united with him!"

We also received a few new pictures of Jeremiah with the update. It's amazing how much a baby can change going from 2 months old to 4 months old when you don't see him everyday. The straight hair from age 2 months has turned into thick, curly hair at 4 months. I had to look at the pictures for a little while to make sure that our case manager had sent us pictures of the right child. Once I spotted the cowlick, I knew that was our boy.

Well I guess we'll keep doing what we do so much during the adoption process.....wait.

Drawn From Water

I came across a video yesterday on another blog about an organization called Drawn From Water. The organization was formed because "in rural Ethiopia, parents are forced to kill some of their children due to tribal superstitions. We are rescuing and providing a home for these children." This group is just getting started. It's an amazing/heartbreaking story. Read the story, check out the video, and maybe even get involved.


Drawn from Water from Drawn From Water on Vimeo.

Spring Break

This was the view out our kitchen window Monday morning (the first day of Monica's spring break)...



It looked really nice but seemed like it would have fit better with Christmas Break than Spring Break. Most of the snow was melted by the middle of the day.

As for the adoption front, there really isn't much to report. We're still waiting for our April 22nd court date, which is rapidly approaching. Our case manager just got back from Ethiopia. Hopefully we'll get an email from her sometime in the next few days with some pictures of Jeremiah.

Tomorrow afternoon we're heading for Kansas. My cousin is getting married on Saturday. It's about a 14 hour drive. We're splitting the trip into two days on the way out but we have to do the whole trip back on Sunday so Monica can be at school on Monday. Hopefully the boys' eyes will just glaze over as we feed one video after another into the DVD player.

Speaking of the boys, I'm realizing I don't have very many pictures of them on here.