Care Package #2

We are sending another care package to Asher tomorrow. The family taking it are the Hamilton's. The family will be heading to Ethiopia to pick up their child on 10/4. The family that took our 1st care package is back and we received some new pics of our little guy and news that he is doing well. He is getting so big, it was so great to get updated pics of him and to see how he is growing, it is also very hard as we are missing so much and can't hold or kiss him. Please pray that Asher will stay healthy, protected, and well nourished. Please also pray that we receive a court date asap, that we pass court the first time and are able to travel right away. On another note, My mom is having a baby shower for us this weekend and I am getting really excited!

Culture Camp

Yesterday, Tim and I went to an Ethiopia Culture Camp that the group we meet with in Mason arranged. It was great! We met a lot of great people at the camp. There is actually a small Ethiopian community here in Cincinnati. They meet for fellowship every week and keep their culture intact. They are all very nice and helpful and will be a great resource for us and our child. It is so awsome that we can continue to learn about the culture and to incorporate it into our everyday lives so that our child will not loose these roots and connections to Ethiopia. We also want to learn Amharic, and were shown some good resources to get us started with this. We are also hoping that someone from the Ethiopian community will help us learn, as well. We shall see how that works as Amharic is a bit intimidating. We attended a coffee ceremony at the camp and it was great. The coffee was really good, nothing like our puny coffee!! I want to get a coffee set while we are in Ethiopia and learn how to do the coffee ceremony. Once I learn I want to do the ceremony every week and invite friends and family to come. I am also thinking that I want to learn how to cook Ethiopian food to serve at least once a week, as well. We will see how that turns out!! We also had dinner with Ethiopian food and some music at the camp. It was really neat and everyone from the Ethiopian community dressed in traditional Ethiopian clothing, many of the children and parents also wore traditional Ethiopian clothing. We also met a woman and her daughter who are part of the Ethiopian community and live right down the street from us. We really enjoyed speaking with them and hope we become friends, so I can rope them into teaching us some things!! It was a great time.

Care Package

Today I sent the care package for our little guy by UPS. They said that it should get to the family taking it for us by this Sat. and I think that they are leaving next Tues. I hope that it gets there w/no probs, especially as it is a holiday weekend. I can't wait for the time that we are picking up Asher and delivering some other family's care pkg for their child. I am constantly looking at Asher's beautiful, little face. Gosh, I can't wait! The Cornetts are the family that is taking the care package over to Asher for us. You can check out their blog at http://ourstoryforhisglory.blogspot.com. Please pray that they have a safe, healthy, and awsome trip to pick up their child.

Acceptance

Today, Tim and I sent in our acceptance letter of our referral. We also put together a little care package for another family to take to our baby when they go to pick up their child. We are sending a little blanket, 2 toys, an outfit and onsie, and a baby photo book w/pics of us. The family that takes the package for us will also be able to love on our son a little bit for us and take some pics and hopefully some video for us, as well. Since we can't be there to hold him and care for him, we are sending the next best thing.

It's A Boy!!

Yesterday Tim and I received a referral for the most gorgeous baby boy in the whole wide world!! Yeah! Yipee! Woohoo! Yessss!! Fantastic! Wow! Yeeeaaahhh!! And any other happy word you can think of! Unfortunately, at this time we are not at liberty to share any additional information about our child or referral until we pass court and he is officially our child. It is very hard because I just want to shout from the roof tops and show everyone his beautiful little face!! We might be being a little cautious about the information that we can post but we do not want to take any chances in jeapordizing our adoption, so in our minds better safe than sorry and rest assured that we will share more information as soon as we can. We received the call around 3:50pm yesterday. However, about 20 minutes prior to this, I almost told off a poor Time Warner Salesman! About 3:20pm I received a phone call and when I looked at the number it had a 760 area code and I knew that our adoption agency's area code began with a 7, so my heart stopped and I got all anxious and tentatively answered the phone and when he told me that he was from Time Warner and did we want cable television, I almost blew a gasket!! However, I did not and politely declined any further services and hung up the phone all dejected and sad. Then about 20 minutes later we got "THE call"!! Our family coordinator contacted Tim by phone first and then they called me at work on 3way. It was probably the most amazing moment of my life so far, next to my wedding day. Our coordinator told us that this is "THE Call" and told us about our little boy. My heart stopped and dropped right out of my body when I heard her voice, I could barely even come up with coherent responses during the call. Terra told us that she was emailing our son's medical information and pictures to us to view, etc. We then hung up and I called Tim right back. Tim was crying and got me started crying, as well. I think we were both still a little in shock at this point. Since I was due to get off of work, Tim and I decided to wait until I got home to look at the information and have our first look at our son together. As soon as we opened the email at home we both knew that this indeed was our child and we both started sobbing again! He is so absolutely beautiful. God definately knew what He was doing! Leslie, I think the wishbone definately helped move things along!! Anyway, Tim and I are still on a "baby high"!! I spoke w/a Dr. who specializes in international adoptions and she reviewed our son's health information. Tim and I also got some of the recommended immunizations for travel today. Tim definately wasn't thrilled about this part of the process, but I told him to suck it up!! He is still whining about it!! Little Asher, see how much your daddy already loves you, he voluntarily got 3 shots today, just so he can come and pick you up and bring you home. Oh yeah, we are planning on naming the baby Asher....We can say that as it is not his original name and it will not identify him in anyway. Also, Tim says that he did not cry. He is a man and is strong, GGGRRR!!

Six Months DTE

We are now 6 months DTE. We are definately moving closer and closer, although some days it feels like a snails pace! We received our official "On Deck" email yesterday from AWAA. Basically, it says that we could receive our referral within 1-3 months. I don't think it will be 3 months until we receive our referral, but who knows, it is all in His timing and we know that it will happen when it is supposed to. We are trying very hard not to focus entirely on our referral or the phone ringing, sometimes it is very hard!! I feel like a kid at the dinner table banging his silverwear on the table, yelling "I want my dinner"! Except I am yelling "I want my baby!!" We received a calendar from AWAA at the beginning of the year and there are bible verses on it for each month. It has been very helpful during our adoption process and the verse for August is so very fitting, I look at it several times a day. It is from Ecclesiastes 3:11 "God makes everything happen at the right time. Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done." I keep saying this to myself and it helps me through the day...maybe it will help you through yours, too..

Five months waiting

Yesterday was our 5th month waiting for our baby since DTE. There has been a lot going on this past month. We had our walk-a-thon and raised over $1,000 from it. Thank you to all who participated and donated, we could not do it without you and we love you very much. We also had our 1st yard sale of the year last Friday and made over $300. We are planning on holding another yard sale next weekend if you have anything you would like to donate or if you want to stop by. We are also trying to plan a spaghetti dinner for September. If you have any ideas of where to hold it at, please let us know or if you have any other fundraising ideas that would be great, too. We had our waiting families conference call today with our adoption agency. They have reduced the wait times for boys to 5-8 mo's, so we are right w/in that range now and think we are somewhere in the top 5 waiting for a boy. The wait for a girl is the same at 9-11 mo's and we are somewhere in the top 20 for a girl. Needless to say, we think we are going to have a baby, Asher!! For some reason Tim seems to think we are going to get our referral on August 7th. So, we will just have to see, maybe we should start a poll?!! We also found out that it is very likely that the courts will only close for about 6 weeks this year instead of the usual 3 mo's. We think that the dates the courts will be closed will be starting on 8/22-9/30. This is good news, although not as good as if they didn't close at all!! But we are very thankful and won't push our luck and we'll take what we can get! Also, please pray for our friend, Ronnie Wallace. He got hurt pretty badly at work and is currently in the hospital. They are hopefull that he will get to go home on Friday and start the long recuperating process. Also, please pray for his entire family as they all struggle through this.