Waiting quietly

"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassion's never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.' The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD."Lamentations 3:22-26

We are still waiting on that 171. Mary said that if its been over 6 weeks (next week is week 8) she can contact CIS. So Monday we'll call CIS and see where the heck our letter is! I am ready to get our paperwork done and be officially waiting. I'm getting so anxious, I really need to get a grip! I need to slow down, and enjoy the holidays and focus on that. I'm usually pretty good at finding peace in whatever stage of life that I'm in but this is sooooo much more challenging. Like all of you adopting, I wish I could just know a date, or know that in exactly three months I'd have a referral...I wish, I wish!!

171 Letter, where are you????

Still waiting on that darn 171 letter. Everyday I think its going to be here but not yet! Its almost been four weeks which is how long I've heard that it takes after getting finger printed. So right now I'm looking into getting our shots out of the way and about to start with our education stuff. So nothing to exciting to report, just a little bit more waiting.

On a different note, my awesome sister and husband (she also has three kids, Allee-9, Jadon-5, and Ben-3) decided to open their home to a sweet 9 year old girl from the Ukraine for the holidays. She will be coming Dec 20th (i think) and staying for 3 weeks. We are all so excited to meet her. She doesn't speak English so the whole language thing might be a challenge but I cant wait to show her around and share in our Christmas festivities. We are such a crazy, out spoken (to say the least) family so I hope we don't scare to girl to death! I also want to have her and some of the other hosted children out to our farm to show them the horses and do all that fun stuff!

Finger print time!!

This wed. we are headed to CIS to get our official finger prints! Once we have those done we will just be waiting for our 171 letter, which is the last thing to go in our dossier paperwork. I am really feeling like we're getting close, I can see an end in sight of all this paperwork!!! I am working on redoing ALL of the papers I sent to Kate at KBS because the notary was going to expire too soon. We still need to get a letter from our health isurance and life insurance, photos of me and jason, and one more ref. letter, then we are done!! We are starting to do our education classes, which i'm really pretty excited about, I think some of the lectures should be pretty interesting and helpful.

On a different note...we went and picked some pumkins the other day. Ella's school has a HUGE pumkin patch on the front lawn every year. For those of you that dont know this about me, I love, love, love pumins. I love to decorate with them, cook with them, you name it! So I will admit I went a little nuts. I have pumkins on my front porch, on hay infront of our barn, on the dining table, the coffee table, its a little out of hand!! I just really love fall, the colors, the cooler weather (well not so much here in texas), the leaves starting to fall, its just a great time for slowing down, taking walks.

Checks on my list!!

I know, I know, I suck at keeping up with my blog!!! But to my defense, my computer is having a little bit of a break down making it really hard to do anything on the internet!

I do have some new updates which maybe dont sound too exciting but to me there is nothing better than checking things off your list of 'to dos'. I will admit, I sometimes cheat and check off waaaayy before I actually finish it, but I love to see some checks on a list (i'm such a freak)! ANYWAYS, so we have finished all of our stuff for Gladney, and Mary told me yesterday that our homestudy was delievered to CIS on Sept. the 13th. So now we're waiting for CIS to contact us for our fingerprint appointment which can take 4-6 weeks after your homestudy makes it to CIS so any day now! Then after we get that done we'll be waiting on our 171H letter from CIS which is the last thing to put into our dossier. In the meanwhile we are wrapping up our collection of paperwork for the dossier. I have a huge folder of things to put in the mail today to send to Kate (at KBS, the company that auth. things for your dossier, what a blessing they are). Hopefully everything is correct and we wont have to redo. I hate having to redo, and having to re-add them to my list, such a bummer! The last packet I sent to Kate I had a few redos so hopefully I got it right this time!

I also got some info on vaccinations. We need to contact our local travel clinic and make an appointment to get some shots. I know we'll need hep. vaccinations, which i hear is done in a series of shots, so we should get on that. I also have been told that its recommended that not only the traveling parents get the hep. vaccinations but anyone in the family. So does that mean only Ella or should grandparents get them too??? I'm a little scared of the vaccinations mainly giving them to Ella. I just hate putting anything into her body that I'm not sure what it'll do. I guess its all this info going around about school vaccinations. I also am totally confused on the maleria medicine. From what I'm gathering (and this could be completly wrong) the maleria med. is something that you take for several days while traveling and after travel. Apparently the mesquitos that carry maleria though are not in Addis and it is considered a "no risk" part of Africa. However they dont tell you straight up to take it or not to take it, they just leave it up to you. I guess I'll just wait and talk to the proffesionals, so more to come on that!!

Ella has been talking alot again about her baby SISTER from Africa. She is not even thinking about the fact that her sister could in fact turn out to be a brother! Some body is going to be in for a surprise if it doesnt go her way! Either way she'll be such a great big sister.

Back to the real world

We are back from Florida, we completely enjoyed our vacation! The weather was absolutely perfect (don't worry the moment we hit the Texas border we hit rain), the beach was beautiful, the drive went really well, the seafood was great, we had tons and tons of fun! Ella perhaps had the best time of her life... she really LOVED the ocean. I was shocked by how well she did, the waves were pretty darn big and she took it like a champ. She loved for us to pull her out on a boogie board and pretend she was a surfer. Before the trip she saw the surfing movie with the penguins and thought that was really cool. She is swimming really well, she wears a floating of course, but can really hang with the big kids. Here are some pics from our trip...

Ella's cool shades for the drive

Me and Ella at this great dive in Louisiana. Ella danced the night away with the band. Ella in costume on the swamp tour

Ella and her daddyJust cooling down with her fan Dreaming of sand castles and surf On the way home we stayed at a plantation in Louisiana called Oak Alley. The trees we're absolutely amazing.
As for adoption news...Our paperwork for Gladney is complete it is sitting on my desk ready to be dropped in the mail!!!!! YEAH! One part done and now to start the Dossier stuff. I must admit I'm feeling a little bit frightened by the Dossier. I'm not sure if its the word that intimidates me, the amount of work that it seems to be, or just all the steps that have to be done. I think I have most of the paperwork together so I think most of it will be getting it notified and checking with Gladney to see if I'm doing it right.

As for how we're feeling...I think with any big decisions there are big ups and downs. Before we left for our trip I was having some doubt, feeling scared, and overwhelmed. I started getting worried about the trip over there and how Ella was going to adapt, I worried about the mounds of paperwork needing to get done, about when everything would happen, I started to worry about all the unknowns. I guess that's were faith comes in and I know that God will bless me with it. I know not to be anxious and to wait and that God has a perfect time and perfect plan but I just wish he's let me in on the ol timeline, wouldn't that be nice! I think most of all I was just run down and needing a pick me up. After getting home I'm feeling renewed not only in energy but in our decision.

Somewhat of a time line

Everyone is asking when we'll be getting a referral so here is a little time line for you guys:

• Finish the last little bit of paperwork for Gladney
• Finish putting together our paperwork part of the dossier
• Finger prints
• Get our CIS letter
• Have all that notarized
• Send it all to KBS for Authen.
• Then the dossier will be sent to Ethiopia
• What we've all been waiting for...the referral

Something else that will hold things up a little...Ethiopia has a rainy season. It literally rains everyday for about two months. Image the living situations now, and then add major rains, wow. So if we don't (which I seriously doubt we will) have our dossier turned in by July 1st to Ethiopia then we can still get our referral however we cant travel until October. I am soo ready to see our baby's picture however I also cant imagine seeing her or him and not being able to just jump on a plane and go. So I suppose the goal is to get everything turned in and ready so that when the rain stops we'll be on our way! All in perfect timing I guess...

sorry, nothing exciting to share

Not much new news to share. We got an email from Amy (the woman who did our home study) and everything looked great! We are working on getting our first set of fingerprints done and still gather things for our dossier. I'm getting a little pooped with all the paperwork, I need my second wind!

All these blogs that I've been reading have totally gotten me excited, well even more excited! All the pictures look amazing. A part of me cant wait to get there and a part of me is scared to death. I am SO glad that Stephanee is going with us. She will be such a good rock for me to lean on. Nothing like your big sister!! I know she will be right in her element! Thanks Steph!