Good News -

I know most people probably read that and thought we got a referral. Nope, no referral. The good news is that courts re-opened in Ethiopia yesterday. What does that mean for us? It just means that hopefully things will start moving at a quicker pace. When the courts are closed there are less families taking custody of children. This slows down children leaving the orphanage, meaning there are less openings for children to be brought in to Toukoul to get matched for a referral. Now that more children will be going to their forever families and leaving Toukoul, more children will be coming in to be adopted. So we are thinking we should be hearing something in the next month or so!

Lucky Number 7

We just past the seven month mark. I can't believe we have really been on the wait list for seven months. If you look at the entire process, we started it over a year ago. Wow!  I am past the point of feeling frustrated that we are waiting longer than the average. I know it will happen when the time is right. Waiting between month 5 and 6 were the hardest, because I think I had an expectation that that is when we would get our referral. After we hit 6 months, I have come to realize that I can't have that expectation on something that I have no control and I just need to let the process take its course. Thing have been much better this way.

Sam was gone all last week and part of the previous week traveling for work. He arrived home on Thurs. so to celebrate we had dinner at Heaute Dish. A fun and fancy joint that does a gourmet spin on Minnesota Hot Dishes. We had the sweetbreads (which I kinda had to trick Sam into, but my friend Anna gave him the DL so he was on to my tricks), foie gras, steak and eggs which was tartare and it came with an oyster shooter, and lastly tator-tot hot dish. It was delicious! That evening also marked out seven months of on the wait list!

This weekend was spent babysitting Alivia, my brother and sister-in-laws daughter. I think Brent and Kim thought this would be good training for parenthood, but in all honesty, she was a piece of cake! We actually liked having to go to be early and staying close to home for a change!

A quick shout out to my lovely sister Laura, who did a style on the Denver Post Fashion Editor last week! We are hoping she will do a write up on Laura and her salon. If you are in Denver and need a sassy stylist check her out here.

Colombian Orphans Needing Families

Spread the word. They are little heartbreakers I tell ya!

http://www.wcco.com/video/?id=83660@wcco.dayport.com

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/colombiankids

The Bestest Birthday Card Ever

Once there was this guy.

A nice guy, really.

And he me this girl.

An incredible girl-truly amazing.

So naturally the guy falls

head over heels in love with her,

and pretty soon they're picking out

china patterns and rings

and there's a wedding

and the starry-eyed couple

rides off into what will surely

be a rosy future.

Okay, so now some time has passed

and the guy is living in that future.

He's still married to the girl,

but now their life includes a lot stuff -

appliances and bills and loads of laundry

and home repair projects.

But between all the to-dos and have-tos,

there are these moments

when the guys stops for a minute

and looks around him.

He looks at his wife,

who is still truly amazing,

he looks at their life together,

all the ways and different

directions it's grown,

he looks at all

the responsibilities he's got,

and thinks to himself,

so, this is my life.

And the he thinks,

I am one helluva lucky guy.

Happy Birthday

I LOVE YOU

Whoever said that cards were a waste of many and over rated, are wrong. Plain and simple, you are just wrong. This was the best part of my birthday. I love you babe and you make me the happiest wife on this planet.


Here is another wife's birthday surprise from her husband.


Background info: 35-year-old Sydneysider Kristian Anderson was recently diagnosed with cancer and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. Despite his illness, he wanted to express his gratitude for all the support he’s received from his wife Rachel, so he made her this special birthday video, complete with cameos by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and actor Hugh Jackman.

Better get the plumber on the phone, because you’re about to break a water main.




Rachel's Birthday Video from Kristian Anderson on Vimeo.

If you are wondering why no posts lately…

Well, to be honest, there is not much to write about. Don’t get me wrong, Sam and I are enjoying life, but I don’t think most readers care about what we have been up to, but rather, where are things at with our adoption. Well…they are the same place they were 6.5 months ago. Still waiting.

So let me talk about the ‘waiting’ period a little bit. It wasn’t not hard for me, at all, up until month 5. At month 5 we were smack dab in the middle of the average, so I think at that point I started to have expectations. When you have expectations they don’t come to fruition, it is disappointing. Regardless of what the expectation is. It is a constant wanting for something, and being let down. Every day when the clock strikes 4:30, I figure today won’t be the day.

If you know me, you also know that I am also a planner. So this whole waiting thing, doesn’t really mesh with my personality or my ability to plan. So this adds a whole other element that is equally frustrating. For instance, Sam and I have been saving as much of our PTO as possible for our adoption. Lucky for me, my company will allow me to carry over 80 hours of PTO if it is not used before the end of the year. Unfortunately for Sam, his company does not allow to carry over his PTO and he has banked over 100 hours of PTO. If we don’t travel to Ethiopia yet this year, then what is unused is just lost.

Another ‘planning’ snafu that we ran into is we have been putting money into a Flex Spending Health Savings Account with the idea that our kids will be home by Christmas. Well that just isn’t going to happen. We need to spend the money in this account otherwise it is forfeited. I originally thought, not a problem, we can stock up on diapers and formula. Well, come to find out neither will qualify. We need to figure out what we are going to spend this money on. If you have ideas, please let me know. *sigh*

The last planning issue that we are running into is I am finishing up courses for my MBA. After my current course, I only have 3 courses left. Yeaahhh for me, although this is a long time in the making (6 years). The challenge is when to schedule my classes when we don’t know when we will be traveling. Ideally, I would like to have them all done before we have the kids’ home, but we don’t know when that will be. *uhhggg*

So with all of this bubbling up, I pressed our agency yesterday for some answers. The first response I received was a bit generic. I understand the agency doesn’t have all the answers either, but I still wasn’t satisfied with her response so I pushed harder. I did feel better after their second response. Here is a summary of what we were advised.

SOS EE matches the appropriate child to the appropriate families as they see fit. Part of this decision is based on the information we provided with our request letter to the Board of SOS EE, what we are approved for in our home study, and the children who have been determined fit for adoption at Toukoul and other factors. During the court closure (they are scheduled to re-open on Sept. 30th) referrals slow down because there is no room for children to move from the regional centers to Toukoul in Addis because families are not being granted custody travel to bring their children home, which opens up space for another child to move into. Dove did receive a few referrals in the first part of the court closure.

There are no families who are in their 8th month of waiting for a referral who are working with Dove and historically they have only had one family who waited 9 months. Since they don’t know exactly when we’ll be matched they can’t estimate when we’ll travel for court but the earliest would be December.

So I just did a lot of writing with not a lot of information to report. I am still hopeful, even though some days are hard, that our referral will come soon. I know when we have our referral, the time we spent waiting will just melt away.

Some people ask us a lot, ‘any news yet?’ While this doesn’t bother me as a I know people are just genuinely excited for us, but honestly, if we have news, you will know. What does bother me is when people say “just try to keep yourself busy.” Clearly if that is your advice, you don’t know us. Sam and I are busy busy busy people. I am honestly looking forward to our social calendar slowing down once we have kids.

No news is good news (really?)

I am not sure if I agree with that statement (or at least right now). We want and we are ready for some good news!  This is only news that we have received from our agency which came yesterday:

Dear Samuel and Christina,

As you continue to get closer to the date you receive your referral, we want to encourage you. Although the average wait continues to be 4 to 6 months, there are times when the wait is outside of this average. We continue to be in direct communication with our international contacts and will contact you as soon as we have referral information.

We hope that you will let us know of anything we can do to help as you are waiting.


So to keep you entertained while we wait...here is an adoption video of a family who recently adopted using the same agency and the same orphanage that we are adopting from. Enjoy!

P.S. If any of you could call in a favor for us, now would be the time :-) (Sigh)

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

How did Africa get in my belly?

I bet you have never seen an ultrasound look quite like this before. Ha!