Happy Monday everybody. I hope you enjoyed your weekend! We had a lot of fun…on Saturday we celebrated Maggie’s birthday with a giant Snow White cake, dinner out with our family and some friends, and then a trip to the movies to see “Open Season”. (Pretty darn hilarious!)

Maggie enjoyed being “Princess” for the day (although truth be told, she is the princess most days!) and birthdays are always a lot of fun in our house.

The weekends are kind of nice…with all the kids home and all of our running around, I don’t have as much time... more

In my last post I announced the new websites created by Rainbowkids, advocating special needs adoption and providing resources, support, information and community for parents who have adopted, are adopting or are considering adopting a special needs child.

Although some of these websites are still under construction, each one is or will be a wonderful resource. They will serve as a place for adoptive parents to network, for potential adoptive parents to get information and support, for children with a certain special need to be advocated for and for experiences and resources to be share.

I am a huge advocate of adopting children with special needs. Although I would never encourage... more

Oh boy…it is getting harder and harder to “not hold my breath” and “not get my hopes up” about traveling earlier!!!!!

I knew last week that the woman at the CDC in Atlanta, the one who has to review our waiver before it can be sent back to Africa to be approved, was out of the office for several weeks. I knew she was returning to work on Monday, Sept. 25 (yesterday). I assumed that she would be very busy and a lot of catching up to do (her voicemail message said it could take her up to 10 days to return messages!). I assumed this would... more

At three o’clock this morning, one of my girls came through my bedroom to use the master bathroom (the one downstairs is being remodeled and we try to keep kids out of the hallway one when Marcus is sleeping because it is attached to his room).

So after I tucked her back into bed and stumbled back up the stairs, I shot a look at the computer and (remembering it was day time in Ethiopia) I decided to wishfully check my email quickly before falling back into bed.

I had resent my email message to the Embassy before I went, asking... more

I am the emotional, impatient spouse when it comes to our adoptions (if that comes as a surprise to anyone…those of you who know me well can stop laughing at the understatement now).

Josh is typically the “big and strong” one, and sometimes he is so patient it makes me NUTS. Just a week ago when I was being particularly whiny, he pointed out how much longer this “could” have taken, and how much longer it has taken for many other families.

My reaction? Yes, thank you, I know. But I don’t care.

I was almost irritated with... more

I bet you can’t guess what I woke up to this morning (and no fair guessing a throbbing toe, because that is NOT what I am talking about.) :)

Give up?

SNOW!

Yes, on Sept. 16 it was snowing on my house. Not just a few passing snow flakes either…three or four hours of real snowing snow. The kids were bouncing off the walls, the house was chilly and soon enough it had warmed up enough that it melted away and everything outside is a muddy mess.

We live in the mountains and unseasonable snow is not all that unusual, but this is early even for us.

Last night I got an even better surprise… I got an email from a friend directing me to Denise’s... more

Today is September 13. That means our HIV waiver has now (hopefully!) been submitted as planned to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa. It means our final wait is finally ticking down. It means that Belane will finally be in our arms in the foreseeable future. Woo hoo!

I am excited and anxious. I take comfort (and keep myself busy!) by organizing and planning, so I have been doing lots of that sort of stuff.

I think it is the “not knowing” when this is all going to happen that is making me anxious. We were planning on the waiver taking about eight... more

Ok so there won’t really be any trains…but we’ve been making (tentative) travel plans!!! Yay!!!

We started looking at the calendar and thinking about travel. With Belane’s embassy appointment next week on Sept. 13, if her waiver is processed in eight weeks as the last two have been, that means it would be done around Nov. 8. Thanksgiving is early this year…it is on Nov. 23. Ideally, I want to go to Ethiopia and get Belane and be home all together for Thanksgiving. I do not want to miss Thanksgiving with our other kids and I really don’t want to have... more

This morning we got the call that our I600 has been approved. Woo hoo! (and a big thank you to our Senator’s office). We are now looking at our last hurdle…the HIV waiver, and then we can finally, finally travel to get our sweet girl.

I remember back when we started all of this, I wrote out the long list of “steps” in the process that had to happen before Belane could come home, and there were so many things that had to happen and so many variable time frames that it was overwhelming.

We heard all the horror stories about how the process... more

(continued from the previous post)

As soon as I saw that padded envelope from Adoption Advocates in the mail box, I knew it was the camera from our welcome bag to Belane! I ripped the package open and held the camera…it was unreal to think that this camera which I had bought in our small town had traveled all the way to Ethiopia, spent a day with our daughter, and was now back in my mail box. Amazing.

A mad dash to the pharmacy and a very long hour waiting for the “one-hour photo”, and we had pictures!!! Unfortunately someone... more