Cold outside, warm inside

We have a pre-Spring storm outside, but we've spent a good bit of the weekend making Endrias and Bethel's rooms warm and comfy.  We're having a problem though.  We have no idea what three and four year olds need.  We went to Toys R Us to just walk around and see what we don't have, but we came away with a couple of sippy cups and some small eating utensils and that's about it.  We did get some pretty cute bedding though and their rooms and play rooms are coming along nicely.

New pictures

Today our adoption agency sent us updated pictures of Bethel and Endrias. We can't share them because of sensitivity on the part of the Ethiopian culture and rules of our agency. We are sort of partial, but these are beautiful kids we are bringing home.

The beginning of blogdom

Welcome to our blog!  Given that we have so much planned for the next couple of months, we wanted to provide a way for our friends and family to follow what's going on.  Most importantly, we want to keep you up to date on the process of the adoption for our little ones, Endrias and Bethelihem.  We received word last week that our first court date in Ethiopia is March 14th.  We will leave on March 9th, land the evening of March 10th and then travel to the South, 7 hours by dirt road, to meet our kids for the first time in the orphanage they are in.  We will be introduced as visitors, so as not to disappoint if, for some reason the adoption falls through.  On Monday, March 14th we will stand before and Ethiopian judge and he will ask us questions about why we want to adopt and about our lives and fitness as parents.  Then (hopefully) he will declare the adoption finalized in Ethiopia and we return home.

The court decree is then sent to the U.S. Embassy where all of the paperwork is examined and visas are issued.  Once the visas are ready for the kids (typically takes 8-12 weeks) we will go back and pick the kids up.  When they put their feet on U.S. soil, they will be U.S. citizens.

We will be taking pictures and blogging during our journey.  However, we will not be posting pictures of the kids and we won't be divulging any of the personal or sensitive information about their situation.  This is out of respect to them and to the people of Ethiopia.  Once they are home, we'll post lots of pictures!

This is truly a life-changing experience for us.  We feel so blessed to be part of this process and we are grateful that we have the resources to give these two young ones a solid home.  They have been dealt a difficult hand already in their short lives and we hope that we can make their lives better.  We have all confidence that they will turn our worlds upside down and we know they will bring a sweetness to our lives.  In all of this, we are the lucky ones.