Day 2: Arrival

Day 2 was fairly uneventful, so we will keep it short. This is us after a long flight to Amsterdam. We were exhausted after not sleeping at all on the flight and it was morning in Amsterdam.
This is a cow statue that Rob wanted me to take a picture next to. You will notice I am holding a smoothie. Does it look like a fabulous smoothie that you would pay almost anything for? It was $10. Apparently, we needed to pay more attention to how many American dollars 5.50 Euro actually is ;)
This is just me shopping in Amsterdam. Cute cow things.
This is the first picture we took in Ethiopia. Kinda neat how the lights blurred like that. It was a crazy trip through the city behind swervy drivers and around people burning tires on the sidewalk.

Day one...November 25th....

After dropping kids off at my sister's house, we arrived at Eppley airfield, got checked in and prepared to make the flight across the continent to Africa. That sounds so dramatic, but seriously, it is dramatic for me. This was my first trip overseas and I am not a very good flier, so it was a big deal for me (all getting new children aside, of course ;) My parents took us to the airport and waited there with us until it was time to go through security, which was nice. The only picture I have of this occurrence is a blurry one, but its all I have, so it will have to do.

After taking the tiniest plane I have ever been on to Minneapolis (and being sat next to a man who screamed during takeoff) we arrived at Minneapolis airport.




Here is the tiny plane. ;)





Me in Minneapolis.

Here is us waiting to board our flight to Amsterdam. I was texting my mom and asking how the kids were. I remember she said they were doing great and they were reading the Berenstein Bear's Week at Grandma's and that Ava couldn't understand why the bears were sad "unless," she said, "maybe its because their grandpa didn't have a hot tub". I never ate that sandwich, by the way. I was way too sad and sick about leaving the kids. The next 8 hours were quite possibly the longest of my life. I was very sad and very sick on the flight and it was so long! It was dark and I couldn't sleep and couldn't eat. This story sounds depressing, but I promise day 2 was much, much better.


Here is a boring picture of the plane to Amsterdam.

Four days later....

This is also a backdated post, but we got an email 4 days after our email about passing court saying that we were in travel group #25 and that we must be in Ethiopia no later than 26 November. We were very shocked and very excited that we would be traveling in a week and a half. In that week and a half, we shopped, packed, searched for passports, got travel vaccines and got Hannah's room ready. It was a crazy time. We also got a new picture of our girl. Can you stand the cuteness??

Miracle.

We passed court yesterday. We didn't know we had a court date. Holt emailed and said that to their surprise the courts had told them that they had already held Hannah's court date and that we had passed!!! We are just completely over the moon! We are so excited and really can't focus on anything else. It is hard to believe we will be meeting our little girl in 6-8 weeks. Now we just have to finish up her room, get shots, and pack (and a few other things in between). We should find out what our exact travel dates are in around 4 weeks. Sigh. The waiting could kill a person, but now that I know when we will probably meet her, I can bear it. It could be Christmas time, but will probably be a week or so later. I read a blog today that had an awesome video of their adoption in Ethiopia and at the very end was the verse 1 Samuel 1:27. So awesome b/c that is where we got Hannah's name. I will blog about that later. I am so behind!

3 months....

Today is 3 months since we first saw our baby girl. It gets a little harder every day to not hear anything about a court date. I miss her more each day and we all pray for her and that we will get to hold her and hug her very soon. We have received paperwork on her with her updates and lab work and those have all been really good, but we are still waiting on that all-important court date. Holt will call us when it is 1-2 weeks prior to our court date. So, we are probably looking at December. I think we can make it. I am putting it in God's hands. But, that doesn't mean I have to like the wait.

Our referral

Okay, so I am going to totally cheat and backdate all of this, but I need to play catch up even if only for myself. We got our referral on August 6th after our dossier reached Ethiopia on July 9th. I got a phone call in the middle of making a cake and it was our social worker who proceeded to tell me that she had a referral (this was after I had asked the week before how long it would be until our referral to which they had answered-6-9 months) and so I sputtered out "For me??" She chuckled and said "Yes" and proceeded to tell me about our little girl. She said she was a healthy little girl who was surrendered by her father at 1 year and 9 months old and that was all she needed to tell me. I told her in between the sobs that we did in fact want to see pictures and get more information. She sent that and I got to see our beautiful girl for the first time. Her name will be Hannah (I don't think we are allowed to post her information or picture until she is legally ours) and she is just gorgeous with big, brown eyes and she had no hair because they shave all babies heads when they come into care. I called Rob at work and he, of course, was not there. So, I called his other office and had to have the secretary track him down (all the while telling her that I would never do that unless it was an emergency). When she found him and put him on the phone, I told him about Asebech. I got about 3 words out about her and he asked me "did you tell them we want her??" No, I didn't. I was waiting to talk to him, but I had my answer. He wanted her just as badly as I did. So, after speaking briefly with our pediatrician, we accepted Asebech and that was the real beginning of the wait. The wait. is. HARD.

Almost done with paperwork

We are SO close! We got our paperwork turned in last week, but there were a few things they wanted redone. We are waiting on one teeny, tiny piece of paper and then we are DONE. Its a relief to be done with paperwork, but even moreso, I really feel like we are actually doing this, not just talking about it. I can't wait to be waiting for our baby. I am *hoping* we will get a referral this fall, but that is totally in God's hands and I know He's got that all worked out for us already. I will be better about blogging from now on. Even if I am the only one who reads it ;)