It's not often that me and the hubs get a date night - or that we dress up.  I'm kicking myself that I didn't get pictures of us last night because we both looked pretty darn cute and we had a lot of fun.  I had heard several things about an organization called Oridinary Hero since they are based out of Nashville.  I wasn't exactly sure about what all they did and avocated for but if it had to do with orphans I am all about it!

We bought tickets to the benefit, which was held last night at a downtown hotel in Nashville.  We were excited to hear that the Director of our adoption agency was going to be there as well.  She is based out of Florida so I'm not sure if we would ever get a chance to meet her otherwise.  We also met another family who is adopting a little boy who is about the same age as Sanai and they came from the same orphanage/village!  I'm hoping we might travel at the same time since our cases are running along the same timeline.

The event was a silent auction and a presentation.  We were served dinner and met some neat people.  The guy we sat next to had adopted from Sierra Leone, West Africa and him and his wife have started an orphanage there!  It's amazing the things people can do with the grace of God!

The video they showed had me in tears so I wanted to share it with you.

http://ordinaryhero.org  VISIT THEIR WEBSITE TO GET INVOLVED! 

It's been several weeks so I figured it was time for an update.  Unfortunately, there isn't much to say. Our case isn't any further today than it was a few weeks ago.  We are waiting for our documents to be submitted to the federal court system in Ethiopia.  Once our case is submitted it should take about 4 weeks for our court date and we would be traveling to Ethiopia to meet our daughter!

My heart fell into my stomach last week when I found out from the adoption agency Director that the judge of the court, a young Muslim woman who had that position for a long time, had QUIT!  Instead of waiting to train another person she left, instead of waiting until the courts shut down in August she left!  Grrrr.  This means a lot of uncertainty and at this point we are just sitting and waiting and HOPING we get a court date before the rainy season shut down which is the whole month of August and September.

I've been trying to just stay busy and not think about what's going on or else I'll go insane.  It's awful that there's absolutely nothing we can do. They weren't kidding when they said you had to be patient!

So in the past few weeks we've had a lot going on.  Tommy had the chance to MC the high school's Black History Club talent show and there was a lot of really good acts.

We also got involved with the local Habitat for Humanity in helping a local woman get a home she needed.  The football team also joined in the building and it was so neat to see how many kids showed up. 

The walls went up quickly

He thought he was really doing something by pounding this dirt!



After all the building we headed to Knoxville for a football game.  Tommy is an assistant coach for an indoor football team for the Knoxville Knighthawks.  He used to coach an arena football team in Louisville for around 7 years but has moved to coaching high school football for the past two years.  So when a friend of his called to ask him to help coach again he jumped at the chance!  We have a lot of fun at the games but unfortunately they didn't get a win that night.

Watching warm ups

Coaching the defense

So between all the waiting we are just trying to live life and have fun and pray that things start moving.  Please PRAY that we get a court date soon!

It's been a couple weeks now since we received our referral and since then all I can see is her face!  Gosh, it's so much more daunting when we know exactly who our daughter is and knowing as each week passes that she's getting older in an ORPHANAGE while we sit here and wait for the red tape. You have to have patience to go through this journey!!

Currently, our paperwork is being translated into Amharic (their native language).  We are waiting on a few other things on their end before our case will be submitted to court.  Once our paperwork is submitted it should take about 30 days before we travel to Ethiopia for our court appearance.

To pass the time we've been trying to keep ourselves busy, therefore we decided to get out of town this past Easter weekend.  Friends of ours graciously allowed us to hang at their cabin this weekend near Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.

It's so quiet and peaceful and we didn't do a whole lot while we were there beside lounge around and watch movies.

The first night we were there we decided to make a fire and roast some hotdogs.  Micah was mostly interested in beating the tree's with sticks, but thats to be expected I guess!

We decided to eat dinner out on the screened porch that overlooks the back treescape.  Through the trees is a view of Lake Nolin.  After dinner we ended up walking down to the lake. 

The next morning we decided to take advantage of the local attraction which was the caves.  We pretended that Batman called Tommy and invited Micah to come see his Bat Cave. It was pretty hilarious!  The caves were discovered hundreds of years ago by explorerers and they were pretty amazing.

Going into the cave

At the furthest point of the cave, about 3/4 mile in

Coming out of the cave

We headed back home on Sunday afternoon and apparently couldn't get enough because our Easter dinner consisted of another dose of roasted hot dogs and smores over a fire!  We plan to try to make it a weekly occurance now that the weather is nice.  We hope everyone had a great Easter as well!