Seriously, we just passed the $20,000 mark!!  I feel like it's the Price is Right and all these lights and buzzers just went off! :)

In other adoption news...there is no news.  The time period right now is the dreaded "while you wait" time that I read about in the beginning.  It is a bit less stressful than having to gather all the paperwork, but none the less, we've been trying to keep busy.

The adoption process doesn't just stop once the paperwork is submitted, a few months ago we received a box from the adoption agency and now that we are waiting it's time to work on our continued education.  And they don't joke around about this.

We received books, magazines, children's books, articles and a coloring book.  The books are about the transition, about biracial families, attachment to your child and even how to do african american hair.  (Thank goodness I have my sister-in-laws!)

We have to read several chapters from several articles and books and answer questions.  The completed worksheets have to be submitted to the adoption agency just like a normal document needed.

We've already learned so much, but they will be a great resource to access once she comes home too!



Did you know...

Ethiopia is located on the eastern side of Africa, known as "The Horn" of Africa.  The capital city of Ethiopia is Addis Ababa and is the most populous city in the country. 

The country is a land of natural contrasts, with waterfalls and volcanic hot springs. Ethiopia has some of Africa's highest mountains as well as some of the world's lowest points below sea level. The largest cave in Africa is located in Ethiopia at Sof Omar.  Ethiopia has one of the largest number of rivers in the world while the country's northernmost area at Dallol, Afar is the hottest place year-round anywhere on Earth.

Currently, Ethiopia is the top coffee and honey-producing country in Africa, and home to the largest livestock population in Africa.



The main sports in Ethiopia are athletics and football (soccer). Ethiopian athletes have won many Olympic gold medals in track and field, particularly distance running.

Ethiopia was the fastest-growing non-oil-dependent African economy in the years 2007 and 2008.  In spite of fast growth in recent years, GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the world, and the economy faces a number of serious structural problems

In mid 2011, two consecutive missed rainy seasons precipitated the worst drought in East Africa seen in 60 years. Full recovery from the drought's effects are not expected until 2012. 

In Ethiopia, a child's last name is typically the father's first name. There is also a tradition, however, of giving an abandoned child the name of the town where they were found as their last name.

According to the head of the World Bank's Global HIV/AIDS Program, Ethiopia has only 1 medical doctor per 100,000 people.  Ethiopia's main health problems are said to be communicable diseases caused by poor sanitation and malnutrition. These problems are exacerbated by the shortage of trained manpower and health facilities.

1 in 4 women die during childbirth or pregnancy.  4 million children are orphaned, nearly 1 million by AIDS alone.  Only 18% of children reach the 5th grade, if they attend school. 

Kidnapping young girls has long been part of the marriage custom in Ethiopia. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where most of the country’s 71 million people live.

We're a pretty big football family if you didn't know.  My husband played on the 1992 championship team at Alabama and went on to play two years in the NFL with the Jacksonville Jaguars.  Sometimes when he's gone I just put football on as background noise, it's soothing to me! ha ha

I ran acrossed this video while reading a few articles on adoption and thought with the recent Super Bowl this video was quite fitting.  I always thought Tony Dungy was such an outstanding guy!

Super Bowl Winning Coach Tony Dungy Halftime Video for AdoptionJourney.org from Adoption Journey on Vimeo.

I was just saying yesterday how I was suprised that we hadn't gotten anything back from immigration for when we went to Nashville and got fingerprinted.  I went home for lunch and it was in my mailbox!

So it's officially, official...we aren't criminals and are approved to adopt an orphan!  WHEW

I found out that it takes about a week for our paperwork to be translated into Amharic, which is the native language of Ethiopia.   Once our paperwork is translated it is matched up with the official documents with all the seals and it will sit in the adoption agencies office in Ethiopia until a child is available.

And now we just wait....and wait....and pray.  At first I thought to myself "I can't wait until a child becomes avaiable" which is the selfish side of me.  But then I thought of the sacrifice that a mother is going to have to make to better the life of her child by giving her up and I can't imagine the turmoil she must be feeling when faced with that reality.  So instead, I choose to pray for our daughter's biological mother - that if/when she is faced with the situation that she must selflessly give her child a better life that she finds some peace in knowing that her daughter will be SO loved.

To update everyone - my documents left Washington DC last week and made their way to my adoption agency in Florida.  A copy of my paperwork had already been sent so my originals are en route (if not already there!) to Ethiopia.

The next step is to just to wait.  The Director of the adoption agency told me that they haven't received a referral (a child that is available for adoption with picture) in awhile so it could be about 4 months until we get our referral.

So in the meantime I'll be finding things to keep me busy.  I've been working on a few craft projects but one of the things I'm most proud about is the collection of shoes I have gathered.  You may have read a few posts earlier that I was moved by a book called "Kisses from Katie" in regards to children in Africa and the consequences of their lack of shoes.

The daycare that our son goes to graciously offered to collect shoes and socks as their end of the year project.  I also informed my mom back in Iowa about what they were doing and she joined in.  I also visited our local goodwill and bought all the childrens shoes that were half price, making them about $1 per pair.

I lined them up tonight just to see how many we had collected and I counted 41 pairs!  I didn't count the socks but there was a small box full, plus a package of brand new socks someone had donated at the daycare.  I was so moved by everyones generousity and can't wait to take pictures when we deliver the shoes.  I had considered mailing the box but I think it will be considerably cheaper to take them with us as a carryon.  I imagine the box of shoes to ship would be several hundred dollars.

Here's some pictures of the shoes and socks we have gathered! 

I'm sure after reading this post you might think I'm crazy but the FedEx guy just left our office and my heart is beating a mile a minute!  It's been a good 9-10 months I've been working on our adoption documents.  I've had to order several reports, go around town to get certain things signed and notarized.  I've had to do several documents over because they weren't signed correctly, notarized wrong or someone used white out on their mistake and adoption documents can't have ANY WHITE OUTS!

Needless to say, here are all my documents (about 40 sheets of paper) bundled neatly inside this Fedex package.  These puppies are headed to Washington DC to get seals from the US Dept of State and the Ethiopian Embassy.

After all the seals are applied the courier will send my documents to my adoption agency.  Then the final documents will be mailed on to Ethiopia.  I sent 2 copies of these 40 pages to the adoption agency already and those are being sent to Ethiopia to begin the translation phase. 

As far as I know we are still #2 on the wait list and our adoption agency Director just got back from a recent trip to Ethiopia.  Also, the lady who did my homestudy, Kelly Stewart (http://www.kellystewart.org/) just passed court and is traveling to Ethiopia right now to pick up her sweet son, Judson!!

You can bet I made my FedEx guy well aware that he was holding my most prized possession in his hands.  When I handed them over to him he sort of chuckled and asked if I was ok with handing them over.  I'm glad to have them out of my hands and on to the next step...but you can also bet that I followed him out the door and watched him drive away.  (Not before I snapped this photo of his truck...just in case my docs get lost) HA HA

We had our fingerprinting appointment yesterday in Nashville at 8am - therefore, we had to get up EARLY!  Here's proof, it was still really dark (and yes, I was speeding!)

I was thankful that the fingerprinting place wasn't downtown because we were running a bit late and downtown can be a bit confusing to navigate if you aren't familiar with the one ways.  So we only arrive about 10 min late and thankfully it was no problem.  We were both in and out in no time.  No pictures were allowed inside and Tommy wouldn't pose in front of the door so here we go:

Then we headed downtown to get our State Seals on our paperwork.  Everything has to be verified at different levels and the person who verified it needs to be verified.  You follow?  lol  Needless to say we took a few wrong turns and went around a few blocks and were finally on the right path when look what we encountered:

A stalled city bus, right in our way.  Once again we had to go around the block to get to the other side, GRRR!

There she is, Snodgrass tower!

Sixth Floor notary division...here I come!

A super nice lady named Jamie helped me out.  I thought she'd think I was weird to ask for her picture so I took a picture of her desk while she was off getting my seals. 

It felt AWESOME to get one more thing checked off our list.  I'm gearing up this week to now send these documents to Washington DC.  A courier service called Assistant Stork will receive our documents and walk them into the capital to get "verified" and then she'll walk them over to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington to get them "verified" there as well.  Then all our documents will get sent to our adoption agency to be mailed off to Ethiopia.