Now or Never

So, I have been talking about blogging for the past two years and I feel like it is now or never. Why now? Well, to be honest our adoption journey has been crazy and although I am a little sad I don't have record of every up and down we have experienced during this process, part of me is ok with it. I do, however, want to document bringing our kids home and how God continues to grow us as a family.

So, who are we if you don't know us and my guess is most of you know us.

-Jeff - amazing husband who challenges me daily, loves his children fiercely, has had a desire to adopt since before we were married, supervises a helicopter fire crew for the forest service, loves to fish and any type of adventure

-Jill - loves Jesus, her children, reading, singing and now Ethiopia, counselor turned stay-at-home mom, looking forward to where God is leading our family

-Toby - 6 years old, inquisitive, creative, dramatic boy, he has an amazing mind that humbles me

-Adelaide - 4 years old, silly, sweet, sensitive with definite opinions about the world around her, she is my joy

Our newest family members who will hopefully be joining us very soon.

Kaleb - 4 years old, shy, sweet with a smile that melts my heart

Emnet - 4 years old very energetic, smart, lights up the room

Our adoption journey in a nutshell.

We applied to adopt 2 children from Ethiopia in March 2009. Our dossier took an entire year to complete for various reasons including having to legally change Jeff's name to his name so we could get a new birth certificate for him. We had our paperwork authenticated 3 times in Sacramento and we had to redo at least half of our paperwork because our notary expired even though she was current when she notarized everything. Oh the joys of paperchasing. Our dossier finally made it to Ethiopia March 2010 and the wait began. We received a referral for a 4 year old boy and a 3 year old girl on November 11, 2010 on a day when both our phone and internet were not working. We had to get further information due to some medical concerns before accepting the referral so we did not have the immediate, these are my children experience, but I am thankful that we were able to pray about the decision. After we got the information we needed we were able to accept with a confidence and a longing for these two children. We left for Ethiopia on March 6, 2011 for our court date of March 11. Do you see the March pattern? We met Kaleb and Emnet on March 9 and the experience was precious. I will blog more about that later. We did not pass court on the 11th as was expected at that time given that Ethiopia had just announced a slow down in the process, but to our surprise we got a call on March 22 that they were ours. Here is where the especially hard wait has come. We still do not have our children home. For some reason it took until May 18 to get the kids birth certificates and we finally got submitted to the Embassy last week. So, here we are praying we will get cleared to travel very soon.

I did it - my first post! I have been so encouraged by reading blogs during this time, although they have also driven me a bit crazy at times, that I am looking forward to brushing up on my writing skills, hopefully improving some of my computer skills and sharing what I am learning.