Shopping

Baby Depot at Burlington Coat Factory is the bomb! Not the cleanest place in the entire world but had great prices. I bought a Graco pack and play and a high chair for less then $90 and look how cute it is!

We Miss You Still Mikey...

Today marks the 1 yr anniversary that our good friend Mikey died. How he died was never discovered. He went to bed, and never woke up. Tonight a bunch of us will go to his favorite karaoke bar, do a shot of Jager and reminise.

We miss you still Mikey, and love you always. RIP.

Courts Closing and Travel

Well good news on the travel part. Courts close for 6 weeks in mid August (i'm assuming that its not the same time each year because it coincides with the Ethiopian new year which changes every year on our calendar, but not on theirs) As long as we get and accept a referral by late June we will travel before the courts close.
I don’t understand how all year long its 3to 4 months to travel then when it gets close to courts closing they can make it happen in 2 months or less. Its this way with all agencies. The good part is this works to our advantage if we get a referral in mid May… Mid Aug is only 3 months away!! Also I am sure we will travel before that cause they are trying to rush things through.
I can’t believe we might have our baby before mid August! That’s no time at all!

Guinan the best fur baby in town

Guinan my fur baby kicks butt!!! Bella is a 2 ½ little girl who we see once a week (or as much as possible) Bella is a very active, very small (still in 1 year clothing) little girl to my best friend Rachel. Every time they come over I put the dogs up. Not that I don’t trust them it’s just that the room can only take so much hyper in it LOL. So yesterday for the first time ever I let Guinan out with them over. She was the BEST dog you ever saw. She is a 90 pound lab who loves her toys. When I play tug with the rope she just about pulls my arm off. She was playing tug with Bella yesterday and was the sweetest thing you ever saw. She would grab the rope with her front teeth and just pull ever so gently. Then when Bella would win (how sweet is it that giunan to let bella win.. she never lets me win) Bella would run around the coffee table and Guinan would chase her (at only half guinans full speed) I have never seen a dog act like this around a child. Nevertheless my crazy hyper dog. I cant wait for Isaac and Guinan to be best friends :-)




On other news. We are on the top ten list waiting for referral (we think including families wanting other children and girls) So hopefully still on track for May

MIA

I know we have not posted as much in April as we usually do... We have been TRYING to keep our minds off of baby stuff and referrals.
Over 9 months since we started adopting and almost 5 months officially waiting for a referral can be trying. At this point keeping busy is our saving grace LOL

Alicia and Eliza

Hey just wanted to send a shout out to Alicia CONGRATS on your referral!!
Cant wait to see pics of baby Eliza!

Yo! Party in my crib... 10pm

Today we went up to my co-workers house to get the crib! THANKS SO MUCH CHI!!! It took us about 10 minutes to put it together... including having to change the bottom rails around cause i put them in upside down lol... check it out! oh and we got a rug for his room :)







Next thing we have to do is get the curtains up and his room will be almost complete!

-S

New ticker

The countdown was making us crazy!!! So we had to change the ticker. Out of sight out of mind LOL

Oh and Happy Birthday to me:-)

Closet Door Knobs

Well, it was (possibly) the last crafty thing we had to do to get his room
Dr. Suess-y. Here are the door knobs to his closet

We Have Been Shot

We woke up at 7AM to be the first ones at the county health clinic and got our first round of shots this morning. Not the best time in my life but not a huge deal. Getting poked in the arm multiple times made me realize i really will be traveling to Africa soon!!!!!

Lets break the birthday curse! And other junk.

I was thinking today how great it would be to get a referral around the time we lost Mikey last year. So lets all pray end of April! I have kinda had a bad luck birthday curse the last 2 years. 2005 my sister totaled my car (thank god she was not hurt) and 2006 Mikey passed away. So lets break the bad luck birthday curse this year darn it!!!!!!

On other news we found out today that Isaac will have a baby girl cousin! I am hoping they will be born best friends! Ashley is due a month after we will probably pick up Isaac so they will be close in age. Also my friend Kim is having a little boy so babies everywhere!!

When we changed the blog over Sari noticed we had something like 130 posts…. OMG we need a life! If anyone out there has read all 130 posts god bless ya LMAO.

Ethiopian calendar (thirteenth month)

So I wanted to learn why I keep reading thirteenth month when researching Ethiopia. Very interesting so I thought I would share :-)

Ethiopic calendar is the principal calendar used in Ethiopia and is also the liturgical year of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church where it is known as the Ge'ez calendar. It is based on the older Alexandrian or Coptic calendar, which is based on the even older Egyptian calendar, but like the Julian calendar, it adds a leap day every four years without exception, and begins the year on August 29 or August 30 in the Julian calendar.

Like the Coptic calendar, the Ethiopian calendar has twelve months of 30 days each plus five or six epagomenal days (usually called a thirteenth month). Furthermore, its months begin on the same days as those of the Coptic calendar, but they have different names, that are in Ge'ez. The sixth epagomenal day is added every four years without exception on August 29 in the Julian calendar, six months before the Julian leap day. Thus the first day of the Ethiopian year, 1 Mäskäräm, for years between 1901 and 2099 (inclusive), is usually September 11 (Gregorian), but falls on September 12 (Gregorian), in years before the Gregorian leap year.

4 weeks

Ticker says we are almost at 4 weeks till referral!! As i get closer and closer to time I find it harder and harder to believe that it will actually happen. After all we started this adoption over 9 months ago and we started the official wait for a match 4 months ago the thought of getting a picture seems out of this world. The wait has started to be all time consuming thank god we shouldn't have too much longer now. May 13th is not 100% accurate no matter what the agency can just give us their best guess. But i think its a pretty good guess. Only time will tell :-/

Would You Eat Them in a Mural Filled Room??

Thats right ladies and gentlemen, it is finished! Now, the mountain (on the left side) and the ocean we finished a couple days ago... the rest took the entire 1st season of Flavor of Love to finish....

Picture of the actual pic from the book


And now the wall!



Yay!! now to get the furniture in there!!

p.s. click on the pic to get a larger image

No Reason to Call

So we were calling our agency once a week to see if the I600A was in Ethiopia yet and since we had them on the phone we always asked about the waitlist. Now we have no reason to call :-( We have to wait like 3 weeks to call just to check on the waitlist. They dont give us much info about the wait but its just nice to have something.. We sent our dossier early December so we have officially been waiting 4 months now!! Our last talk with the agency went like this:

Sari: anything new on the waitlist?
Agency: let me see.... you have moved up alot!
Sari: Still May?
Agency:That is a reasonable guess, sorry i cant tell you more

Approval is (FINALLY) in Addis!!!

Got an email from my agency, its confirmed, my 1-797 (approval) is in Addis! Yay!! I feel like a huge weight is lifted. Now we just wait...

For those who don't know, or need a recap... in September we sent off the I-600a, that is the Petition for Orphan Adoption... basically its the US Govt approving you to adopt. When they approve you, they send you the I-797 form and also send that to the country you are adopting from. This process should take around 3 months. Finally wrapped up and confirmed by Ethiopia at 7 months.

1st problem: Home Study was never sent to USCIS (found this out 3 months AFTER the fact)
2nd problem: Approval was sent to the WRONG country.

So finally we are ALL done its fixed and in Ethiopia :-)


-S

We have a I600A Case Number!

I called uscis (not the lady who messed up) they said it was dhl to Ethiopia on March 2nd?!? So I got the case number from them (which I have never heard of before) and our agency is going to try to find it today (which is Wed in Ethiopia) by case number not name. So cross your fingers! Also the lady who messed up emailed us back saying she emailed the approval. So I really hope its all done!!!!!!!! I can see the light at the end on the I600A tunnel!

Flying tips

For those of you adopting or traveling with a baby here is a GREAT site!! Check it out. http://www.flyingwithkids.com/travel_planning.htm

April

Already April so now we can officially say should have a referral next month! But then again whose counting LOL