Christmas..showing some Africa love

Here are a few ways this Christmas looks a little bit different from the past ones....

We have Africa shaped gingerbread..And this is one of the African ornaments I painted so we have some Micah and Isaac love on our Christmas tree too! It will be so nice next Christmas to have us all together.We were also able to send Micah two Christmas care packages. One of the packages was given to him this week. All 3 kids wrote him a letter and we sent him a harmonica and a shirt and some other fun things. The mom that gave him the packagae said he loved the harmonica and all the kids were dancing while he played it! He came up to her and gave her a hug the next day. I love how he has his hands wrapped around her arm. Soon I will be able to give him a big hug too!

Isaac's quilt

My mother in law took some of my adoption shirts and made a baby quilt for Isaac. I loved how it turned out and cannot wait until he is home crawling around on it!

Adoption shower

Our church threw us an adoption shower in November. It was so nice. My mom and BFF, Amy came down for it. Isaac and Micah were showered with all kinds of cute things. I cannot wait for them to be home to use it all!

Merry Christmas

Tickets are booked

Yahoo! We have tickets! We will be flying out on Jan 17th. We fly to Washington DC and from there, we fly straight ( Yay for no layovers!) all the way to Addis. We will get there at 8:25 am Ethiopia time and stay until Jan. 24th. We fly out at 10:15pm and after a quick refuel in Rome, we will get back to DC at 7:25 am. Hang out in the Nation's Capital for a few hours and then fly back to Charlotte. We should be home on the 25th around 5:30.

I really wanted to fly out of Greensboro, but Charlotte was better times and cheaper. I think we will save the Gboro arrival and departure for the second trip so we will be closer to home when we have the boys and people can meet us at the airport easier. (Abby is planning a welcome home airport party) :)

It seems so real now that we have concrete dates and can plan our week out! Now to just have a baby boy to go with that court slot! (sigh)...maybe today.

Court Date

We received our court date phone call last Tuesday. We were in Virginia getting ready to have an early Thanksgiving with my parents and were so happy to finally have a concrete date. Our court date is January 24th, 2011. The best part is there are two slots for TWO CHILDREN!

AWAA does not seem to think it will be a problem at all to submit the baby's paperwork once our referral has been received and accepted. I am praying and hoping it will be this week that we finally get to see Isaac's face.

I will be working with travel agents on Monday , but our plan is to leave on Monday, January 17 and arrive in Addis on the 18th. We will meet the kids on the 19th and then be able to spend a bunch of time with them as well as go to Trees Of Glory and see our sponsored child there and love on those sweet sweet kids.

One of the biggest blessings in the adoption process is seeing how God works and the people He puts in your path. One of the families that sent in their dossier and became DTE on March 26th was the Herwehe family. Laura and I have texted and called and emailed and inboxed ourselves into a great friendship! ( Dont tell Greg, but I texted Laura about our court date before I even called him!) :)

My DTE buddy and me have been praying we would get to go to ET together....well, her court date is Jan 18 and they are leaving ET on the 21st so we will be there together for 3 whole days! We are sooo excited!! They also sponsor a child at TOG, so we will get to go there together too. God is so cool to give us this experience along side each other!

So sorry for the lack of blogging. I have just not felt like much of anything since our referral being taken away, but I know God is good and He has given me so much peace over this. I know when it is the right time He will give us our baby Isaac too.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all

Love ~

Jackie

A hard phone call....

We received a phone call that AWAA is needing to withdraw the referral of our baby boy. We cannot go into the details as to why, but it is for a good reason and we do understand that it is better for the baby. We are, of course sad, but feel God's peace in the situation as well.

We are now waiting for another referral for an infant male. The good news is that if the referral comes soon then we will be able to swap paperwork in court and it should not delay bringing the baby and our 10 year old son home together still.

Thanks for the prayers for our family as we process this information.