God's Promises

We had a rain cloud dump some rain on us the other night. It produced that real "rain smell" which I love. Having grown up in Western Kansas, I quickly came to appreciate that smell because the rain often came at a much-needed time! After the rain came, this beautiful rainbow stretched across our sky. We were reminded about how God makes promises and reminds of of these every once in a while. I'm so glad God is so personal and present in our lives.

Speaking of His work, our dossier is traveling to the Ethiopian Embassy today and will be finished Monday! At that point, it will travel back to CWA where they will double-check everything. We should be on the waiting list at that point. Exciting!

Summer Fun

The kids and I ventured to the zoo this week. Here, we are in the rain forest. It was amazing to me that two seconds before this picture was taken, Raegan was crying, throwing a fit really, because she didn't want to take a picture. Amazingly, she all of a sudden decided that it was o.k. and produced this smile.

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day, we invited the Coppocks and the Sites over for an Ice Cream Party!

Go, Purple Panthers!

This year, Sydney is playing softball in the Goddard Recreation League. This is her first year to play organized softball, so it is proving to be a learning experience. She is having a lot of fun!

Here, she made it on base after her first hit!

Spring Storms

So far, we have already had two times where we have had to go to the basement and prepare for storms because there have been tornadoes in the area. Here are pics of the latest. Luckily, we have been able to make it "fun" for the kids so they don't get too scared.

Adoption Movement!

Wow. After many weeks of very little movement, the last two days have been great! Yesterday, we already received our documents back from Topeka. They were fully authenticated. This means that the Secretary of State said that our notarizations were valid. It looks very official!

So, that enabled us to gather all of our documents for our dossier. (I took a picture of all of these papers spread out over our table. Yes, they covered the entire table! But, then I thought twice about posting the picture. Who knows who might be able to use their technology to get all of our information. So, you'll just have to imagine our kitchen table covered with about thirty different documents.)


Here I am at Kinkos getting ready to send this package to a courier in Washington D.C. who will hand-deliver each document to the appropriate places, ending with the Ethiopian Embassy! The courier said it will take them 48 hours, and then they will send the dossier back to CWA, our agency in North Carolina.

At that point, we will pay our last big fees ($11,000) and then they will send it all to Ethiopia! Our case worker told us that it is about three months referral time right now; our eyes are focused on September!!!

I know. . . way too many exclamation points. I'm just excited.

Then, today we received our appointments to get our FBI fingerprints. So, we'll be making that trek in the next month or whenever Chris has time on a Wednesday between 8:30 and 3:30!

Alright, that is the big update now. Please be praying that the process continues to flow smoothly. We are also already praying that we would make it through court the first time. There are often many delays at this stage in the game, so we thought we better start praying now.

Dossier Approved!

Oh, what wonderful words! I had no idea the emotion those words would bring when I read them on the e-mail.

It isn't quite the end of the "paper pregnancy"; however, we are getting close! As soon as I get the last document from our agency, I will send several documents to Topeka to get them authenticated; then I will send everything, I think, to Washington D.C. to get the whole batch authenticated.

Yeah, it feels good to be gaining some ground. :)