The sweetest little Cowboys fan ever!!!

Marley's first Cowboys get-up courtesy of daddy!

Oh what a feeling!

Well the day, the call, the moment has finally come! The call came about 11 am on Monday, November 16, 2009. I was sitting at my desk talking to Shelly when my direct line rang. I told Shelly to wait, that it was probably just Kris since he is the only person who calls my direct line. When I answered it was a female voice and she said "Hi Staci. This is Ashely!" (our adoption consultant) It didn't hit me until she said, "I have Kris on the other line!" It was precisely this moment that I lost it. She then went on to tell us all about our new baby girl, half of which I missed because I was a blubbering mess at this point. After we hung up, Kris and I ran home to see her pictures, read her reports, and spread the word. It was such a GREAT day and so much fun telling all of our family and friends who have waited right by our sides this whole time!

Our official wait time: 14 months, 2 weeks and 2 days for our baby girl, but these little fingers have been a dream of ours for the past 7 YEARS!!!


The Hyman family left this last weekend to pick up their baby girl so we sent a little care package with them for Marley. They are also taking new pics for us, we are so excited to see these new pictures and to see how she has changed. Our hope is to have as many traveling families take pictures for us as possible. At this point, pictures are the only thing we have to get us through the rest of our wait but at least we have a face now! And what a "beautiful" face it is!

Marley's first care package!So what's next???
The most popular question asked to us now is, "when do you get her?" For those of you out there in blogger world that aren't familiar with this process, here's what's next. After waiting over a year for our referral, we get to wait again. This time we're waiting for that all important Ethiopian court date. This is the court date that will make her legally ours through the eyes of the Ethiopian government. This court date is more than likely 2-3 months away. Once we pass court, it is usually a few more weeks before we travel. We will then be in Ethiopia for approximately 1 week before returning home with Marley forever. Hopefully this clears up a lot of the questions people were having regarding this process. It's a whole new waiting game now!

Referral Day!!!

Just a quick note to let you all know that at approximately 11 am this morning we received word from Ashley, our case worker, that we are going to be parents to a beautiful 2 month old baby girl. We're pretty limited on what we can say about her right now (until we pass court) but I can tell you that her name means "beautiful" and that she certainly lives up to it!

Good News-Bad News

Wow, where to begin, Kris and I realize that we have not updated in awhile, so sorry to all of our followers, if we have any left:)

Well, as of October 29th we have waited 14 months, to me this can be viewed as good news or bad news. The good part of it is our wait is almost over, the bad part we have had to wait this long!

Last week our agency referred 6 children to 6 families, but no baby girls. Already this week they have referred a baby boy and a baby GIRL!!! That means we are 1 or 2 on the list, we don't know for sure. So baby girls=good news, referrals=good news! All of these referrals have come from a new orphanage our agency just started to work with so hopefully the other orphanages will catch up soon.

Kris and i have tried to remain busy to keep our minds off our long wait. In September my sister Brenda and brother-in-law David hosted a garage sale at their home as a fundraiser for us to help with travel expenses. We had many, many friends and family donate items to the sale. The sale was apart of many going on that day for fall city wide. Kris and I were both very excited and surprised with how well the sale went. Kris and I are so blessed to have so many wonderful friends and family who care so much about us and getting Marley home! Thanks everyone for all your help! We continue to remain busy with work, I started a different position in July and is finally getting started on some of the main duties of the job, I really enjoy it so far, it will keep me very busy!

Okay onto another subject, our dogs. We have two spoiled dogs, Sam and Libby. Sam is 4 and Libby is 8. I know we are not the first people to have dogs before having children but I think we have the worlds most undisciplined dogs. Our poor child will never be able to walk around with a snack in her hand with out fighting off these two. And don't get me started on their barking, and boy they are loud, anyone who has ever come to our home knows this. So we have started putting their bark collars on them daily, trying to do some training, I just hope it is not to late! They are a lot better when they wear them, but they resort to their old ways when not wearing them. Hopefully they adjust well to life with a baby and hopefully Marley will adjust to them!

That is all for now, hopefully we will continue to have good news to report and are sooooo excited to be able to finally share our good news with all of our family, friends and readers!

Finally...

Finally the Ethiopia courts are up and running! The Hyman family just received their court date today. I couldn't believe when they said it was THIS FRIDAY!!! We were expecting court dates to be another month after notice. This means, if all goes well, the Hymans could be in Ethiopia next month! This is awesome news. Really praying that the Salyers are next in line for their date. Now come on baby girl referrals!!!
Referral Update: Our agency handed out a referral today for 19 month old twin boys. The lucky family had waited 16 months.

How sweet it is!

Nothing new to report on the adoption front but we DID have a blast in K.C. this past weekend. We headed down Saturday and picked out our new crib (which won't be available for pickup for another 7-14 days). For some reason, white baby furniture is never readily in stock. They had plenty of black and wood-toned furniture readily available but not white. For now, we'll just have to include a stock photo of Marley's new crib.

After crib shopping we headed over to my brother & sister-in-law's for the night. We tried out an awesome pizza joint in Liberty, MO called The Dish. Awesome, awesome pizza! If you're ever in the area, we definitely recommend.

The next day we watched our beloved Cowboys put the smack down on the loooooowely Chiefs! It was great!!!
--Kris

Inside Arrowhead, pre-smackdown

Little bro & I. (for some reason, his smile was turned upside down a few hours later)

Lucky 13...

13 months ago today, our dossier was shipped to Ethiopia. We had just spent the previous year in the Vietnam program only to have our hearts broken when news spread that adoptions to the United States were, more than likely, coming to an end. Rather than stay put and hope for the best, we felt something pulling us towards the Ethiopia program. The estimated wait time the day our dossier left our hands was 6-10 months. Fast forward 1 year and 1 month later and we are now days, if not hours away from seeing our Marley for the 1st time. This has GOT to be the most exciting time of our lives and we are soooo ready for THE call! Thanks to all of you who have prayed, donated, or just offered an encouranging word over the last few years. We appreciate and love you all. We truly have the best family and friends! Here's to 13 months!

--Kris & Staci

Our heart's in Africa...

We just got our Heart for Africa wall decal from the Sager's today and it looks great! If you've never followed the Sager's blog, they have been home from Ethiopia for a little over a month with their new daughter, Finley, who is absolutely adorable! You can read about the Sager's HERE or you can check out their etsy shop HERE. Thanks for the beautiful decal Sagers!

I must say it was a little nerve-racking hanging this because, let's face it, you screw up-it's over. Luckily it went up without a crease OR a bubble. This is the corner of the nursery our rocking chair will be (as soon as we get around to picking one out). Speaking of nursery, it's been awhile since we've touched it. We've still got quite a few things on our to-do list like finding new closet doors, decorating, night stand, etc, etc...Oh, and did I mention that our crib was recalled?!?! We've known about it for months but just recently got around to dismantling and sending off for our credit. I'm thinking it's just about time we start finishing this project once and for all.

The corner minus the rocker...

The crib that was not to be...