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!