One year ago today (Pt. 3) HAPPY GOTCHA DAY!!!

One year ago today we FINALLY landed in Addis and had our sweet baby girl in our arms a few hours later.  Our lives have never been the same since.  Happy Gotcha Day Mar-Mar.  Mommy and Daddy love you more than you will ever know!  We threw this little montage of our first year together yesterday.  Enjoy!

One year ago today (Pt. 2)

Oh where to start?  Alot of colorful words could be used to describe this day but for the sake of our readers will just call it "Bittersweet".  We arrived at Frankfurt, Germany around 8 A.M. as scheduled and everything was going smooth...that is, until we managed to miss our flight to Addis.  What a nightmare!  For some reason, Frankfurt doesn't declare a set gate until about an hour before takeoff so the only thing we had to go by was the gate # printed on our tickets.  BIG MISTAKE!  We set there for a few hours until our scheduled departure drew closer and closer.  We asked several airline and airport staff if we were at the correct gate, to which they all said, "yes".  Yada, yada, yada....long story short, we missed the flight, was told that the next flight out wasn't for 2 more days (which meant we would likely miss our Visa appt), cried, cursed, finally found another flight out at midnight with another airline (Ethiopian Airlines), cried some more, forked out another $1600 and at 10:30 PM finally departed the hell hole that is Frankfurt Airport en route to Addis Ababa and our baby girl!  Now if that's not bittersweet, I don't know what is!

Our inspiration through 2 days of layovers, missed flights

One year ago today (Pt. 1)

One year ago today we boarded the plane from Kansas City to Frankfurt, Germany enroute to Addis Ababa.  Had to be the most exciting day of our lives!  We posted this to our blog just before our departure:

"It's hard to believe that after 3 long years, the time has finally come. We're off to get our beautiful baby girl!!! Don't know if the opportunity to upload photos or update our blog will present itself during our stay as we've been told the internet is slow...I mean, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slooooooooooooooow. Not to mention the frequent power outages but rest assured there will be plenty of pics and videos to go around when we get back and we can't wait to share these experiences with all of you! Sorry to rush off but we're sort of in a hurry... we're off to meet that certain little someone ;) Ciao!"