Girl Referrals!!!

Quick referral update. Just found out that our agency has sent out 5 referrals today, 1 boy and 4--count 'em--4 infant girls ranging in age from 2 to 3 1/2 months!!! The House of Hope has GOT to be bursting at the seems with all the referrals they've been passing out lately. For those who don't know, the House of Hope is where the children stay and receive phenomenal care from CHI's wonderful care-takers. The House of Hope serves as a transition home for the children while they wait on their forever families to bring them home. This is where we will meet Baby Marley for the first time and hopefully where we will be staying.

The CHI House of Hope in Ethiopia

Free giveaway and something NO baby should be without

A really cool company called sloppybaby.com is having a giveaway for some baby sets. Click HERE to enter.

I've found the one thing that no baby should go without. Check it out:

This is the coolest thing ever!!! Now If I can just get Staci to go for it! Found it HERE

My Turn To Post.....

This week I was informed by Staci that it's my turn to post an update. It appears she's suffering from a severe case of writer's block. Combine that with the fact that we live the most boring lives ever and you can see why it's difficult to come up with something interesting enough to post about. It seemed like only yesterday there were parties to go to, friends to see, things to do every other night. What happened? Now it's, go to work, eat supper, watch a little tv, go to bed by 10, get up, go to work, etc., etc... Jeesh, how did we get so OOOOOOLLLLLLLLD? I guess I do have one thing going for me, I'm not AS old as Staci.

As I mentioned, we live the most boring lives so needless to say we haven't had a lot to write about the past few weeks. A few weeks ago we made the cross-state trek to St. Louis for the big Cowboys-Rams game. The Boys only come to this area once every blue moon it seems. Heck, the last time they were in K.C., Troy, Emmitt, Irvin, and Deion Sanders were still playing for them (and of course they get beat the one time I get to see them). I was sooooo excited about the Cowboys coming to St. Louis this year not only because I never get to see them but because they were playing the Rams who, by the way, are AWFUL. The weeks leading up to the game I was just waiting for a big injury to occur so I wouldn't get to see them at full strength and sure enough, in overtime the week before the Rams game, Tony Romo breaks a bone in his hand and was out 3-4 weeks. Long story short: the Cowboys had a geezer at QB who couldn't throw the ball more than 20 yards without getting a running start and they got KILLED! I had to do the walk of shame down the stairs half-way through the fourth quarter with every Rams fan heckling me (and every other cowboys fan leaving). It was mighty hard holding my tongue but I think I handled myself well, Staci may not agree. The humiliating loss made the long drive that much longer. Fortunately I was able to channel all my frustrations and focus them on the "idiot" drivers that inhabit I-70. If you've ever driven I-70, you know exactly what I mean. I may or may not have had a slight case of road rage on the way home.

Enough about the Cowboys! The Ethiopia program has been kicking major booty here lately (is it alright for a guy to use the word "booty")! Each week has been filled with referrals since the courts reopened in October. As of Wednesday night CHI's referrals for the week included one sibling group of infant twins, and 4 infants/toddler boys. I know that the family waiting on the sibling group waited 11 months so congratulations to them and every other lucky family this week. Man, at this rate, we'll have a referral before we know it! Here's to hoping the referrals keep coming. Not quite sure where we are on the waiting list but I'm thinking we're low 80's high 70's. The last 2 1/2 months have flown by. Having previously been in the Vietnam program we are trying not to get too excited but it is getting harder and harder to hold these feelings in.

If you missed the latest episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the travel channel, you can catch a re-air on November 17th at 9/8 central. This week Andrew was in Ethiopia! It was really cool to get an upclose look at the lives and traditions of the Ethiopian people. I'm really hoping that we don't have to eat some of the things he was eating though. YUCK!

TWO DOWN!!

Well, we have officially waited two months!! By my calculations we are #92 on the list. I know that seems like a high number but hopefully we get some steady referrals and it continues to go down. Kris and I made it to St. Louis and back in one piece. We had fun even though the Cowboys were terrible!! We were able to check into our downtown hotel early on Saturday so we were able to make it to Arch not long after the Obama rally started. Since I am so short and there were thousands of people there all I saw was his hand waving, Kris was able to see more. It was really neat to experience something like that and see how the crowd reacted to things he said. It was beautiful in St. Louis all weekend so we headed inside the Arch and did the tourist stuff, I had never actually gone up the Arch so we did that and look around. We were hot and tired so we walked back to our hotel checked out Washington Ave and headed to our room to rest before
dinner. The weekend would have been perfect if the Cowboys had won, we still had fun anyway!!

Nothing else new to report we are enjoying the weather and keeping buy with work.

We're back!

Well we are back on-line, we were very surprise to get our computer back in a 1 1/2 weeks, with a new hard drive so hopefully no more problems. I can't believe that it is October with such beautiful weather, I love it! We found out that we will be getting a new nephew!!!! We are so excited for this new addition to our family.

The courts opened up in Ethiopia a week early so that is good news to all those families with their referrals who had to wait that much longer. Our agency has been receiving lots of referrals since the courts opened, we got 5 last week and three this week so by my count that puts us at 91. Most of these have been girls, come on girl referrals!!

We are planning a weekend get away to St. Louis next weekend, romance you say, no the Dallas Cowboys football game, Kris LOVES the Cowboys so the great wife I am is giving up romance for the Cowboys;) So all you wives out there please cheer for the Cowboys so our 6 hour car ride home will be somewhat pleasant.

I would like to thank all of our loyal readers for keeping up to date on us, hope everyone out there is doing well!!

One down!

Well we have officially been waiting for one month, wow how time flies. We are trying to keep ourselves busy, our wonderful friends threw us a couples shower and we had fun hanging out with our friends and got some wonderful gifts. We are very blessed to have so many wonderful, supportive friends. We have been enjoying the weather and finally got most of the outside of our house painted, a project long over due. We have been having some issues, with our somewhat new laptop so we will be away from the blogging world for a few weeks while it is being fixed, hopefully. We will probably be checking in, just not as often. So keep us in your prayers that this process continues to run smoothly! Hope all is well with all of you!

IT'S OFFICIAL!!!!!

We are now a waiting family!!! our Dossier was sent to Ethiopia on Friday August 29th so now comes the hard part, waiting. As you can read from the title of our blog we decided to unveil her name, Marley. Kris actually picked the name; he heard it last winter and really liked it, and it has been the only name we both really liked and agreed on. She will have two middle names Ann (my middle name) and her given name. We had originally decided not to tell her name but there are at least a dozen pregnant women in our town and we thought it might be better to put it out there so people are aware that it is OUR name so they will not use it. I know Marley is not a common name but you never know. Also I had never posted that Kris and I are going to have a new niece or nephew, my sister is expecting again in early February, we are all very excited!

So please pray that our agency starts receiving lots of referrals and that our referral comes quickly!!!

Quick Update

Well our dossier was sent to DC yesterday the 21st!!! So hopefully it will be a short process and sent back to CHI quickly, they will review it one more time and send it to Ethiopia. We are getting very close to that waiting list!!