The Blog Change Worked!!!

CHI handed out 6 referrals today! Among the referrals was a 3 mo. baby girl, a sibling group of girls aged 3 1/2 and 5 years, two boys of 22 months and 2 1/2 years, and lastly, a 5 year old boy. Congrats to the lucky families! Hoping this is a sign of things to come for CHI's Ethiopia program.

Time for a Change....

In lieu of the recent lull of adoption referrals, we've changed our blog background with hopes that it will somehow magically change the program and referrals will somehow start flying in. We're not normally supersticious people but hey, the last time we did this, I believe there were 10 or 12 that came in that very day. So here it is, our official blog-background change for more referrals! May the referrals start rolling in.

***UPDATE: We thought our new blog background was REALLY lucky when we received a call this afternoon and CHI was on the caller ID. Unfortunately, they were just updating their personal files. Talk about your heart skipping a beat! Don't they know NOT to call waiting families unless it's THE call? hehe

6 months down!/Nursery

Sorry it's been so long since our last post so here's a quick update. In the down time since our last post we officially hit the 6 month period. Hopefully we've only got a few more months (or less) until we see our sweet Marley's face. There were 3 referrals today!!! A sibling set, a baby girl and toddler boy. Congrats to all the lucky families! Besides the waiting there's not too much to report on the adoption front besides the fact that we are currently in the process of having our home study updated.

We finally, FINALLY finished the nursery and bathroom! Needless to say, we're taking a well deserved vacation from housework to get some other things done. Kris' brother Ryan is getting married in April to Krissy, which we are very excited about so that's going to keep us busy the next several weeks with showers and other fun festivities. On that note, I leave you all with pics of our new nursery. The only thing missing [besides a mattress and closet doors:)] is our Baby Marley.

Here's our color scheme:

And the fan, which I love!

New Nephew!

Jarrett Reed was born yesterday at 6pm, he was a whopping 8 lbs and 1 oz and 22 inches long! We are all so very excited he is finally here. Both he and Brenda are doing great and will be home tomorrow. Jenna is also a very proud big sis! Sorry we will be posting no pics, we are keeping him and Jenna all to ourselves! (they are the two cutest kids I know though)

So as of today no referrals this week but will keep everyone up to date as they come in, we are getting very close and very excited. I know we have had several request of pics of the nursery, we will post some as soon as the crib is put together! We finally got our new bath tub in and all we have to do is sheet rock around the tub and paint, then it will be onto the next project.

5 months down!

Wow, I can't believe that it has been five months to the day that our dossier was sent to Ethiopia, hopefully I won't have to many more of these monthly updates. So as of today we are #34(my calculations). Once we receive our referral we are assigned a court date, then if we pass the first time we will travel a few weeks later. This process could take 4 months or longer after referral.
Kris and I have been very busy with the nursery and it is done! Now we are tackling the bathroom. Trying to keep busy so the time will pass quickly! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Referrals!

*UPDATED* So our agency gave out 11, yes 11 referrals yesterday 5 baby boys and 6 baby girls, all from the ages of 3 weeks to 5 month! Great way to start the week, hopefully there are more this week, tune in to find out!

good day!

I have been keeping my own unofficial list as to where we are on the wait list. We started at 103 so each week I just subtract the number of referrals we get. The number I had us at today was 59, so I decided to e-mail Toni to see what we are on the official list, boy was I glad I asked, we are officially #45!!! I was so surprised and very happy and excited. We might have a referral sooner than I had thought! Good thing her nursery is almost done. That has been our project for the past two weeks. Kris and his dad are going to finish tomorrow and then I will post some pics! Hope everyone has a great weekend and stay warm.

Finally referrals!!

Well, mothers always say if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Well I guess that is what I have been following since there has been no good news to share about our adoption. Our agency did not receive any referrals for the last 4 weeks and to top things off they have lengthened the time from referral to travel. When we started the program families could expect to travel 2-3 months after the acceptance of a referral, now families can expect to travel
3 1/2 to 4 months after the acceptance of a referral if you pass court the first time. So that was disappointing but in the world of international adoption you have to be ready to expect changes and roll with them. I know our agency does everything in their power to keep the referrals coming in and keep things rolling and they do a great job!

So some good news, finally today we got three baby boy referrals!! Hopefully this is the start of a lot of referrals. At this rate Kris and I are just hoping to get our referral and pass court before they they close in August for the rainy season. So Please pray for LOTS of referrals for us, we thank you in advance!