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!

4 Months Down/Rockabye Baby CD's

Well, we've officially been on the waiting list for 4 months now! It's gone relatively fast to this point considering we got on the list during the summer when things were fairly hectic, and the Thanksgiving and & Christmas Holidays have helped keep our minds off the wait. Here's to hoping that the next few months go just as quickly.

The CHI offices are still closed and will remain so until January 5. We are hoping for a flood of referrals once the offices re-open. Hopefully there is a huuuuuuge backlog of referrals accumulating on their desks as we speak!

We had a great time over the Holidays. We spent Christmas Eve at Staci's parents and had a blast watching our niece, Jenna, fuss with another youngster over her new big wheel (or "bike" as Jenna calls it). It was so funny! While they were fussing over it, it was time for Pa'pa Neil to open the gift Jenna had picked out for him [a pack of gum :) ] and instead of taking the risk of losing control of the big wheel, Jenna pulled it into a spare bedroom and shut the door. As soon as Pa'pa" opened the gift she ran back to the bedroom and got her big wheel. Needles to say, she has a little more work to do in the "sharing" dept, hehe.

Staci and I got the coolest baby gift from my brother and his fiance. We got the Metallica & U2 lullabye CD's. These things are cool. The album art is modeled after the original album art but with teddy bears instead (pretty funny). They're really cool! Here's some pics:

Here's the Metallica CD:

And here's the U2 version

You can get the lullaby renditions of several bands including the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Nirvana, the Eagles, etc, etc... Check them out HERE

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

We just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope your holiday is filled with love, laughter and lots of cheer!

HOLY COW!!! MORE REFERRALS!!!

Wow, just received word that our agency has had 8 referrals this week alone! Hate to be greedy but maybe there will be a few more by the end of the week. Last week CHI had 2 sets of sibling referrals. The sibling referrals are much more rare and to have two in one week is amazing! Unfortunately, our agency will be closing for Christmas break at the end of this week and will be closed until January 5th. Hopefully once they reopen they will continue raining referrals. We're getting closer!!!
Other than the referrals not much to report in our personal lives. We had a great time this past weekend catching up with the Payne side of the family. Really wish we got together more than once or twice a year. I have actually had thoughts of pulling the crib box out of the garage and getting started on putting it together. God knows if I don't start now I'll probably still be trying to figure out the instructions while we're on our way home from the airport. We've got the changing table/dresser in the nursery but haven't really done much else. I told Staci we'll start getting serious about the nursery after the Super Bowl. That seems like a good target date to start our nursery plans. We've got some ideas, it's just a matter of agreeing on some things. The nursery is the one room in our house that we have yet to touch since we bought our house 5 years ago. It's got this "lovely" pale greenish/blue colored walls and one wall is covered in wallpaper with tiny yellow flowers all over it. IT'S HIDIOUS!!!
Until next time, Merry Christmas to everyone and congrats to the families that received their referrals this week. What a great Christmas gift!