Orphanage Donations

It's a little last minute over here, but we will be collecting donations for the orphanage that our dear son is in. Sadly, given the fact that we are packing for an extended stay, we will not have room for "stuff". Donations of $$$ for the orphanage would be much appreciated. 

The money will be used in 2 ways: 
1) to assist the orphanage with any current needs (in the past, this has included groceries, supplies, etc) 

2) buy fun things for the kids (some people have bought bubbles out there, or pencils, or candies).

The deadline for getting this to us is Wednesday, May 8th.

Court Date!

Most of the time, an article with that kind of title would not be met with a lot of cheering.  Today, however, it is a different story!

After years of waiting for a child, through 17 months of waiting for the girls, and 2 ½ months after accepting the referral of a boy.  We FINALLY, FINALLY, have a court date.

Hilary and I are excited to announce that we are going to ETHIOPIA!!!

We are doing, what many in the Ethiopian Adoption world would be called the “Long Stay”.  We will be travelling during the middle of May for the court date, and will return whenever we can get the citizenship paperwork completed.  This means that we will take custody of our son, shortly after the court date, and work on the bonding as a little family of 3.

Even though Hilary has everything planned to a T (at least the packing), there is much to do, and only 3 weeks to get it all done.  Please pray for us as we make the necessary arrangements, get things done, as well as mentally prepare ourselves for this life changing journey.  I believe the tough arrangements have already been made.  Zeke has a home while we are gone, and we have someone to live at our place.  Here’s hoping everything else can fall into place as we keep preparing.

We thank you all for your prayers and support.  We were overwhelmed by the support we have been shown thus far.  An overwhelming stat from today was the fact that we received over 80 “likes”, and over 30 comments on my facebook page announcing this court date.  We feel the support.

So hang on to this ride.  This blog is about to get more interesting! J

Update

We are still flying high one month after our referral. We are extremely excited about the possibility if welcoming this little boy into our home.


What have we been doing to prepare for the arrival of our little boy?

We have both been looking at completing some projects around the house, but Hilary has been preparing his room. If you remember from a previous post, Hilary was incredibly creative in her painting of a country scene on one of the walls, and then decorating it with butterfly decals. We felt that butterfly's might not be the most appropriate for a boy, so Hilary has painted a tree in the room, and some little animals on the wall.

We have also removed the bunk bed and put the mattresses on the floor. We are unsure of what he will be used to, so we will play it by ear when we finally meet him as to his sleeping preferences.


Also, yesterday we received news of one more step, and in many ways, it now feels as though we are further along in the process than we were before. We received a court file number. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is one more step.

Now we wait until we actually receive our own court date. With some of the new changes that are in place in the process, we don't expect to hear of a court date until mid to late April, so this may be a period of time again of no news. But we will continue to be patient. It's getting closer!

Hello Little One!!

After what has been a whirlwind couple months, We officially received a referral on Friday.  As most, if not all of you reading this blog know, we have been trying to adopt from Ethiopia.  This process has had many ups and downs, and 2 months ago, we had one of those downs.  Our adoption dream was halted due to some decisions made in Ethiopia.  We made a decision at that time, that we would be interested in getting back into the process, and maybe we could get a referral relatively quickly.

On Friday afternoon, WE RECEIVED THAT CALL!!!!

WE RECEIVED A REFERRAL FOR A BEAUTIFUL 20 MONTH OLD BOY!!!

The obvious questions are why only one child, and what does this mean for a potential travel date to Ethiopia.  We received an update from our agency (sent to all families) that basically stated that there were relatively few siblings available to be referred.  When we submitted our file, what feels like many years ago, we said that we would accept one or two children.  We are ecstatic that we may be so close to being able to parent a little boy, and are now anxiously waiting for a court date.  We have no idea how long it will take to get a court date, but our guess would be that the earliest we could be travelling would be mid March, but that all depends on how things move.  As was evidenced in the previous situation, nothing ever seems to happen exactly how we would expect it to.  Only God knows when this date will be.

Please pray for us as we begin waiting in earnest once again, and for this little boy as the orphanage prepares him for a very different life.  Please pray for the entire situation, that it would work out much quicker, and better than it did the last time, and that the end would be positive.  Please also continue to pray for the girls that we were not able to adopt, and whatever situation they are in.  Even though we have moved on in looking towards a new referral, we will NEVER forget these two girls.

We thank you ALL for the support, encouragement and prayers that all of you have been to both of us, and once again, we look forward to showing off our boy to the world.  (as an aside, we will not be sharing current pictures, and the story of his life, so please respect our wishes here)

Goodbye

It is with heavy hearts that we share this news.  After nearly 18 months of waiting for these 2 girls (which we were referred on June 17, 2011), we were told on Friday morning, that our adoption of them would not go forward.  We are devastated, but have started to come to grips with the reality of losing them.

We cannot share any details of the situation, but we want to make clear, that this was a situation unique to these girls and us.  It is a decision that has been made in the best interests of all parties, and we have assurances that the girls will continue to be loved and cared for.

We have felt a great deal of support from our "international' agency, our local agency, and the orphanage in Ethiopia.  We felt that they did everything they could in the situation to give us information when they received it, and supported us when breaking the news to us.  We also want to thank all those friends and family that have been incredibly supportive throughout this ordeal.  It means a lot to both of us.

We struggle with where to go from here, but we hope that we will still yet have some good news to share eventually.  We will be taking some time away from the blog, but will continue again once there is news to share.

Sheldon & Hilary

Happy Birthday!

We are still here and will keep on posting when we are able and/or when we have news we can share.

Today is S's Birthday. She turns 3. It has been nearly 500 days since we first saw pictures of her. We wish her a very happy birthday.

We love you dearly already, and hope that you had a great day. We hope that we will someday be able to meet you!  Have a great day, and enjoy playing with all your friends.  Hopefully you got a nice treat for your birthday, and we celebrated your birthday with this nice cake.  We wish you were here!!!

We Love You!

One Year Referral-versary

One Year ago, our future was changed forever.  You can read all about it here.  As I went back to look at that post, it feels like so long ago as well as just yesterday.

Well, one year has passed, and we continue to wait.  It was a tough Father's Day, and I hope this is the last one we need to "celebrate" without our girls.  We continue to press forward in getting answers as to why this has happened, but as it stands, there is nothing new.

What have we done in this past year to prepare?
- We have gotten our girls room ready, complete with painting a scenery picture on the wall (all Hilary), and creative decals.
- We have set up their bunk beds, and made the beds.
- We are somewhat packed up, and ready to go (at least all the stuff for the girls is mostly packed up)
- We have done some landscaping in the back yard to make it a bit more kid friendly.
- We (and by we, I mean Hilary), have made crotchet toys for the girls.  There are 4 dolls, an elephant, a bee, a pig, and a mouse. (This sounds like the opening to a really bad joke)
- and much more

We have been so blessed to have the support that we have received from family and friends, many of whom we have never even actually met.  On Friday, I received a call at work from someone who told me that a package had been left for me at my neighbors place.  I was totally confused as to who would do that, but had a couple of ideas as to why we would have received it.

As soon as I got home from work on Friday, I went to pick it up.  It was a gift basket from a couple that I have never met, and never talked to, but we have become pretty good email buddies over the past year.  They are getting home in the next couple of days after a lengthy stay in Ethiopia to pick up their son.  Yay for them!

Jessa and Doug, we both have been completely blessed by your friendship, and we know that we will have to get together once our girls are home as well.  Here are the pictures of the gift basket we received.  (the tree on the wall is actually a decal that Hilary has decorated our house with, not part of the basket :) )

Once again, thank you all for the love and support you guys have all given us.  We hope to be able to share good news with you all soon.