In the past nine days since announcing our adoption so much has happened. I will start with Isabelle. I have to say that the child's heart is bigger than Texas and I just love her for it. When I told her about the adoption she was so excited, the first words out of her mouth were, "I get to share my room with her, I really want to Mommy". Her follow up statement, "what can I do to help?". I told Isabelle that we would need to fill out all kinds of paper work and start saving up a lot of money to get our new baby, but that it was going to take time and not to worry about the room situation just yet. Of course she immediately opened her fundraising file in her sweet head and decided that she is going to start making rainbow loom bracelets and sell them to help. Then she asked if she needed to talk to anyone about us. Would someone need to know if we were good parents or not because she would be happy to talk to someone about that, but she was concerned about what Davie would say ;) I reassured her that Davie would probably say good things but the weight of what a 3 year old says is not normally taken that much into consideration (she should be worried about that boy though, he is a loose cannon).

Isabelle told all of her friends at school, and pretty much anyone else that she ran into that would listen to her. Her teacher has since pulled up pictures online of Ethiopia and talked to the class about the people, houses and culture there. (So sweet to have such an amazing teacher, we love Mrs. Meazell) Isabelle is working on a Flat Stanley project and we were so blessed to have met a sweet lady, Mrs. Hilary, who is taking Stanley to Ethiopia with her when she picks up her new son in a few weeks. So exciting! My last Isabelle brag is what gift she has asked for this Christmas. We were talking about Christmas and she told me that she really wanted a brown American Girl doll because she doesn't have any brown babies like Baby E (that is what we are calling our mystery Ethiopian baby). We looked through the catalog and when she saw the brown twins she asked if she could get those for Christmas, she would keep one of them and save the other one for Baby E when she got home. How precious is my girls heart?

As for Davie he is is still pretty clueless about what is going on, we have told him but he is a boy and he is 3 so really he doesn't care all of that much. Davie also has no real sense of timing, with it being such a long time from now I don't think it's best to start talking it up to early. Once we are on the wait list we will probably talk it up a little more. I did however show him a picture of an Ethiopian baby girl and asked if he wanted a baby sister like the one I was showing him and he told me "no, I need a brother".. Tough cookies Davie, we are getting a girl and you will love her just as much as you love sissy :) I keep saying girl, but don't know if I ever officially announced it-  we have requested a girl from birth to 5 years old. I probably should have mentioned that, it is pretty important :)

ADOPTION NEWS:
We have finally selected an agency and are going with Children's House International. Finding and picking an agency has been way harder than I thought. I called a bunch of them, asked a ton of questions, and asked the very few people that I know who have adopted what they thought and we finally ended up at CHI. One of the main reasons we have chosen CHI over a lot of the others is because of their wait list. When calling around so many agencies has a closed list or they were on a three year wait list, CHI had a wait list of one year. This was in the beginning a big red flag that made me concerned whether or not they were being honest about their wait time but after asking around their wait times are smaller because they are an agency that shuts down their wait list before it gets to long. Once all of their families are off their list they move onto a new group of families. This makes perfect sense and seems like the way that all of adoptions should be done, three years is so long to wait :( After speaking to the lady at the agency, she was very nice and ready and willing to answer all of my crazy question I knew this was the agency for me. We are so excited about CHI and cannot wait to get this ball into motion. At this point we have filled out the application and submitted our application fee, we are just waiting on approval.

Another selection we have made this week is our social worker. With CHI being based in Washington we had to find a social worker that was local to the area to do our required home study. I again asked around and spoke to the very few people that have adopted and by chance the two people I spoke to referred me to the exact same lady and told me how amazing she was. Kind of feels like a God thing people!  I called her up and spoke to her and indeed she is a wealth of information and a sweet, sweet lady. Yay, we have a social worker! We are currently working on filling out all of the required paper work to start moving forward on our home study.

We are beginning what is now called the paper chase, sounds super exciting right? My days in between designing Christmas cards, cheerleading, school, preschool, keeping my house in functioning order and preparing for Christmas are going to be spent filling out a bunch of paper work, answering lots of questions that frankly I have never even thought about, and chasing down a bunch of paper work. Am I excited, OVER THE MOON, I can hardly wait to do all of these things because they bring me one step closer to getting our sweet baby girl.

I had better run lots to do, places to go, people to see and a social worker to call (I have a social worker, so giddy). Before you leave my blog check out the new page I added to the blog called, "Why Ethiopia) or you can click on the link here: http://winksethiopianwish.blogspot.com/p/why-ethiopia.html Just incase you were wondering why we decided on Ethiopia.

The Big Announcement

It’s been over three years now since I have written on my blog, but I feel like this was a special occasion worthy of documentation! It is with great excitement and a lot of fear that we are telling you- we are starting the process to adopt. 

The decision to adopt has been something we have struggled with for a couple of years now. A while back we felt the call to adopt, we looked into it and then we chickened out. Over the past couple of months God has been pounding on my hard head telling me that we need to do this. I have tried to ignore all of his messages and have resisted and come up with reasons why it wouldn’t work or why it’s not the right time until one day God wore me down. (I mean that in the best way possible, but you know how persistent he can be.) The day I finally gave in and decided to stop ignoring the call was at a conference called Reckless at Preston Trails church that I went to in October. My best friend, Jen Hatmaker, was speaking at the conference. (By the way, she doesn’t know she is my best friend, if you know her don't mention it because she may get a restraining order) Jen adopted to gorgeous kids from Ethiopia a few years ago and she began telling her story. When she said the words, “let me show you a video from the day we met our two babies” I knew it was all over for me. Here is the video that she showed:

 


I CRIED, and I don’t mean a little cry but a full on ugly cry. I knew then that this message was for me and I had to act. I dropped of the girl that rode with me to the conference and immediately called Dave bawling telling him to get on the computer and book some flights to Ethiopa because it is happening! From that day Dave and I have been researching, praying and seeking as much information as we can about the process. 

We are still in the very early stages of adoption but it’s one step at a time. I called agencies all day today and found one that I am pretty sure we are going to go with. After I do a little more research I will gladly share those details. We are now preparing our hearts, our children and ourselves for what lies head. One of the scariest aspects of this whole adoption, and the main reason I continued to ignore the calls is the financial aspect of adoption. After much research it appear that the adoption process is going to cost anywhere from $28,000- $30,000. That is such a scary number especially when we just started building a house, which also requires a lot of money. Normally I tend to freak out over financial worries but I am a peace with it right now. I feel like if God is calling us  to do it, He will see us through it. We are putting our trust in God and giving all of our worries to him. 

Our first step is saving the $700 for the application fee, followed by the first investment of $3000 due a week or so after the application has been approved. We are currently looking into a couple of different fundraising options, if you have any suggestions or experience we would love all of the help we can get. 

During this journey we appreciate prayers. We asked that you pray for the child that God chooses for us, that you prayer for the child’s first parents and that you pray for guidance in all of the things that we have in store for us. We are so excited!

Love, 

Dave, Erica, an excited Isabelle and a clueless Davie