Life Unexpected

I can’t believe we are leaving for Ethiopia in less than 10 hours.  After an amazing week of vacation with our family in Stone Harbor, NJ, we “circled up (as my Grandma used to call it)” for prayer, stopped one last time at Springers, our favorite ice cream shop, and said a tearful goodbye to our family.  This time the tears were not of heartache or hurting, but of excitement, anticipation, and indescribable joy.  Side note…our family cheered as we walked away from them.  I seriously felt like we were leaving our wedding ceremony and heading off on our honeymoon.  I guess this honeymoon will have to include a lot of stinky diapers, a lot of baby learning, and a reunion with the cutest baby in the world…our son Biruk. We have no idea what the next two weeks will look like.  We have been imagining the day for what seems like forever and it almost seems surreal that it has finally come.  We have no idea what to expect, but I think that’s ok.  ...

We just returned from our Annual Progressive Dinner on the Boardwalk.  By “we”, I mean Nate, my two sisters, and my two brother-in-laws.  Several years back Nate and I decided that we would literally eat our way down the boardwalk.  We stopped at whatever food stands we wanted, tried new snacks, bought desserts we had never tried before and called it our “progressive dinner.”  A few years ago, Nate and I decided to invite my sisters and their husbands along for the adventure (knowing they were dying to go), but made sure they understood that whatever we ate…they had to eat too, even if it didn’t sound good.  Tonight was no exception as we ate pizza, fries, water ice, custard, chip-sticks, corn on the cob and more. I love my family.  I have said it before and I will say it for the rest of my life…I love my family.  We were in Laura’s Fudge Store tonight, each ordering something for “dinner,” when my brother in law, John, bit into his chocolate co...

There are some days that are so awesome that you have to pinch yourself to make sure that they are legit, real, days.  Today was one of those days.  WE CLEARED EMBASSY!!!  I have to back up to yesterday. The greatness of today definitely comes on the heals of a challenging yesterday.  Yesterday was the scheduled meeting between Embassy and Biruk's birth mother.  At the beginning of the week, embassy had notified us that they would not clear us to travel until they met with the birth mom.  Our social worker had told us that it could take a week to hear back from embassy after the meeting.  So, you can imagine that when we got a call around 11:30am yesterday, my heart started beating in that out of control kind of way.  I picked up the phone and thus began the "not so awesome day." Our social worker informed us that embassy had met with the birth mother, but there seemed to be some discrepancies.  She wasn't sure of the details and told u...

This morning I woke up with anticipation.  Not only was it the day we would leave for our awesome annual vacation to Stone Harbor, NJ, but I was expecting to get an email from the Embassy saying we were approved and could travel to Ethiopia to pick up our son.  I have been checking my email incessantly.  I actually think I annoy myself with how often I check it.  Every five minutes I look to see if there is something new, and this morning, when I found a new message from our adoption agency, I was stoked. I opened up the email and did not read what I was expecting.  Instead, I read that the embassy is requesting a meeting with our son's birth mom.  Apparently that is not unusual and no reason to be concerned, but it means that we clearing embassy is going to take a little while longer.  It could take a week to several weeks. You can imagine that as my husband was packing the car with not only our vacation suitcases, but our Ethiopian suitcases, a c...

I should totally be going to bed, but had to blog about what just happened.  Nate and I have been attempting to pack Biruk's suitcase for the past 3 hours.  We have decided to go on vacation tomorrow with our family, hoping and praying that we will get approved by embassy and leave from vacation to go straight to Ethiopia.  So, we are packing EVERYTHING. Seeing that it is our first baby, we are new at EVERYTHING.  Not only are we new at everything, but we have only met our son once, and he is growing like crazy.  We are attempting to pack the right sizes, pack the right items, and pack enough of everything.  We are praying we haven't forgotten anything!  Well, we know that we have to bring a lot of diapers.  In fact, people have recommended bringing 80-100 diapers, so that is exactly what we are doing.  Someone had given us a box of 136 diapers (size 3), and we decided it would be best if we just brought the whole thing.  When we got t...

Yesterday we spent some time with some students from our youth group preparing meals for people in our church who needed a little encouragement.  While we were in the kitchen, one of my 7th graders said to me, "So when you are you guys going to get Biruk again?"  I replied, "Well, we are just waiting for the Embassy to approve us so that we can travel."  To which she replied something along the lines of, "All you guys do is wait!  If someone was going to write a book about your life it would be called 'The Waiting Life.'  I smiled and thought, she has no idea. It's been almost two weeks since we were submitted to Embassy and I am going crazy.  We were supposed to lead our youth group on a missions trip to Honduras this week, but we decided that we needed to stay home in case the call comes.  It was a really hard decision to make.  I absolutely love missions, love Honduras, and love when students can catch a glimpse of the world that God sees eve...