Friday, October 30, 2009

Florida Vacation

We had a great time in Florida, except we wished it had been a little cooler. Florida was having record heat and it was 91 degrees and about 350% humidity. My glasses would fog up when we got out of the car sometimes!

However, even with the heat, it was a lot of fun. We were visiting Adam's grandparents who live near Ft. Myers Beach. We rode their boats a few times, did a lot of swimming, went to the zoo, helped great-grandpa catch some fish, and played and played and played. One day, we went to Sanibel Island and rode bicycles around the island. The boys loved doing that. My sister, Christina, was also vacationing near the area with her family. We got to spend 3 days with them, and it was so nice to spend time with them.

Below are some photos of our trip:







We went to the Naples Zoo for some trick or treating.

This is the man that chose the seat by Cal. Calvin just used the man as an extra pillow.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

We Are Certified!!

After "patiently" waiting for 4 weeks, we are now officially certified by Arizona to adopt a baby girl from Ethiopia!!! Our documents have been sent to the US Immigration Office, and we are awaiting their certification. It normally takes Immigration approximately 4-6 weeks to make a decision. Once we receive the final decision from immigration, we can then submit our dossier to a bunch of places for different certifications/authentications before it lands in Ethiopia. My goal for our dossier to reach Ethiopia is December 1st. After that, we are officially on the waiting list!! There are currently 100 families from our adoption agency that are waiting for Ethiopian infants, and the wait time is 10-12 months right now.

There have been some truly amazing things happen over the past few months. It seems like whenever we have a fee to pay for the adoption, we unexpectedly get that exact amount through gifts from family, an unexpected check from the bank, or extra work from Adam's business. In addition, fingerprint results normally take 4 weeks to receive; however, the Immigration Office called us less than 24 hours after our prints were taken to let us know that they had received our results. The immigration officer was stunned, and she had no idea why our results snuck through to the front of the list. Our adoption coordinator was floored, and she had never heard of such a thing happening.

We truly thank you for your support and prayers. We know that God is definitely helping us out, and the "coincidences" are just shocking.

Below are some pictures from our recent trip to Sedona with Jenna & Zach: