Thanks to Kellie for posting about Eden Reforestation Project – Ethiopia. I had looked a while back for a tree planting program in Ethiopia and hadn’t stumbled upon Eden’s website. I am so happy to have read her post today because reforestation in Ethiopia covers two of my greatest passions, taking care of the earth and Tom and Jerry’s homeland.
Tesfaye from Chronicle Project on Vimeo.
There is also a free coloring book download for those of you with kids or who are teachers.
Adoption Update: Our agency didn’t have any referrals this week, it has been since the week of 7/11/08 since the last set of referrals. So, they have to be coming soon, right? This isn’t all that unusual with international adoption. I do like it better when the line is moving, but I am not very stressed about the wait at this time.
Running Update: I ran once this week. 🙁 Let’s just say someone stayed up too late every night to watch the Olympics and refused to get up early before the heat set in and run.
Push-ups: We didn’t do them, don’t know what happened we just forgot. I am pretty sure we are now going to have to just repeat week 2.
Gardening: Most of my plants are still alive, they made it through the hottest part of the season!
Taffi helping weed (Just ignore the photographer’s shadow, she doesn’t think these things through)
My peppers (they were feeling left out of the last post on gardening)
A bee doing his job (I hadn’t seen a lot of bees this summer, but they finally showed up!)
Scary Spider (I let them live in the garden because they eat the bugs that eat my plants, but there are several of them and I have a tiny fear of spiders)
What an exciting week, ehh?
I am thinking of doing a regular update post at the end of every week. I seem to be doing a lot of random update posts lately, so I think I will just start doing a Friday Updates post.
Adoption update: No news. There haven’t been any referrals this week from our agency. The courts in Ethiopia are now officially closed until sometime in October. There can be referrals during this time period, but no court dates will be heard. (Court is what legally makes the child(ren) yours, a referral is a child(ren) matched to you from the agency)
Running update: Last week I got my three runs in, even getting one in while in Colorado. This week no runs. 🙁 I might try to get one in tomorrow morning. I was making good progress until this week, so hopefully I can get back on track next week.
Push-ups update: We are total slackers! Vacation definitely put a hold on our push-up regime! Hopefully we can get back on track next week and get week 2.5 done!
Other random stuff:
Last night we had a nice big storm that brought us .5″ of rain, lightening, and wind. The wind broke one of the nicest branches in the above tree and it is currently hanging down into my tomatoes. Luckily my tomato plants will be just fine and the tree should survive.
While we were in Colorado we were able to score lots of great stuff for Tom & Jerry at thrift stores. We bought lots of books, wood puzzles, blocks and legos, and a shopping cart seat cover. We love to go thrift store shopping in Colorado, we always seem to score better stuff there. We also received books from Matt’s grandparents and his parents.
We found out that Jason and Michelle were having a girl and I snagged some adorable shoes and a hat from the thrift stores.
I will do my monthly update of the Carbon Challenge tomorrow. I am running a little behind right now. I should have taken the file with me to Colorado!
I hope Matt will have pictures added to his last post by tomorrow. FYI I do not love road trips as much as he does! I like them for a couple of hours but that is it. I do not like being in the car for that long, but we do manage to have fun together and the time goes by relatively quick.
Okay I think I am done rambling!
Matt and I have slowly been preparing our house for the arrival of Tom and Jerry. We do little things around the house each and every month. Some things are for them, some things for us (the kind of things we know we won’t have time for after they arrive). This weekend we sold a lateral file cabinet that was in my office/den/future playroom and finally had a place to put the table we had bought Tom and Jerry from Ikea. Carter loves the new addition to the room and thinks it is a great place to catch the morning sun.
I like going at a slow pace preparing for their arrival. We don’t know how long the wait will be, and if everything was already finished I believe the wait would be harder to go through. This nice slow pace gives me hope for the future, while keeping me here in the present.
Matt and I are finding new ways to keep ourselves busy during the waiting period. The Ethiopian courts close for two months starting August 6, so even if we got a referral right now our case couldn’t be finalized until October/November. Plus I am pretty sure that there are still a few couples ahead of us waiting for a sibling set. We are hopeful for the end of the year, but early 2009 is looking more realistic. So, we are just trying to stay busy and keep ourselves occupied. Continue reading “Keeping Busy”
Matt and I started our adoption journey nine months ago today. It is hard to believe it has been nine months, the time has gone by fairly quickly. We have been waiting for about a third of that time, if we end up having to wait the top amount of time are agency is now predicting that would be about another nine months. It us hard to imagine waiting that long, when we started this journey we fully expected to get our referral this summer and travel before fall, even though we were told by our adoption consultant at the time we started that wait time could and probably would increase. I chose not to listen to her wisdom until, of course, I saw the evidence for myself that the wait times had indeed increased. I have prepared myself for the wait to last until fall, which would put us waiting for 6-8 months. I really wanted to have Tom and Jerry home by Christmas. Of course, if fall comes and goes without a referral I will have to wait just a little longer. I know I can and will be patient (for the most part), but at times it can be so difficult. I cannot wait to meet them, hold them, and just love them!
There is a an article on cnn.com today reporting that more U.S. companies are offering assistance with adoption. I was very happy to see that companies are starting to treat employees who are adopting in a similar way to those having biological children. Some companies are even offering paid time off after an adoption and consulting services.
“Never once do you feel like you’re in a separate bucket because you’re adopting” rather than having a biological child, said Huval, a senior vice president of card services at Bank of America Corp.
We found out last week that we needed to do another form (power of attorney) to add to our dossier in Ethiopia. Matt and I drove up to the Secretary of State yesterday to get it authenticated and now it will travel to Washington, D.C. to get authenticated by the US State Department and the Ethiopian Embassy. It will not affect our wait time as everyone had to add this to their dossiers.
We also learned yesterday that the sibling group wait times should be expected to be around 12 months. The official wait timeline is still 6 – 12 months, but more likely to happen in the 10 – 12 month range. If you haven’t already guessed the referral date you still have plenty of time.
Our dossier was shipped off to Ethiopia two months ago today. I must say these last two months have gone by pretty quickly. I hope the rest of our wait goes by this quickly, however long that may be. Continue reading “Two Months Down”
As you may have noticed we have not blogged about our adoption in a while. Quite honestly it is because there is nothing to report. Continue reading “Waiting”
Our dossier is anyway! Our dossier was shipped Friday, March 7 to Ethiopia. We are now officially waiting.
Our dossier did get shipped to Washington, D.C. on Thursday! I was informed it could take 5 – 10 days, but that it usually is arrives back at our agency the very next Friday, so hopefully it will be back at our agency March 7. After that our agency will ship it to Ethiopia.
Did this feel like an extra day to anyone?
Not me, I had a busy, but overall fun week. I got to spend a lot of time outside this week walking dogs (if you don’t know I do this part-time), my boss was out of town so I picked up some extra work. The weather was great this week, I had to get out my tank tops, shorts, and sunblock (realized that after Monday and I was a little red). I really enjoyed all the extra time outside even if it kept me from doing other stuff that needed done.
We had a slight glitch in our adoption paperwork, but that was quickly fixed and sent to our agency. It hopefully went to Washington, D.C. yesterday. We don’t know for sure yet, but I will let you know when we find out.
In other news my dad made the paper. He said I was younger than I am, thanks dad!
I have decided to particpate in a tech free challenge. I am going to give up technology (e.g. television, computer, wii games) on Sundays for the month of March. Matt still hasn’t decided if he is going to participate yet, he is so addicted to email. I am looking forward to a day without technology right now even though I do love reading blogs and emails.
Anyone else want to participate in the challenge?
By the way this is post 200 on our blog. We have been talkative!
Our dossier is officially in the hands of Fedex now and on its way to St. Louis, Missouri. I went by the Secretary of State today to get everything authenticated and they attached a sheet of paper and seal to each one.
Isn’t it pretty?
Today I also have to give thanks for woman’s intuition. As I drove away from the SOS I had a voice in my head that said to pull over and check the documents. Of course, I didn’t want to pull over, but I did give a quick look while sitting at a red light and the first sheet I looked at was missing the gold seal. I turned around, parked, re-checked absolutely everything, and went in and got the one gold seal I was missing.
I am so happy that our dossier is in the mail and out of our hands. It was a lot of work, but so worth it!
