...yep, still waiting....

There is no speck of doubt in my mind that THE CALL (aka, our referral call) will come at just the time it is supposed to be, for the exact little girl who is supposed to become our daughter.

However, knowing this does not necessarily make WAITING any easier. I keep reminding myself that many good things in life are worth waiting for - but I still may (or may not) be going very a little bit crazy waiting. Among other things, today I sorted 3 bins of mixed crayons/ colored pencils/ markers into 3 nicely organized bins, 1 each of markers, crayons, and colored pencils. You know, because that DEFINITELY needed to be done. Not only that, but I tested every single marker, and discarded the ones that were dried up.

Anyway, to put a bit of a humorous spin on the fact that we are still waiting, I drew this little cartoon. If you click on it, it should enlarge in your browser, so you can see it better.

For all my lovely family and friends, THANK YOU for putting up with the little bit of crazy I might be exhibiting lately. I hope promise that I will return back to fairly normal at some point in the near future!

On a side note, I am fully aware that waiting is exponentially harder for our daughter. My heart and arms ache to hold her, and I know that yearning to be held and loved must be so much more difficult for our daughter, because she probably doesn't understand what is going on right now.

In the meantime... we pray... and wait... and stare at the phone WILLING it to start ringing with that 703 area code... and wait some more.

43 months since DTE!

It has been 43 months since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia!
Monday also marked 4 years from the day we first applied to our agency... but families don't get onto the wait list until they send in their dossier, which is a compilation of documents required by the Ethiopian government.

I was really hoping that we would have some news by now, but at the same time, I know that many of the best things in life are WORTH WAITING FOR.

Our DTE buddies (their paperwork got sent to Ethiopia the same day as ours did) got their referral call yesterday, so we are confident it will be our turn SOON.

Yesterday's Bible study included the following verse:
"Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation." (Psalm 5:1-3)
We will continue to wait in expectation, until we hold our girl in our arms!

Walking on a beautiful beach last weekend helped put things into perspective!

Please continue to pray for our daughter, and for the other children and families at all stages of their adoption.

41 months since DTE!

Yup, it's been 41 months since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia.

If our wait was compared to an elephant's gestation period (which is 21 months), we would now have a 20-month-old baby elephant. 

That is one heck of a wait, folks... and we know it will be 100% worth it in the end!

The projected wait time our agency quotes is 36-42 months... so THE call could very much happen any day now... or in a couple of months (in case I lost you, I'm talking about our daughter, not a baby elephant now).

We are so excited to get the referral call... hopefully very soon! We are praying and waiting for you, sweet girl!

40 months DTE!

Whew! It has been 40 months since our dossier was sent to Ethiopia!

That's a long time to wait to get your kiddo, folks. That's one heck of a long time!

Two families from our agency got their referral this week, which bumped us up 2 more spots on the wait list. We are getting SO CLOSE to it being our turn, and we rejoice with the families who got such great news!

We just got to submit the paperwork to update our fingerprints with USCIS. We also sent off a new Power of Attorney to the WA Secretary of State to be certified - Ethiopia's MOWCYA is asking families for this new POA, so we want to have that ready to go.

We continue to wait and pray for our little girl! 

38 months DTE!

Yesterday marked 38 months since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia!

Last week, Ben and I were pro-active and got our travel vaccinations. Ben got 6 shots and I got 8. The next day we both felt super achy, as if we had lifted 100lb weights all day long. We both felt tired, and a little nauseous, but aside form that, felt fine. By Sunday we were back to normal. (We had expected much worse!).
Before you get all excited that we might be traveling soon, the main reason we got the vaccines now was that our health insurance is pretty awesome, and most of the shots were fully covered.

To see which vaccinations are recommended for travel to Ethiopia, you can check HERE.

Aside from getting vaccinated, there isn't really much news. We continue to wait... we continue to pray... and hopefully we will have some more interesting news for you by the end of the year, but there is no guarantee.

Looking on the bright side, we are a whole lot closer to the end than we were 38 months ago!

36 months since DTE!

Today marks the big 3-year-mark of waiting since we sent our dossier off to Ethiopia! That's 36 months of waiting for our daughter, folks. 36 months!

When we sent off our dossier, Mark was only 5 years old, and Sean was not even a year old. Look at this picture of them, proudly posing with our dossier just before mailing it:

This was taken Aug 12, 2011

 Oh how we love our boys - they have grown up so much since then! Now they are 8 and almost 4!

Our two wonderful boys hope to be big brothers soon!

Right on time for this celebratory blog post, we finally DO have some updates and good news. Our adoption agency has sent us an email telling us that we are nearing the top of the wait list, and therefore should make sure all our paperwork is in order. We have been busily updating a few of our dossier documents that we have to re-submit upon receiving our referral. 

Since in International Adoption everything is so unpredictable, we honestly don't know when we will receive a referral. We are hoping it will happen before the end of this year (tomorrow would be fine with us, too!). However, we continue to trust in God's perfect timing!

For those of you who are wondering what will happen after we get a referral, here is the approximate sequence of events:

1. We get a referral. This means our agency calls us to tell us we have been matched with a child, and we get to review her file. The file includes pictures of her, any known history, and medical info. 
2. We accept the referral. We get to send in a bunch of documents at this time, as well as the referral acceptance fees. 
3. We wait for the Ethiopian government and the US Immigration services to process a bunch of paperwork. With the new so-called PAIR process, this takes about 4 months.
4. We are assigned a court date once PAIR is complete and MOWCYA has written a recommendation letter. 
5. We travel to Ethiopia to meet our daughter, and to adopt her in the Ethiopian court. She legally becomes a Bradley family member at this time!
6. We travel back home without our daughter while the US Embassy processes MORE paperwork. 
7. We get Embassy clearance, and travel BACK to Ethiopia. We finally get to take custody of our daughter! We have to attend several appointments at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, and then we travel home!
8. Upon arrival on US soil, our daughter becomes a US citizen!
9. We arrive at home, and become a family of 5!

Thinking about arriving at home with our daughter makes me feel all giddy and also a little bit teary with anticipation. This will be one of the most wonderful and also one of the hardest things we have ever done. I am looking forward to a bunch of friends and family welcoming us with our daughter at the airport! More than anything, I am looking forward to holding our daughter in our arms!

Please continue to pray with us for our little girl!

35 months since DTE

This month our documents have been in Ethiopia for 35 months. WOW! From the time we signed on with our adoption agency we have been waiting 40 months for our daughter. Since the paper chase takes different amounts of time for different families, everyone counts from the time their dossier was sent off though. Hence, we are at 35 months, and counting. 

You might have noticed that I missed updating the blog for a couple of months. Oops! On the bright side, we are that much closer to getting our referral. 

We have worked VERY hard in the last few weeks to get a bunch of our expiring paperwork updated. We have completed our Homestudy update, and have applied for our I-171H renewal. A few new laws were passed, and we JUST BARELY squeaked our application in before they came into effect. Otherwise we would have had to have background checks for every residence we have lived at since we were 18. Between growing up overseas, going to college, being in the military etc. we have moved MANY times, and I don't even remember the address for every place we lived. Whew!
(I should add that our social worker is a rock star. WA DHS was backlogged to the point where our clearances would not have come through on time to make some of the deadlines. She took time out of her day to make sure we got our clearances on time and everything was notarized and mailed on time!)

Quite a few families in our agency have gotten referrals in the last 3 months, now that regional Ethiopian clearances are finally coming through on children's paperwork. Our agency doesn't refer a child until he or she is 'paper ready' - this means a possible longer wait on the front end, but once a referral is given, the paperwork is fairly straightforward. (I say 'fairly' here... keeping in mind that in international adoption a lot of things are unpredictable!). 

This is an exciting (and somewhat nerve-racking) time - the families who are getting referrals right now are about 4 months ahead of us in the process. This means that maybe, just MAYBE we will get our referral by the end of this year! This means that our daughter is most likely already born. Please join me in praying for her...

30 months since DTE!

It has been 30 months since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia!

I don't really have anything new or exciting to say... except that we are 30 months closer than we were when we started out this wait. :) The wait sucks, but I know that God knows what he is doing, and so we continue to wait patiently-ish.

29 months since DTE

It has been 29 months since our dossier was sent to Ethiopia.

I don't really have any new news for you right now... so we continue to wait, trust, and hope that the wait will soon come to an end! It could take another year, or there could be a whole slew of referrals. 

On Monday I painted a little painting of my friend's daughter dancing with her scarf at the Ethiopian New Years festival (Enkutatesh) back in September. I needed to paint something hopeful, joyful... I'm getting pretty tired of waiting at this point!

28 months since DTE!

It has been 28 months since our dossier was sent to Ethiopia!

There really isn't any news to share... we continue to wait! 

27 months DTE!

It has been 27 months since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia. This means we are 27 months closer to holding our daughter in our arms.

I wish we already knew who our daughter is going to be. On the other hand, I know that the wait will be even harder when we have a little face to yearn for, after we get our referral.

God knows what he is doing!

25 months DTE!

Our dossier has been in Ethiopia for 25 months now! At this point, our waiting time is higher than our number on the wait list... but we could very well find ourselves waiting for another year.

Many families had their court appointments last month, and we rejoice with them, as well as with the families that get to travel this month to go to Embassy and bring their kids home.

September 11 is the day that Ethiopia celebrates New Year. Melkam Addis Amet!

Some of you might like a print of my newest painting: an Ethiopian market scene! I have 8x10 and 11x14 prints available in my Etsy shop HERE.

My newest painting: Ethiopian market

I am really looking forward to seeing Addis Ababa myself some time next year. Hopefully I'll be able to take lots of pictures for future paintings!
More importantly, I can't WAIT to meet and hold our daughter... we continue to wait (more or less patiently) for our referral!

23 months waiting since our Dossier arrived in Ethiopia...

Last week was a busy, busy week, with Vacation Bible Extreme at our church and a whole slew of projects and commitments. I zoomed right past our 23-month date - oops!

Happy 23-months-waiting to us. It is good to know we are getting closer... right now the families who are getting referrals have been waiting for about 27-28 months, so we will be within the window of possibility soon-ish!

Life is busy, and it's (almost) easy to forget sometimes that we are waiting... and waiting... and waiting for our little girl. We remind ourselves to pray for the other families who are waiting, or who already have a referral. We also pray for our daughter (whoever she may be), for her birth family, and for everyone she will encounter on her way into our arms!

22 months since DTE

Our dossier has been in Ethiopia for 22 months! That is 22 months closer to getting our little girl... and so we celebrate. 

This week I am feeling frustrated and discouraged with the long wait, and the prospect of the wait continuing to lengthen.

In spite of my heavy heart, I continue to trust in God's perfect timing. He has the right little girl in mind for us, and she will come into our family at the right time.

21 months since DTE!

Woops, we zoomed right by the 21-month-waiting mark. On May 12 was 21 months since our Dossier went to Ethiopia.

It's good when time flies like this. The wait is hard, and the last few weeks weren't always easy. We continue to trust God and His perfect timing...

20 months DTE!

Yesterday marked 20 months since we sent our dossier to Ethiopia.

Life has been wonderfully (and sometimes a little stressfully) busy this past month, so time has flown by.

The current projected wait time that our agency quotes is 24-30 months, so in 4 months we will be 'in the window' for receiving a referral. However, looking at how many families are still ahead of us on the wait list, we are counting on waiting longer than that.
Don't get me wrong. As far as we are concerned, RIGHT NOW would be a great time to receive a referral. But we trust God's perfect timing, and we trust our agency.

Please join me in praying for our little girl, who very well could already be born at this point. We are praying for health and for protection of her little body and her little mind. We are also praying for her birth family, whoever they may be. Adoption always comes out of a situation of brokenness, and we don't want to ignore this as we eagerly wait to hold our sweet daughter in our arms...

19 months DTE

Our dossier has been in Ethiopia for 19 months now!

The last month has actually been really encouraging. There were 15 (!) referrals, and we moved up by quite a few spots on the waiting list. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see a few more referral-rich months?!

18 months waiting since DTE!

OK, it has officially been 1.5 years now since our dossier was sent to Ethiopia. That is 18 months, or about 548 days. *Phew!* We could very likely find ourselves waiting for another year or more before receiving a referral... so we continue to wait... and pray... and wait... and update our documents... and pray... and wait...

Life is very busy and kind of normal these days. I don't have much time to sit and pine over the fact that we miss our daughter-to-be, can't wait to meet her, and to hold her in our arms and grow her into our family. We've reached the point in our wait where people start asking us: "So, are you guys actually still adopting?!" - YES! Yes we are! It just takes a really long time!

Please join me in prayer for MOVEMENT in all stages of Ethiopian adoptions. There are so many families who are waiting, and so many children who need families. Please pray for expedient (and ethical) processing of the clearances each child must receive before being able to be referred. Please pray for families to get referrals, and that the process of court and Embassy go smoothly. Please pray that the hearts of the children who need families are protected while they wait... after their losses, the wait is so much harder for them than it ever can be for us!

17 months DTE!

I forgot until another family from our agency who has the same DTE date as we do posted on Facebook.

Our dossier has been in Ethiopia (DTE) for 17 months today!

Sometimes it's nice when you are so busy that time flies. We are trying to be patient, and rejoice with the families ahead of us as they get referrals, go to court, and pass Embassy. Hopefully by this time next year we will be home with our little girl, but we trust God's perfect timing!

We still have a ways to go, but once we get into the 20s on the wait list, we'll start posting pics of the boys counting down...

14 months waiting since DTE!!!

Ooops, last Friday was our 14-month-waiting-since-DTE-versary, and we were so busy, it totally flew past me!

Today we had our homestudy update meeting - everything was easy and smooth, and getting the documents updated (new security clearances, new fingerprints, new doctor's form and letter, new financial spreadsheet, copy of tax forms from last year) was much easier than when we had to do it the first time (there were also fewer documents we  needed!).

We still have a long wait ahead of us, but it was encouraging to talk to our social worker. Hopefully we won't have to do another homestudy update before we get our referral!