All wrapped into one

     Well, it has been a while since our last update.  Things have been crazy and busy around here with the holidays fast approaching. 
     As far as the adoption goes, we are officially on the waiting list!  Woohoo!  We had our USCIS fingerprints done last week and now we are waiting on our Favorable Determination Letter from them.  Then we will send that last piece of paperwork on to our agency and after that we wait....and wait...and wait.  The picture below wraps up everything that has been happening.  It is officially our last picture as a family of four.  It shows me at 29 weeks and the numbers hanging from the dog's collars (which they are loving as you can see) tell where we are currently on the waiting list for the adoption.  Blue=boy, Pink=girl.  We have a two year wait from now.  Well, it will give us a chance to focus on our little girl coming in February. 

 

     Speaking of our little girl, she is still growing and doing well.  We picked out a name a few weeks ago:  Claire Hannah.  We like Claire because it is a name that you don't hear much these days.  Hannah has special meaning.  We wanted our daughter to have a middle name from Ethiopia so that she would have something in common with the baby we adopt.  Mike found a list of top Ethiopian girl names and Hannah was on the list.  Also, the transition home where our adopted child will be before we go meet him/her is called Hannah's Hope.  We both thought that was a perfect middle name for little Claire.
     In other news, I had my first bump  in the road with the pregnancy in the past couple of weeks.  Two weeks ago, I took glucose test #1 and did not pass.  I was devastated and totally freaked out until my mom reminded me that I am not in control, God is.  She also reminded me to pray about it and just trust Him.  Wise words indeed.  The next morning I was still really worried and upset about the whole thing because I just had a feeling that I probably had gestational diabetes despite the fact that I hadn't taken the second test yet. 
     While sitting at the table that morning eating breakfast, I opened my Bible app on my phone and read the verse of the day.  It is from Jeremiah 31:3 and it says:  "The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying, 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.'"  It's amazing the moments that God sweetly reminds us of his love for us and that He is always with us. I decided in that moment that I would trust Him to take care of us because I know He knows what is best for us.
     After taking the second glucose test, I found out that I didn't pass that one either but it wasn't as hard for me to get that news because I had already decided that I am not in control.  I will be attending a class at the Women's Hospital to learn about nutrition that will be good for us and I will also have to test my blood sugar levels 4 times a day.  In short, it is easy to manage.  That is a huge relief for me.
     We have also been busy getting Claire's room ready for her...when I say "we" I really mean Mike.  He has painted her room and is busy working on the trim that will go on the walls.  I plan to order decals in a pink jungle theme to put on the walls.  It is really starting to look like a nursery.  I can't believe that I am already 30 weeks along today.  It has gone by so fast.  Pretty soon, we'll be posting pictures of our beautiful baby on our blog.  Well, this has been a really long update but thanks for hanging in there until the end to read all of our news.  Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

No spoilers in the title. You must read to find out the BIG NEWS!!

Friday was a HUGE day for Tam and I to say the least. As you may already know, we have spent the past several months writing and gathering a ton of information about ourselves and our lives from birth to present. All of this information eventually comes together to create our official dossier. This is the set of documents that will eventually be sent to Ethiopia as an initial representation of ourselves to the Ethiopian government. To give you an idea of what this entails, here is a high level list of the requirements.

- Notarized and State Certified Power of Attorney Form
- Notarized Power of Attorney Form
- Statement of Reason to Adopt (Application Letter)
- Photocopy of US Passport w/Notary Sheet for father
- Photocopy of US Passport w/Notary Sheet for mother
- Official passport photos (2 photos per parent)
- Photographs of the family
- Photographs of the family’s home
- Home Study of family with Copies of Social Worker & Agency License
- Letter(s) of Employment for father
- Letter(s) of Employment for mother
- Financial Statement
- Birth Certificate for father
- Birth Certificate for mother
- Certificate of Marriage
- Medical Letter for father
- Medical Letter for mother
- Police Clearance for father
- Police Clearance for mother
- Two Letters of Reference
- Obligation of Post Placement Reports
- 2 Complete Copies of Dossier

Well, Tam and I are glad to say that our dossier is now COMPLETE!

On Friday we finally received the official notarized originals of our completed Home Study in the mail! For those that missed this, our home study was when our social worker (Jennifer O'Leary of Family to Family Adoptions --- we highly recommend her) came to our house to interview us and make sure that we could provide a loving home to a child from Ethiopia. Well, this was the final piece we had been waiting on. With this in our hands, we were able to package it up with the rest of our information and forms in order to create our dossier.

What's the next step? Right now our dossier is on its way to All God's Children in Portland, Oregon. They will review the information we have submitted and if they find any corrections that need to be made, we will have to fix those. Once our dossier is deemed correct and complete by All God's Children, we will then be in a position to be put on the waiting list. As we did not specify a preference for a boy or girl, we will be placed on both lists. At this point, the wait is likely to be around 18 months or a little longer.

While the process of getting to this point has required a lot of prayer and at times been very frustrating, it is a process that has helped us grow as Christ followers, as husband and wife, and as future parents. We are so very glad that we decided to follow the path God has set before us and with this huge step behind us we are now expectantly looking forward to seeing the beautiful face of the child God has already selected for us, even though that child has not yet been born.

At FedEx mailing our dossier

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice...

 

That's what little GIRLS are made of!  So, as you know, we went to the doctor and had the ultrasound to tell us whether we are having a girl or boy.  We are excited to say it's a girl! (We would have been excited either way).  She was rather difficult at the beginning of the ultrasound.  She was face down and would not turn over, no matter how much wiggling of my belly was done.  But in the end we were finally able to get a good picture that leaves no doubt in our minds that it's a girl.  I've posted one of the ultrasound pics below.  We haven't picked a name yet though...

There's no doubt!  It's definately a girl!

We had some of our family over on Saturday for lunch.  Funny story, I was talking to my mother-in-law and I said "Next year we'll have to figure out what babysitter to put 'em with" and she thought I said "him".  So she thought I had slipped up and said that it was a boy.  Mike added to the craziness by saying, "Funny it's usually me who messes up surprises!"  So after lunch when we had the cake balls, she was really suprised when the inside was pink!  It was great! 

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law who live in Dallas couldn't be there, so we face-timed with them on Mike's phone and he bit into the cake ball and then showed them the pink inside on the phone.  It really was a neat moment to see everyone's suprised faces.  Then, I got my very first baby presents to open from family.  I'm already loving all the cute girl stuff!!  It was an awesome day! 

Cake Ball Reveal - Mmmm!  Yummy!!

We are having a...

I had my 20 week appointment last week and found out that we are having a...

Sorry, I can't reveal the news just yet because we are having a family gathering this weekend at our house for the big reveal.  My sister is making cake balls and she will color the cake either pink or blue, depending on what we are having.  We are excited to have our family over to share the news! 

At the doctor's appointment everything was good.  The radiologist came in during the ultrasound and his report said that everything looked great.  Baby and Mom are doing well...now if I can just get it to move off of my bladder - LOL!!  I am starting to feel more kicks and that is so cool! 

 

On the adoption front, our Home Study is finished except for our online education classes and our workbook.  We have reviewed the Home Study and it has been sent to the adoption agency for review now.  We have two more online classes to finish (they take about an hour and a half each to complete...ugh!) and the only other thing left to do in the workbook is to write about our experience eating at an Ethiopian restaurant.  We are planning to go to Blue Nile this week.  I've heard great things! 

Another thing we had to do for the workbook was to cook an Ethiopian dish and we chose to make Doro Wat this past Friday.  It is considered by some to be the national dish of Ethiopia.  It is essentially chicken and spices and I found the recipe online (http://www.whats4eats.com/poultry/doro-wat-recipe).  The recipe calls for a special spice called berbere and I was thankfully able to get some from our friends Ben and Lauren Huss.  I could have made berbere but there are about 18 different spices in it and the recipes that I found online to make it look difficult and time consuming.  I'm going to have to find somewhere here in Houston that I can buy it for future use!

The dish tasted amazing!  It was really spicy for me but we served it over rice and that helped to cut some of the spice.  I'm sure all of you non-sensitive-to-spicy-foods people (like Mike) would have considered it medium spicy.  It is a dish that I look forward to cooking in the future for our family-- even before the baby from Ethiopia is here!  I've posted some pictures below that we took while cooking the dish and then there's the final result picture as well. 


Cooking berberé paste with other spices

 

Simmering the chicken with the spicy sauce

YUM!!

I SURVIVED!

Despite all the running, climbing, jumping, swimming, crawling, thick mud, and getting shocked over the course of 4+ hours, I still managed to survive! I was very glad to have run the race with family and friends and was especially grateful that my beautiful pregnant wife was still able to meet me at several places throughout the course to help me check my blood sugar. If you want to see how I got to looking like this...

...take a look at the video. It includes all 22 obstacles that our team went through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWh1Ur8m-w

Two random things

Although I should be in bed right now, I figured I would share a couple of upcoming events we have. While they are a little random and completely different, they at least in some way pertain to our pregnancy/adoption.

Firstly, one way Tam and I have been attempting to raise some money to put toward our adoption is through garage sales. We had one last weekend (which didn't go too badly) but due to the rain, our HOA has decided to have another one in two weeks on 10/13. Before I ask the "if you have anything that you have been wanting to get rid of " question, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE first consider donating it to a charity, especially as the Christmas season will be here before we know it. If you are looking for somewhere to make a donation, here is a place that always needs help and does a great job of making the most out of what they receive: http://www.secondmile.org/.

However, if you still would like to help out our cause and have something you would like to get rid of without going to the trouble of a garage sale, Tam and I would love to try to sell it in ours and would definitely appreciate the donation. Just get in touch with us and we will come pick up whatever you would like us to.

As for that other thing......so maybe this is me wanting to do something crazy before I become a dad (which I hear doesn't involve very much sleep), but this Saturday 10/6 I, along with my younger brother and two guys we went to school with, will be running in a Tough Mudder. For those of you who have not heard of this event, take a look at this link (http://toughmudder.com/austin-2012/). In a nutshell, Tough Mudder is a 10 - 12 mile run broken up by 28 obstacles designed by British Special Forces to test your strength, stamina, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, the biggest test here is on your sanity, which I appear to be failing miserably.

In any case, I have been training for almost 4 months so there is no quitting now. I will be recording the run (mainly the obstacles) with a GoPro camera and will be posting a YouTube link to the video here next week. Stay tuned!

16 weeks and still growing!

So this past week I went to my 16 week check up appointment.  2 hours in the waiting room and 5 minutes in the room with the doctor to find out that all is well.  It was a long afternoon.  I did get to hear the heart beat again.  That is always so cool!  The nurse said that it is in the 160s.  It took her a few minutes to find the heartbeat (freaked me out) because she said the baby was all over the place!  My friends we have an active baby!  I guess I won't be sleeping much after I start to actually feel the baby move :).

We find out whether we are having a boy or girl October 17th.  We are so excited!  We don't care either way, we just want a healthy baby. 

I've posted my 16 week picture below.  As one of my students said, the baby is showing!

One step at a time

It has been a long month but we are now nearing what we consider to be a MAJOR milestone in our adoption process, which is to complete our home study. This has been scheduled for Tuesday, September 25th.

The most difficult part of this milestone is when the social worker will be giving our house the white glove test to make sure that we have properly cleaned every surface in the entire house ...okay, just joking on this last part, but this process can sometimes feel this way :-)

But seriously, the social worker we have contracted with to perform the home study will be coming over to our house to learn more about the environment that our child will be adopted into. This process is designed to not only make sure that our house is not infested with snakes (we already dumped all the snakes in our awesome neighbor's pool - Thanks Joe & Sandra! ;-)), but also to make sure that we are parents that can and will nurture and provide for a child. Aside from all the birth certificates, marriage certificate, doctor's approvals, employment verifications, etc that Tam and I have had to gather for the home study, we each had to fill out an autobiography. In the end this amounted to about 20 pages each of single spaced questions and answers about of our lives from childhood until now. The interview process is supposed to take several hours and go over the material we have written in our autobiographies as well as any other information our social worker may want to know about us.

After writing this I realized that one of our intents was to encourage people who may be thinking about adopting and what is above may seem too much on paper. However, while our adoption process has been a little stressful at times, we are really getting closer to having what we need in order to submit our dossier to All God's Children for approval. What makes all of this worth it is knowing that in a matter of a few months we will be on a waiting list to adopt a beautiful baby from Ethiopia and provide this child what he or she so desperately needs...a loving home. This, in our opinion, is one of the greatest things we have ever aspired to do and we ask for your prayers in this.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork...

Ugggg, SOOOOO much paperwork to fill out, notarize, copy, etc so that we can get our dossier ready. It is due in December but we are trying like mad to get it done earlier so that we can get on the waiting list for the adoption.
 
We should have started earlier I suppose but when we told the adoption agency Tam was pregnant in July, they wanted us to wait until she reached the 12 week safe zone. They also said that waiting would give them time to see if their soon to be revised pregnancy policy would keep us from adopting. Since they said that we could move forward last week, we now feel like we are over a month behind.
 
But, on a happier note...check this out. I'm sure many of you have already seen this, but if not, this is a super adorable video a co-worker sent to me as to what we have to look forward to with our two babies.

I guess I need to pick up guitar lessons as well :-)
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7uIG8KYhg&feature=plcp
 
WE CAN'T WAIT!

Exciting News

We have exciting news this week!  Yesterday, we received confirmation from our adoption agency that we can continue with the adoption!  God is so amazing! 

As far as the pregnancy...
Here is my 12 week "tummy picture".  I will be taking one every month as the baby and I grow. :)
Also, I had my 12 week check up at the doctor this week and everything is good.  I got to listen to the heartbeat - it is really fast.  The doctor did another ultrasound and I've placed one of the pictures below.  This is the best profile shot she could get...the baby was moving all over the place!  My doctor said that her vote is that the baby is a girl but we won't find out until our 20 week appointment.


12 weeks = little baby bump :)

 

There's a first time for everything...

As I still have not succumbed to the pressure to create a Facebook account (I know, shame on me :-p), and Tamara is not on there much either, we have decided to start our own blog! I know, we could more or less do the same thing on Facebook, but then I would not be able to share this with the 5 other people on this planet without a Facebook account. :-)

I have no idea the direction this blog will take over time, but the inspiration for it came from two places:

1. Our desire to share with family, friends, and anyone else interested our adoption experiences as well as to provide updates on our recent pregnancy!
2. Our friends Ben and Lauren Huss, whose story is not that much different from ours. They have an awesome blog (teamhuss.blogspot.com) so check it out.

With this blog, we also hope to be able to encourage others who are considering or are in the process of adopting so please feel free to get in touch with us.

If you don't mind reading a few paragraphs, check out the Our Story page to see what has led us to the point we are at right now.

And finally, to all you veteran bloggers, as Tamara and I know little about blogging, please feel free to let us know if we are "blogging" incorrectly :-)