Summer Randomness!

Here is a glimpse at what we've been up to the last couple of weeks...  We have been so busy!  But we are loving every minute of this summer... and spending lots of time outside and with family and friends...

Evan and Elias at the church picnic- Evan's first experience with a snow cone :)  He loved it!!

Holding and petting a baby alligator at the church picnic...

Evan posing with Johnny Appleseed at the TinCaps game on Cal's birthday :)

Zoo Day with Aunt Laura...

Friday Night Live at Jefferson Pointe....  Enjoying the Chipotle chips!  We've done this the last 3 Friday evenings...  it's becoming a new summer tradition...  so much fun :)

Evan and his buddy Elias- watching Tyler (Elias' daddy) get dunked in the dunk tank at the church picnic :) Natalie and I were cracking up watching them laugh and have fun.  I love how they are holding hands!!

Picking green beans from his garden at Ma and Papa's house....

Loving the Splash Park one Friday evening before Friday Night Live....

The Timing of It All..

There are two questions that I get asked more than any other:

• When do you expect to have your child home?
• How are you doing it financially? Or along those lines - how much does Ethiopian adoption cost?
  

I'm going to tackle the first question in this post, with the second to come later on. Here's an overview of the expected timeline for our adoption from Ethiopia:

The timeline can be broken up into 3 main pieces:

• Paperwork and Homestudy (approximately 3 months)
  
• Waiting for our referral (approximately 6-9 months)
  
• Court and Travel (approximately 4 months)
  

We started in July, so that puts us out to approximately September, 2011. We've got a 14 month pregnancy on our hands. Whew, seems like forever away...

• Paperwork and Homestudy - This includes getting birth certificates, having physicals, police checks, in-home homestudy visit, references, and endless signatures that all had to be notarized.
• Waiting for Referral - After sending our paperwork over to Ethiopia, we are then waiting for our referral, which is our "match". We'll get a picture, name, age, and medical information of our child. Once we accept the referral, knowing that the child will be ours, we are then just waiting for the courts to make it legal.
• Courts and Travel - A new rule in Ethiopia requires us to travel over to be in Court to legal declare our intent to adopt our child. This will likely be a few months after we get our referral. We'll get to spend some time with the child in the orphanage, and then go to court in Addis Ababa (the capital city). Then comes the hardest part - we come back home. We have to come back home after going to court to legal make our child a part of the Baker Crew, to give the paperwork time to get through the system and to the U.S. Embassy. Approximately 1-2 months after traveling to Ethiopia the first time, we'll go again to pick up the daughter that God has planned for our family from the beginning - what a great day that will be! (sidenote - in Adoption lingo this day is called your "gotcha day").
  

That's the general overview of our timeline, which we're leaving in God's hands. Hopefully these approximations are longer than what we'll experience, we'll certainly do everything as fast as possible on our end!

Drew

A Whole Lot of Playing!

Well, we have kept very busy these last couple of weeks.  Lots of playdates, errands, and fun family time.  I am trying to take advantage of this weather as much as we can because I know it will be cold before we know it!  I have included a few pictures of what we've been up to (although I haven't been very good about taking them lately!).

And for an adoption update- we have finished gathering all the paperwork for our homestudy and had our home visit a week ago.   Now we are just waiting for our homestudy agency to write up the homestudy and we can proceed with the dossier preparations.  In the meantime, we are starting to gather all the paperwork for the dossier.  It will still be awhile until this paperwork part of the process is done, but we are definitely making progress.  And each day we are a little closer to seeing our little girl!  So exciting :)   

Playdate with cousins Keaton, Kane, and Jack!  This is the best picture I got (and Keaton wasn't even in it)- the boys kept us on our toes and I didn't have much time to snap pictures! Thanks Holly for having us over! 

Playdate with his best buddy Ryan- playing on the big sand pile!  These boys have the best time together- and Marlene and I have a pretty good time too :)

Playing in the sprinkler one night with Daddy...  one thing is for sure- these 2 have so much fun together!

SURPRISE!

Drew and Evan surprised me a couple of nights ago with a necklace in the shape of Africa.  Now I can easily remember to pray for our little girl...  I look forward to wearing it as we start this long and emotional journey to our daughter.  What an awesome way to keep the "end" in mind as we are swimming in paperwork and dealing with all the details of getting our dossier and homestudy ready.  Drew and I have been discussing lately how crazy it is to think that she may be born already or her birth mom may be carrying her right now...  Makes me so emotional everytime I think about it...

This is the bracelet Drew gave  me in the recovery room after Evan was born...  It's a good thing we were already 100% set on his name before he was born!  I think it's so special that I have something to wear as a reminder of each of our children...  What a thoughtful husband I have!

About Ethiopia..

Ethiopia is:

• a land-locked country in the Horn of Africa
• roughly twice the size of the state of Texas
• the second-most populous nation in Africa with over 79.2 million people
• bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, and Kenya to the south
• one of the oldest countries in the world, having been an independent nation since ancient times (except a brief period of Italian occupation)
• one of a few African countries to have its own alphabet (called Ge'ez or Ethiopic), and it's own time system and unique calendar, which is seven to eight years behind the Gregorian Calendar (hence the translation problems with pinpointing exact birth dates of the children for referrals!)
• a land of natural contrasts, with spectacular waterfalls and volcanic hot springs, some of Africa's highest mountains as well as some of the world's lowest points below sea level
• home to the largest cave in Africa at Sof Omar as well as one of the hottest places year-round anywhere on Earth in the country's northern-most area at Dallol
• the source of over 85% of the total Nile water flow
• divided into nine ethnically based administrative countries and subdivided into sixty-eight zones and two chartered cities: Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. It is further subdivided into 550 woredas and several special woredas
• mentioned in the Bible numerous times. After Egypt, it is the second most frequently mentioned country in both the Old and the New Testaments with approx. 41 Biblical references to Ethiopia (Hebrew - Kush)
• the most mountainous corner of Africa with almost 80 percent of Africa’s land above 9800 feet despite the fact that the country comprises barely 4 percent of the continent’s total land surface
• known for it's production of coffee beans, as well as the grain, Teff. Even today, Ethiopia is the top coffee and honey-producing country in Africa, and teff is sown on more land than any other crop in ET. Injera is one of the staples of the ET diet. It is made from Teff. Teff contains more essential minerals than other grains.
• a deeply spiritual country, and the oldest continuous seat of Christianity after the Egyptian church. The authority of the church is widely respected by the country’s 24 million Orthodox Christians. Ethiopia embraced Christianity less than 400 yrs after the birth of Christ - while Europe was still in the Dark Ages.
• believed to have connection with biblical events dating back to the ninth century BC when the Queen of Sheba is said to have traveled from her ET palace to meet King Solomon in Jerusalem (their meeting is described in the tenth chapter of the Book of I Kings). ET tradition interprets the scripture to mean that Solomon spent the night with the queen, and that she gave birth to Solomon’s son upon her return to ET. The child was named David, and in due course he ascended to the throne as Menelik I, founder of the Solomonic dynasty. In later times, the link between ET and Christian religion was strengthened by a legend telling that, while still a young man, Menelik brought the fabled Ark of the Covenant to Aksum (where it is believed to still remain). A replica of the ark is enshrined in each of ET’s more than 20,000 Christian churches. Known as Tabots, these replicas play a central role in major religious events.
• home to nearly 6 million orphans. More than half a million of these were orphaned as a result of AIDS

Ethiopia has:

• one of the most powerful militaries in Africa
• around 80 different ethnic groups, with the largest 2 being Oromo and Amhara
• a tiered government system consisting of a federal government overseeing ethnically based regional countries, zones, districts (woredas), and neighborhoods (kebele)
• 23,812 kilometers of all-weather roads but only15% are asphalt. Mountainous terrain and the lack of good roads and sufficient vehicles make land transportation difficult and expensive
• eighty-four indigenous languages. English is the most widely spoken foreign language and is the medium of instruction in secondary schools. Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by local languages such as Oromifa and Tigrinya

Evan's Big Boy Room!

In between filling out LOTS of adoption paperwork and having fun as a family, we managed to finish off decorating Evan's big boy room this weekend.  He's been sleeping in there consistently now for about a month, but now everything is officially moved over from his closet and dresser.  He loves his new room!!