Anna has decided that she wants to dance.  So she shall :).  Her cousin Laney invited her to a ballet class the other week.  It was a hit.  The other picture is of Jackie in a rare moment of dress up fun.

I am blessed with talented friends and family!  This is SAND ART done by one of my best friends on this planet, Kristie.  Is this amazing or what?

These pictures were taken by a family who just got back from ET.  We were SO excited and thrilled to get them!  Thank you to the Jones family, I am praying for you and your beautiful son.  Check out the link to read and see their amazing story. 

sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug...

Well, we are the bug I guess. This week brought a bit of movement but not how we wanted it to go! We are now moved to the NEXT travel group. We should leave here on Feb 27 and return a week later, though I have not gotten a confirmation email on that as of yet. We have an appointment with Immigration in Fairfax next Friday morning to update or address. We MAY be able to be issued our new 171-H (a must have to get Micah's visa) on the spot. If that is the case, then we wait to hear when our new address and update will be confirmed through the Nation Visa Center (NVC). The problem is the NVC is quite busy at the moment with the disaster in Haiti and it is nearly, if not totally, impossible to get through to them, so I hear from other families. We won't be able to make our concrete travel arrangements until we have confirmed that our info is updated over there. We may have to get our Senators invovled, but I don't know! So, we'll give Immigration a chance to get it done and take a "wait, pray and see" attitude for a bit.

We did receive Micah's ET birth certificate this week. He is Abenezer Tyrone Ferrel and they listed his birthdate as August, not September! No worries, we'll give him a September birthday anyway when he gets his new birth certificate. But it does make me a little sad that he may be in fact older than we thought. Par for the course though. Oh, the name is how they traditionally do it in ET. He will be re-named Micah Abenezer Ferrel once we get him here :).

Anna and I ventured up to AWAA last week and picked up our updated HS. We brought brownies :). The office is GORGEOUS and the people there are so nice. It was great to meet some of the people I've been talking to for over a year now! It was not a bad drive at all, minus a bit of traffic and there is a great BBQ joint right down the road! :) So, now that I'm at a stand still with my paperwork and emails, I think I'll do some more studying on Ethiopia. I got an Amazon order yesterday :). I ordered Fire on the Mountain, an Ethiopian childrens book by Jane Kurtz. The girls and I LOVED it. We will be getting all Jane's books. The illustrations are WONDERFUL and the story is outstanding. I also got Ethiopia, Culture Smart and started reading it to Ty while he made breakfast this morning (he always does bfast on the weekends!). I continue to be fascinated by Ethiopian Culture. I began reading Held at a Distance by Rebecca Haile yesterday as well. I'm enjoying that too.
On another note, my dear friend Elyse made Micah's NAME for his wall! I squealed when I opened it! It is beyond gorgeous! Since it's snowing and we are done going outside for now, I plan to make Ty help me hang it! Yipee! Pictures later!

girl effect

Micah's room and Christmas fun

 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

Out for Delivery...

Well our clearance paperwork is out for delivery in Richmond! Yipee! It's still too early in CA to find out if they have shipped our immigration file. SO... we wait. I just processed Lips For Love orders and am amazed at how awesome my friends and family are! Thank you thank you thank you! I will put in another order soon!

Hanging in there...

Well it's complicated...  We have to update our info with immigration.  This involves transferring our file from the office in San Fran to the office in Fairfax, Va.  So far, the VA officer has been wonderful.  I have not heard back from the CA office yet, all communications are via email.  Also, we had to do more VA clearances, which were sent via Fed Ex to Richmond today with a pre-paid fed ex envelope for them to stick them in upon completion, and send them off to AWAA for our HS update.  The officer there is also wonderful and is going to do her best to expedite the process for us!  So far, I'm feeling like we are doing the best we can!  Lord, please keep these people moving!  I have been told that I can personally hand carry our updated home study (HS) to the USCIS office in Fairfax when AWAA completes it once they get the documents from Richmond.  Another adoptive parent and friend suggested that I bring brownies to those workers!  I will be doing that! :)  Please keep praying! 

On another note, Jackie rode the bus home today for the first time!  She loved it!  ;) Anna also had her first Ballet class.  Since I only enrolled her today and did not have a chance to get her the proper attire, she was decked out in a fancy shiny gymnastics leotard/unitard.  She would not dance in it because she wanted to look like the other girls!  LOL!  The teacher thought that ballet might not be her thing because she did not want to dance!  Anna assured me that she did not dance because she needed a new ballet shirt!  That is so Anna!  Wardrobe has historically been a very big issue for Anna.  Where did she get that from??  NOT from her mother and that is a fact! :)

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Frustration...

I have not posted in...  a very long time.  It's a very long story which I will touch on very quickly.  Basically, here is the low-down...

We moved from Monterey, CA to Stafford VA on military orders this summer.  We built a new house and closed on it in October.  We started the VA update process then. We got our referral call for our gorgeous baby boy on November 10th 2009!  It went WAY more quickly than we ever thought it would!  We got it before we had even made very much progress on our update (thank you swine flu!!).  WE accepted!  THEN we got a court date for Christmas day.  They did not open our case on that day, so we got a new court date for Jan. 1 2010.  We still had not had our home study visit for our update at that point but had an appointment for the end of the first week of Jan.  No problem.  We got a call on Dec 30th from our awesome social worker.  She told us she could come out early for our check and could be there in a few hours!  So we took her up on it!  Clean Clean Clean!  Not an hour later we got a call from AWAA!  We had been blessed by a surprise early court date and we had passed!  He is ours!  We named him Micah Abenezer Ferrel!  Praise the Lord!!  We then began waiting for travel news while waiting on the final word on our HS update...  We got concrete dates for Feb 14-19, contacted the travel agent and got itenerary.  THEN came the bad news...  We found out that one of our clearances was not back and our update had not yet been submitted.  Come to find out, we never did the clearance!  So tomorrow, after I get done beating my head against the wall (not really!), I will get it done!  I am praying this does not delay us very much...  Micah wants to come home and we want to see him and hold him! Click here if you want to check out more!