24 Hours After the Call

The last 24 hours have been an emotional, wonderful, productive time. In addition to staring at Gayle's picture about 100 times I also got a lot done. I sent her background and medical information to a pediatrician that specializes in international adoption. He reviewed everything and then had a 40 minute phone consultation with me. He said she looks very healthy and saw no reason for concern. He also said he thought she was really beautiful and I said I couldn't agree more.

Tomorrow we will get a packet of paperwork from our adoption agency. We need to fill out some forms in order to officially accept her referral. Then I mail that in with the last big check (it was a doozy) and our paperwork can be forwarded to Ethiopia to request a court date.

A little more about that big check. It felt a little surreal to go to the bank today. When we first started this process I opened a savings account at a new bank. I wanted it to be completely separate from our other banks so that we would never be the tiniest bit tempted to touch that money.

The tellers at the bank knew why we had the account and they have been our cheerleaders during this process! Today I got to show them a picture of our baby girl and one of them actually teared up. These ladies have seen my struggle to raise this money. They have seen the tiny deposits when I couldn't scrape much together to the big deposits when I had successful fundraising. They heard about our "grocery angel" that sends us gift cards in the mail so our grocery money can go towards the adoption. One of them said she prays daily for us. What an amazing connection I have had with these women!

I left there with a big check (although an empty back account) and a bigger smile.

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WE GOT THE CALL!!!!

For 432 days we have been waiting to see our little girl's face. As hard as those days were they were all worth it! Our case worker called tonight around 5:45pm. As soon as I saw the caller id my heart started racing. I picked up the phone and just blurted out, "is this THE CALL?" She laughed a little and said, "yes."

Then she told us about our baby girl. She is two months old and already weighs over 10 pounds. She has gorgeous, big eyes and chubby cheeks. She is perfect and precious and we are already head over heels in love!

The next step is to have her information reviewed by an international adoption pediatrician and officially accept our referral. Then we wait for a court date. The courts in Ethiopia are closed until mid-October. Once they reopen they can issue our court date. If we are really lucky it could be the end of November.

I can't write anymore because I have to go back and stare at her picture some more!

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13 Months and Counting . . .

How did we celebrate 13 months of being on the waitlist? Putting together Gayle's crib and finishing the painting in her room, of course!

Transforming the bedroom from Jared's room to Gayle's room has been quite the undertaking. Four years ago I painted Jared's room dark blue (walls and ceiling) and my extremely talented friend Kristin painted a rocket ship mural that wrapped from the wall to the ceiling. I put mirrors in the shape of stars on the ceiling and funky touch lights on the walls. A few months ago we moved Jared into his new room. Standing in that empty, blue room I really had to ask myself what I was thinking four years ago.

It took hours to carefully get the mirrors and lights off the walls and ceiling. Then we had to patch several places. Then it took two coats of primer (three for the part with the mural) to cover the blue. Finally, we were able to paint the ceiling off white and the walls a pale pink. I repainted the trim and doors white and now you would never know that room had ever been blue!

Jed spent Saturday morning putting together the crib while I washed all her new bedding. If I had been a fly on the wall I probably would have heard Jed mutter, "I can't believe I am putting together another crib." When we gave away Laine's crib we never thought we need another one. How glad we are that we were wrong!

I ended the day with another of my huge babysitting nights. About once a month I invite up to 20 kids over for babysitting so their parents can go out. I make good money that we put into the adoption fund and our kids usually love it. It is like hosting a big birthday party at our house. We have pizza and do arts & crafts and play games.

By the end of the day I was beyond exhausted but I went to sleep with a huge smile on my face. Somehow that 13 months of waiting doesn't seem so bad.

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July Number!!!

That's right, we are officially #3 for our little girl!!! Wow, after 13 months of waiting I actually cried when I saw that number. It feels like she is within reach and that is a pretty amazing feeling.

We should get "THE CALL" anytime within the next month or two. We don't know the family that is #1 but we do know the family that is #2 are waiting on a child under 12 months. We may actually be the #1 family for a child over 12 months so it really could be any time!

The courts in Ethiopia will be closing in a few weeks for their annual two month break. We don't know the exact date they will reopen but it should be early October. This means that if we get our referral in the next month we could still hope to go to court in maybe late October or November. Then we would have a shot at bringing her home in December. Oh, how I would love to have her here for Christmas!

As excited as the Jones adults are the Jones kids are possibly even more excited (in the way that only kids can be!). Laine was the first to learn our new number and she ran through the house yelling, "number three" over and over again. On Tuesday we were at the pool and I watched Jared play with a toddler boy for about 45 minutes. He didn't even know the little boy but he sat next to the boy and his mom and handed him toys and gently splashed in the water with him. The mom came up to me later and said she had never met such a sweet little boy and said he should have a little brother or sister. I told her we are working on it.

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Welcoming Liya

We had the pleasure of welcoming a beautiful little girl named Liya to Texas on Saturday night. Liya's mom is my awesome friend Kim. Kim and her husband also have a little boy they brought home from Ethiopia over a year ago and grown kids to boot! It was wonderful to be part of Liya's homecoming.

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A Trunk Full of Groceries

Hmm, what does my car loaded down with groceries have to do with our adoption? All of those groceries were bought with a gift card from our secret grocery angel! About every other month a gift card arrives in the mail and we use it to buy groceries and then put our grocery money towards the adoption. We have no idea who is sending us the cards!

All the way to the grocery store Laine was trying to guess who had been sending the cards. She asked me if it was possible that God was sending them. (You know I loved hearing that question!) I told her that God was definitely moving someone's heart in a special way for them to support us like this.

We may never know who has been sending the cards but I hope they can feel my prayers of thanks and know how touched we are.

I am happy to report that with our latest deposit we have all of the money we need to write that last big check to our agency! We are now saving up for our travel expenses. Plane tickets can be as much as $2,500 per person (times 4 plus the one way for Gayle) so I have my work cut out for me.

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Did Our Number Just Go Up???

At this time each month I anxiously await the phone call or email from our caseworker letting us know what our official wait list number is. Even though most of our agency's families are on a message board and keep an unofficial list it is always exciting to get confirmation that our unofficial number is our official number.

Last month we were #9. We know one family got a referral and that moved us up to #8. Then a few days ago a family ahead of us shared that they were being called to adopt a specific child with another agency and were leaving our agency. So I giddily walked around the house saying we were lucky #7.

Then today we got our official number for June and it is . . .



Doesn't that look suspiciously like the #9???

My belief is that the family that is leaving our agency is not officially off the list. So why aren't we #8? My belief on that is that there was a family added to the front of the girls list. This can happen if a family is on the boys or siblings list and they decide to change their parameters to include a girl. They will be added to the wait list based on the day they initially got on the lists.

Despite the surprise I am too happy to let this little number snafu get me down. We will get the child we are meant to have and all my numbers crunching doesn't really amount to much. Plus I am super happy for my friend Kim and her husband as they are preparing to leave for Ethiopia for their second trip and will be bringing their new daughter home the night before Father's Day. Can you imagine a better Father's Day gift than that? We will even get a chance to welcome them home at the airport!

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