Incline

This weekend I decided that a great way to spend our relaxing Memorial Day off would be to pack in as much activity as humanly possible, starting with the Pikes Peak incline. I forgot how hard this hike is. It is basically a little over a mile, straight up the side of the mountain. There used to be a train that went up the trail but now it is 2,800 (I heard someone say) railroad ties that form stairs up the mountain. Kevin and I got up early to hike it. It was soooo stinkin' hard, but we finished in just under an hour, which doesn't seem that good but I felt pretty good about it considering when I did this hike last year with a friend it took us almost 2 hours. It felt like we had really accomplished something. It was also nice to have some time to just hang out with Kevin, the hike down gave us a lot of time to talk.

After that we ran home got ready and headed to the zoo with the boys. It was so crowded, but a lot of fun. We met some friends there and Kaden's favorite person Paulina was there. She is the 17 year old daughter of our youth pastor and my 3 year old son is in love with her. I wasn't prepared to lose my son so early to another woman, but she is sweet.

After the zoo we all headed over to a friends house for a BBQ. It was a lot of fun. There were a lot of kids there for the boys to play with and they got to make S'mores, Kadens favorite part of the day. So we did not have a relaxing day, but we had a lot of fun with our family and friends. Here are some pictures of our adventures.This is us about half way up. We were pretty tired, but just look at that view (next picture), how could we complain???This is us at the top. We were feeling pretty good at this point because all we had left was to hike the trail back down. Little did we know that would take us over an hour!

Here we are at the zoo. My sweet boys riding the train together.

This is the new Grizzly Bear exhibit at our zoo. This picture was actually from another visit to the zoo but I thought it was too cool not to share.

Ups and Downs

As this adoption process goes on I think that I have felt pretty much every emotion possible. I came across a blog entry through my blog friend Melodie's blog and it is so beautifully written and it explains so much of how I have been feeling. Since I have discovered that writing is not a gift of mine I will let you read her entry here. I have felt most of these emotions already and it is good to know what is to come.

As for the adoption process itself our homestudy is at Adoption Alliance to be reviewed and approved and that should take 1-2 weeks. Once it is back then we will send off our I-600A and await our anticipated fingerprinting appointment. While we are waiting on all of that we are still working on our dossier so that when our fingerprints are done we will be ready to send our paperwork to Ethiopia. If wait times are right then we should have our dossier off by July or August. I am hoping for July but preparing for August.

Waiting....

After a lot of thought and prayer we have decided that we are not going to adopt a child older than Kaden. We just feel like it could work out really well, or it could have some adverse effects on Kaden and we don't want to find out the hard way that it could hurt him. We have changed our age preference from 0-12 months to 0-24 months. With the time frames that they are giving with our agency it looks like even if we get a referral for a 24 month old by the time we get the referral Oliver will be older.

That is another thing that is really heavy on my heart is the time frames we have been given. It looks like we are going to be waiting 18 months before we get a referral. Yes, I said months, not weeks. That is so hard to hear since I have seen people with other agencies wait less than 18 weeks for referrals. I knew going into this process that we were in for a wait, but I did not prepare myself for waiting 18 months. I know that God is in control and knows what child he has for our family but I am still hoping for a miracle.

Changes????

Today we went to Denver and met with Milkiyas, the in-country facilitator, and Nesibu the director of Yezelalem Minch the orphan program that our agency is working with in Ethiopia. They are amazing men with incredible hearts for orphans. It was great to learn more about the program and about the country. They are obviously very proud of Ethiopia and it was great to learn about it from them.

The thing that had the greatest impression on Kevin and I was one of the questions that Milkiyas asked and that was basically, why don't Americans want to adopt the older children? He asked in a much nicer way but that is the jist of it. And then he went on to talk about how so many people want baby girls, and they are all wondering what will happen to the baby boys and the older children. This really struck Kevin and I because up to this point that has been exactly what we were thinking, a baby girl. Not because we don't like boys, we happen to have two pretty special boys now, I just wanted to know what it would be like to be the mother of a girl. We were thinking baby because we didn't want Kaden to not be the oldest child anymore. Now we are not so sure, would it be so bad if Kaden weren't the oldest child anymore? I don't think he really thinks or cares about it, I just don't want to do something that will cause problems for him down the road. I need to talk to someone that knows a little more about birth order and all of that stuff.

Pretty much we have told our social worker to hold onto our homestudy for a couple of days so we can think and pray about whether or not we would be willing to accept a child that is 5 and older. We would have to change our homestudy and our paperwork that goes to immigration before we can send anything off. So... that's were we are right now. If there is anyone out there that knows more about birth order and child psychology please share your insight with us. We know that ultimately we need to listen and follow the Lord's calling so please be praying with us as we pray about this change.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and mothers-to-be. Have a wonderful day!!! Love you!

Done, Done & Done!

We are finally done with our home study!!! We went in on Wednesday and read over it and signed off on it. Now the director has to sign off on it and then it has to go to Adoption Alliance to be reviewed and approved and then it will finally be done. It was such a great feeling to have that part behind us. It finally feels like we are moving along again.

Tomorrow we are going to Denver to meet Milkiyas, the in-country facilitator, and Nesibu the director and founder of the orphanage that our agency works with in Ethiopia. I am excited to meet these men and learn more about what is going on in Ethiopia. It will also be fun to see the other families that we met in our training and possibly meet more people that have started or are interested in starting the process.

A Productive Day

So I decided today that instead of just being frustrated I was going to be productive, so I went and got a certified copy of our marriage certificate, and then I went and made copies of everything that we have done so far. We got our police clearances yesterday and I hope they are okay, they say in small print that this clearance is only valid for our city, so I hope that is okay. It looks like it is a pretty standard print out so if it is not okay I am not sure what we will do. So I have been able to check almost everything off of our dossier checklist, I am just waiting on a few things. Being productive makes me feel like we are making progress and that feels good.

Thank you to all of my sweet blog friends that were so encouraging, it is nice to know I am not alone!