The Dirks Family

Two Years!

2011-08-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

Two years ago today we took Luke home from the orphanage forever. So, so, so thankful for him.

THEN
NOW

Happy Birthday Samuel!!

2011-08-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the joy of celebrating Samuel's birthday with him for the first time! It was so much fun. In the time he's been home with us, he's watched all of his siblings have a birthday, so he knew what was coming and he was pretty excited about it.

Layla enjoyed her cupcake too :)

5x7 Folded Card

2011-06-23T22:07:00.001-07:00

Lovely Branches Green 5x7 folded card

Create custom cards for Valentines Day and Easter at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Daddy's Girl

2011-04-12T18:37:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday Luke!

2011-03-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

We celebrated Luke's second birthday last week! He is such a joy to our family and it was great to celebrate His life and God's goodness to us in letting him be part of our family. We are so thankful for him!

He started his day with a birthday morning muffin!

Samuel and Luke loved the balloons.Who wouldn't want these three at their party?? :)
Luke loves cars, so I made him a car cake.

Home!

2011-02-20T17:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't been keeping the blog updated over the last few months, but an update is definitely in order as we have had some huge changes in our family recently! We returned home from Uganda on January 22 with one handsome 2 year old boy and one beautiful baby girl who we are blessed to call our children! Here are...

Samuel Jeffrey

and Layla Faith
First family picture

Hopefully more to come, if I can find the time!!

Adoption News!!

2010-09-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since we have posted any kind of update on our Ugandan adoption. There hasn't been much to report. But that changed last Thursday morning!!

We woke up Thursday morning to an e-mail from our orphanage that included a referral for TWO adorable children!! We are going to be a family of SIX! We will be adopting a little BOY who just turned two years old and a little GIRL who is not quite two months old!! We could not be more excited!

The kids have the same birth mom, so the orphanage staff was really hoping to keep them together. They had thought about asking us if we wanted to adopt them, but had decided to give us a referral of just the little girl because there was some question as to whether the boy was free to be adopted. But the e-mail had not been sent. Meanwhile, God has been working on our hearts in the last few months (and especially in the last couple of weeks) and has been giving us an increasing desire to open our home to two more children. We e-mailed the orphanage director early last week and expressed this desire to her. We were a little nervous about it, but decided to step out in faith and see what God did. After getting our e-mail, they decided to give us the referral for both children! We were thrilled and said we'd love to adopt them both, and the orphanage has since been able to confirm that the little boy is free to be adopted!! I love the way God was working in our hearts and the hearts of the staff at the orphanage to take care of both of these children. It is an illustration for me of how much God loves the orphans of this world.

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:18

Our next step is to send more paperwork to our lawyer in Uganda, and then wait for a court date. It will probably be at least a few months before we can get a court date and bring them home. I'm sure the wait ahead of us will be a hard at times, but today we are just REJOICING in these two blessings!

We can't post any pictures of them until they are legally ours, but if you are someone who sees us on a regular basis, we'll be carrying pictures with us that we would love to show you! They are super cute and we think they will just fit perfectly into our family!

Preschool!

2010-09-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

Isaac had his first day of preschool today! He was so excited. He got a little nervous when I was about ready to leave, but when I came to pick him up he was all smiles again.

No Training Wheels

2010-09-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

Emily thought Isaac was ready to take his training wheels off. She was right.
This is one of his first attempts.

Adoption

2010-05-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

My good friend Melissa wrote a BEAUTIFUL post today on our adoption in Christ - her thoughts after reading the book "Adopted for Life". It's worth your time! Awesome truths!

Adoption Day!

2010-04-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

We had Luke's adoption hearing last week! He was already legally our son, but now he can become a US citizen and his name changed from Amanuel to Luke!

Here we are with our judge. Not the greatest family picture (the boys were both very restless!), but it commemorates the event!

Faces

2010-04-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

I have to work hard to get a good picture of these boys. They move too fast! But here are some of my recent favorites.

Running!

I told Isaac to make a mad face.

Happy Birthday Luke!

2010-03-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

We have a one-year-old! Here are some of our birthday pictures.

We had an early party at Grandpa and Grandma's house.

Why would you want to open a present when you can stand on it??

My favorite boys! (Notice I'm holding them both back from the cake.)

Luke is way more interested in throwing the food in front of him than eating it, so this plate did not stay there long.

Back to Africa!

2010-02-08T20:45:00.000-08:00

We are excited to announce that we are adopting again! From Uganda!

Where to begin? Shortly (within weeks) after returning from Ethiopia with Luke, we started to feel God begin to put the country of Uganda on our hearts. We started reading/hearing about it all over the place as God truly opened our eyes to the needs there. Although the timing was sooner than we anticipated, we are thrilled to begin this journey of adoption again. I think our time in Ethiopia had a big impact on this decision too. We stayed at a guest house with several other adoptive families, most of whom were bringing home sibling groups and older kids. I cannot tell you how inspiring it was. All I could think was "We can do more. We need to do more."

Many who have gone before us in Ugandan adoptions have done so without using an agency, so we have decided to do the same. We are having our home study updated, and working directly with a baby home (orphanage) and lawyer in Uganda. A little scary but I feel like we have good resources to help us figure things out as we go.

So that's our news! Please keep us in your prayers. I will try to keep the blog updated as we know more!

Bearded Boys

2010-01-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

October in Pictures

2009-10-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

We've had a busy month so far! It started out with Luke's Dedication/Open House weekend, which was a lot of fun. Here's Luke meeting his Great Grandma Dirks...

and Great Grandpa Dirks!

Here's the Ethiopian flag cake I made for the open house.

Hanging out with Grandpa.

We had our first snow of the season and Isaac was very excited to play in it!

My first snow!

Luke got his "Welcome to the United States" book in the mail. Look how happy he is to be here!

Isaac started AWANA and is loving being a cubby!
Hanging out in the dryer while Mommy folds clothes :)Superman pajamas!!

Ethiopia Highlight #2: Meeting our Compassion Kids

2009-10-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

One of our favorite ministries to support is Compassion International. We love what they are doing around the world for so many kids. Eric started sponsoring Derar when he was in college. At that time Derar was about 7...

now he's 18!

When we were planning our trip to Ethiopia in March, we had contacted Compassion to arrange a visit with him, but then we had to cancel it when we lost our referral. So since we knew we wouldn't be going for a few months, we decided that we should start another Ethiopian sponsorship so we could meet her too! We asked Compassion if they had a young girl who lived close to Addis Ababa, and they gave us sweet Adanu! She is nine years old.
We had our visit scheduled for Tuesday, and they arrived at our guest house around noon. Both kids were really timid and quiet. It was a little hard to get them to open up. They came with Yoseph (a sponsor visit director), who translated, and each of their regional workers. While we talked, Derar was very honest with us and told us that he was considering Christianity, but had not decided whether he believes it yet. His family are not Christians, so it is a bigger deal for him to go down that road. We are grateful that he was willing to share this with us so we know how to pray for him. Adanu was really sweet and loved holding Luke. She clammed up part way through the visit and didn't want to do anymore talking, but it was nice to just be with her :) We went out to a restaurant for lunch, and then back to our guest house where we gave them their gifts and then it was time to say good-bye. I wish we would have given them their gifts at the beginning of the visit because I think they would have been less leary of us. :) Oh, well. I think Adanu might have had a previous sponsor, so she may have been seeing us as short-term sponsors. Sorry, Adanu, you're stuck with us for awhile! We gave them hugs and I gave Adanu a kiss on her forehead; then they got into the van and we waved at each other for about five minutes while the van driver tried to maneuver the van around in the small parking area. It was over too soon, but we are so glad we were able to meet them!

Eric and Derar (go Twins!)

Adanu, sleeping Luke, and me

In the van on the way to the restaurant.

Ethiopia Highlight #1: Meeting Luke!

2009-10-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

I really want to blog a little about our trip, but I'm not much of a writer, so rather than taking you through the week day by day, I'm going to talk about a few of the highlights of the week. The first and best highlight (of course!) was meeting and holding our sweet boy! I know I will not even come close to capturing the emotion of this, but I will do my best.

We arrived in Ethiopia on Sunday, and we were told to be at the orphanage on Monday afternoon to pick him up and go through our paperwork. We knew this would likely be naptime for the babies, so we weren't surprised to find Luke sleeping. Here's our first glimpse of him.

This was a pretty amazing moment for me. Because of what happened with our first referral, I couldn't shake the idea that Luke just might not be there, or that he wasn't really ours. So seeing him sleeping in his little crib was beyond wonderful. I could have stood over his crib and wept, but I didn't want to get too emotional when I couldn't even pick him up yet! We stared at him for a few minutes and then tried to distract ourselves so he could sleep a little longer. We had a couple of care packages to deliver to some other babies and lots of pictures to take for the other families with our agency who were waiting to pass court, so we did that and played with the awake babies for maybe 45 minutes. Then one of the nannies decided we shouldn't have to wait anymore and woke Luke up for us! :) Luke wasn't very happy about this though. The nanny pulled out his going home outfit and went to work getting him all spiffed up for us. Poor Luke just cried the whole time. I rubbed his head and tried to soothe him. Finally he was dressed and I got to hold him in my arms. He settled down but then my tears came! It's a moment I'll always remember.

Eric was doing all the picture taking, so we didn't get a good one of him with Luke at the orphanage, but I did let Eric hold him...a little bit. :)

Naming Luke

2009-09-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

I wanted to go into a little more detail on the name we chose. Many of you know that this is the same name that we had chosen for our first referral (Alazar). After losing that referral, we had a really hard time knowing what to do about a name. We've been asked many times over the last five months if we had chosen a name for the baby, and we would always say, "No, we're going to wait until we meet him to decide." Which was the truth - we really didn't know!

We struggled with feeling like we needed a new name for this new baby, but we couldn't come up with any that seemed to be right. In the end we decided that Luke Steven was the name we wanted to give our son, and even though we thought for a time that our son was supposed to be Alazar, God knew all along that it was to be this precious boy now sitting in my lap. This is Luke.

The name Luke means "bringer of light." As we considered the name, we did some reading about Luke in the Bible and realized his heart was much the same as ours. He demonstrates a great concern for the orphans, the widows, and the poor of the world, and he magnifies Jesus' call on us to care for them. Our prayer for Luke is that he will bring the light of Christ to those around him and that his heart will be burdened for the needs of the world.

His middle name, Steven, is in honor of my dad. I think my dad was quite a bringer of light himself to a lot of people. Though they won't meet until heaven, I hope that we can teach Luke the traits of loyalty, kindness, endurance, and integrity that my father modeled for me.

Lark Toys

2009-09-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

Both boys are sleeping at the same time for more than 20 minutes! So I have time to post again! :)

Yesterday my mom and I took Isaac and Luke on a little road trip to Lark Toys, a nearby toy store/museum that was super fun! Since it was a week day, it was not crowded at all, so that made it even more fun! We also had a great time talking with one of the owners, who just turned in her paperwork to adopt from Ethiopia! Yay for that!

Grandma was taking all the pictures so unfortunately she didn't make it in any!

They have a great carousel that Isaac and I rode three times! So fun!

Isaac with a giant panda

Isaac in the teepee

And they have ice cream! He was one happy kid!

Me with my handsome boys (and the llamas). I had to put both of these pictures up because Luke looks so cute laughing.

Brothers

2009-09-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

Luke

2009-08-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

We're home!! Here are a few shots of our new bundle of joy - Luke Steven. He is delightful - we love him so much!

We Got Him!

2009-08-24T10:51:00.001-07:00

Here's a picture! It's pretty surreal to finally hold him in our arms. While we are enjoying it here, we are probably more excited to just get him home to big brother Isaac.

We're in Rome

2009-08-22T06:42:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update. We're enjoying our two day "layover" in Rome and we get back on a plane tonight for Addis Ababa.

We had to run to catch our plane in Atlanta and by God's grace we made it. But now we're waiting for our luggage which did not make it on the plane. Please pray for that to come today before we leave. Thank you!

Testing

2009-08-18T19:58:00.001-07:00

I'm just testing the "post from your e-mail" function for our trip!

TRAVEL DATES!!!!

2009-07-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

We just got the call from our agency telling us we will be travelling in THREE WEEKS!!! I am way beyond excited! When we were told that we had passed court, we were told at the same time to expect to travel in late September. This was a huge disappointment to me because I had expected to be going at the end of August and it meant one more month away from my baby. But God showed himself merciful to us! When Lisa from our agency called, she said "Have you been praying?" Um, yes.

We passed!!

2009-07-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

I don't have much else to say - we're excited! Thanks for all the prayers!

Tonight!

2009-07-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the night! Please pray for all the paperwork to be in order, for the people who need to be there to show up, and for God to allow us approval tomorrow. We were encouraged to hear of a lot of abandonment cases that passed today - it was the first main day of re-scheduled abandonment hearings for people who had been affected by the hold. Thank you for praying with us!

Finally Some Good News!!

2009-07-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

We have been pretty discouraged the last couple of weeks around here, not hearing any significant news from Ethiopia. But today we got the e-mail we've been waiting for telling us we have a new court date!! It is two weeks away on July 28th! If we pass, we have a good chance of travelling before Eric has to start school again, which would be a huge answer to prayer.

New Bike

2009-06-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

Isaac and I found this big kid bike at a garage sale last week and it fits him perfectly! So he's movin' up from the trike! He loves it and he's doing a great job getting around on it.

Still Waiting

2009-06-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

I have been putting off updating the blog because I unfortunately have no good news to announce. We are still waiting. Our case was not heard last Friday because the hold on abandonment cases is still in place. We really have no more news than that. We can't even guess about when our case will be heard because there is just no news.

Please pray for/with us. We are trying to keep a positive attitude and trust in a mighty God, but some days are definitely harder than others. We received some updated pictures of him yesterday, which was wonderful, but at the same time we feel like he is growing up without us.

Waiting (for the Lord)

2009-05-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

Well, June 5th is fast approaching, but now we don’t know if we’ll get to go to court or not. Since we last posted, Ethiopia has recognized some possible inconsistencies/injustices with the way some of the agencies are working with abandoned kids. So, they’ve put a hold on all abandonment cases from Addis Ababa until further notice. This has already been going on for a few weeks, although our agency doesn’t expect it to be too much longer. Even if this is all resolved before June 5th, we don’t know if they will just automatically reassign us a court date, or go ahead with the one we have. Needless to say, we really have no idea where this is all headed, and when.

All that to say, I (Eric) am reading chronologically through my Bible and this weekend I read the Isaiah 40 passage that is so familiar to many:

“but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.” (v. 31)

But it was fitting to read this verse in context. The section begins with these words:

“Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God’?” (v. 27)

As much as we don’t want to say or feel such doubts, it is often a struggle to keep the fight of faith in all of this. God’s response to such questioning immediately follows:

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength…” (vv. 27-31)

By God’s grace, we pray that we’ll be able to wait for Him, to know Him as the everlasting Creator, and to know His power and strength in this craziness. We hope to see Him and His deliverance soon.

JUNE 5TH!!

2009-04-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

We have a court date!! June 5th! We are so excited that this is only 5 weeks away! The Ethiopian courts have sped things up significantly because for our first referral we had to wait about three months for our court date, and this time it will be just under 2 months! God is good! Please pray with us that we will pass the first time so we can bring Baby Dirks home in early July.

Hope and Healing

2009-04-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

We have received some much-needed good news at the Dirks' home! Friday afternoon we were sent the referral for a very little baby boy who is only ONE MONTH OLD! We are very excited to welcome this little one into our family. He has big brown eyes, cute little lips, and CRAZY hair :) We can't wait to bring him home.

So the process now is to:

wait to find out our assigned court date
wait for the day of court to come (we're guessing this will be in about two months)
if we pass, travel about 4 weeks after that.

As we have experienced, there are no guarantees that things will go this way, but we will hope and pray for the best.

Thank you all so much for your kind words and prayers on our behalf over the past two weeks. It has been one of the harder things we've been through, but we are thankful that God has put such loving and supportive people in our lives. And the news of this new precious baby has brought much hope and healing to our hearts.

Sad News

2009-03-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we received some very sad news. Our adoption agency called to tell us that they just found out that Luke is no longer in their care. They simply don't have him anymore. After some calling, we found out that probably a month ago someone from Luke's extended family came to claim him, but it sounds like there was only one worker in the orphanage that actually knew about it, and in what is apparently a cultural way of dealing with bad news, she didn't want to tell anyone about it, so she didn't. And it wasn't just Luke, but he and three other kids have been placed back with families, while we and others have legally adopted them, except that they weren't really there to be adopted. So, needless to say, we are not going to Ethiopia on Friday. The only way the timing and circumstances seem that they could have been worse would have been if we had found out when we were over there. It all seems so calculatedly cruel (which I'm sure satan is) and of course, we have no way of seeing what good God is ordaining in this at this point (that's not to say that He isn't, but that we can't see it). So, please pray for us, that our faith would not waver and that we would be able to adjust to this part of God's plan for us.

Flights are Booked!

2009-03-07T18:47:00.001-08:00

We are going to Ethiopia in less than three weeks!! We received our travel dates this week and booked our flights for March 27th - April 4th. It "happened" to fall right during Eric's spring break, so that allows him to use his 5 allotted days off the next week when we're trying to adjust back to being home! This is definitely an answer to prayer! We have a lot to do in the next three weeks but it's great to have a reason to scramble. We're coming Luke!!

WE PASSED COURT!!!!

2009-02-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

We're so excited to introduce our new son, Luke Steven Dirks!

Please Pray!!

2009-02-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

We are so excited that the week of our court date has finally arrived! Our case is scheduled to go to court this coming Friday. Ethiopia is about 9 hours ahead of us so when we wake up on Friday morning, it will be over and we should find out fairly soon whether we passed. Please pray with us for this!! I can't even let my heart dwell on the possibility of not passing court, and yet I know it is a real possibility. Ethiopia's court system is very different from ours and there are a number of unexpected things that could happen that would cause us to get rescheduled for a later date. So please pray that we will PASS on Friday and get to hold him in our arms in March!!

I'll leave you with a few recent pictures from V-day and Eric's birthday...

Ice Skating

2009-02-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

Isaac got to try out ice-skating for the first time last week, and he had a great time! We thought he did pretty good for a first-timer! Here are a few pictures and a short movie. Enjoy!

Isaac with his friend, Naomi, who was nice enough to let him borrow her sticks!

The boys.

Court Date

2009-01-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

Well, we found out our court date today. February 27. While it was nice to find out, it is just seeming way too far away right now. I expected this part of the wait would be the hardest, and it definitely is, especially now that we really know how long it will be. They say we can expect to travel 4-6 weeks after passing court. It seems like that will be the easiest part of the wait since we'll be busy getting ready for the trip...we'll see.
Thanks for your continued prayers. We're grateful to know that our loving Father is watching over our little guy and trusting Him to carry us through the weeks ahead.

It's A Boy!!

2008-12-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

Big news - we have a referral!! We are excited to announce the soon-to-be-newest addition to the Dirks family! He is 10 months old and SOOO cute! He has big brown beautiful eyes, just like big brother Isaac. :) Now we're waiting for an Ethiopian court date, and soon after that we'll be able to bring him home. We really don't know how long we'll have to wait to get into court, but please pray that it will be soon. We are obviously very anxious to get him home.

We've decided not to post or e-mail out his picture yet, but we will be carrying it with us everywhere we go, so if you see us, you can stop us and say "Let me see him!" and we'll be happy to oblige!

Five Years

2008-11-25T18:37:00.000-08:00

Eric and I celebrated our 5th anniversary on Saturday. Eric's parents blessed us greatly by taking care of Isaac in Brainerd for the weekend, so we were able to get away for a few days! Isaac had a blast with Grandma and Grandpa and we had a relaxing and responsibility-free weekend to ourselves - what a deal!

On our little balcony overlooking Lake Superior

Isaac helping hold the antlers from Grandpa's deer!

Isaac and Grandma...he's definitely in a cheesy grin phase!

We're Next!

2008-10-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted much lately about our adoption, because there (unfortunately) hasn't been much to say. Our agency has been working hard to find some kiddos, but it's been more difficult than expected. Recently they found another agency that offered to work with them in finding referrals (pictures and information of adoptable children) for their waiting families. We've since had to update paperwork for our dossier with a few extra documents required by the second agency, but now our dossier is getting authenticated and will very soon be on its way to Ethiopia. The great news we received today is that we are number ONE on the list to get a referral for a baby!! We had been number two, but the family ahead of us just got their referral, so that means we're next! This also means I'll be checking my e-mail madly and my heart will be jumping every time the phone rings. Since our agencies aren't as large and well established as some, we really don't know if this call will be days, weeks, or months away, but we are hopeful that it will be soon! So check back often :)

Derar

2008-10-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

We thought it would be fun to introduce our blog readers to Derar, who is one of the kids we sponsor through Compassion International. Eric started sponsoring Derar before we were married and before we knew that his country would be the birthplace of one of our children! Derar lives in Ethiopia, not too far from the capital - Addis Ababa, which is the city we'll be going to when we travel to bring home the baby. So we are really hoping to be able to spend some time with him while we are there! Derar is quickly approaching the age of 18, when he'll graduate from the Compassion program, so we are especially grateful for the timing of this adoption since it might be harder to contact him or arrange a visit with him if he were already done with the program. Needless to say, we are very much looking forward to meeting him!!

Late Summer Recap

2008-08-27T13:47:00.001-07:00

Eric started back at work again this week so the summer is officially over for the Dirks' family. Sad, but we're looking forward to whatever God has in store for the fall. I thought I'd post some pictures from the second half of our summer to show you what we've been up to lately...

Isaac loved getting to ride around the yard on the "tractor" after Eric finished mowing the lawn!

Eric made a second bathroom in the basement! Isaac's always ready to help :)

Baking with mommy. Once again, our little helper!

First time I was brave enough to get the paint out! One of Eric's other projects this summer was to put a new floor in our (previously carpeted) dining room, so spills at the table are much happier now.

Isaac got to go on his first airplane ride - which was exciting...too exciting to sleep of course.

Lots of snacks on the front step! This is Isaac's on-cue smile :)

Hoping to post again soon with news on the adoption. Our agency is working hard at getting referrals, so we're hopeful.

Approved!!

2008-07-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

Well, after a two month wait, we finally got our approval from USCIS to bring a baby into the US from Ethiopia! We actually got the long-awaited I-171H form in the mail last Friday, but they had spelled our last name wrong in one spot, so we had to ask for a new copy. They turned it around quickly, but it was frustrating nonetheless. But now it's on its way to our agency where it (along with the rest of our dossier - this document completes it) will be sent to various places for authentication, and THEN we are ready to get a referral!! For those not familiar with the lingo, a referral is receiving the name and picture of a baby that we could adopt. That will be an exciting day! Please pray for patience and wisdom for us as we wait for this day.

Weekend in Brainerd

2008-07-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

We went up to Eric's parents' house for a few days over the Fourth. Isaac had a great time seeing everyone and LOVED the water!

Pretending to take a nap on the beach

Isaac was SO excited to go on the boat

Grandma and Isaac

Grandpa even let Isaac DRIVE the boat - lucky kid!

Eric and his brother and sister getting ready to waterski

I love this one

Our little fish

North Shore

2008-06-15T17:59:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures from our recent trip to the North Shore with my family. Isaac had a great time and was a spectacular traveler - which made for a much more relaxing vacation!

Not much to report about the adoption - we are still just waiting for our immigration approval from CIS. Having summer here and Eric home has been a nice distraction that has made the waiting a little easier - although some days are harder than others. I just can't wait to see that little face! Isaac has started referring to the baby a lot - tonight he said "Night-night baby!" He'll be a great big brother!

Our Home Study

2008-05-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

...is finally done! I was beginning to wonder if this day would ever come! It is being mailed all over the place this week to be signed by a variety of people, and then it will go to USCIS so they can approve us to bring an orphan into the US. It's anyone's guess as to when this approval will be granted, but we are praying that it will be soon! Feel free to do the same! :)

The Zoo

2008-05-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

Isaac and I spent the day at Como Zoo with our friends Stacy and Anna, who just came home from Uganda. The kiddos definately enjoyed the stationary entertainment more than the animals that we went there to see...oh, well -as long as they're happy!

Isaac barely gave a glance to the real giraffes, but was pretty excited about this one.

This was a photo booth with a curtain that provided a good 15 minutes of fun...at no cost :)

Isaac and Anna had so much fun looking at each other through the hole in this post. They're so cute together.

Two!!

2008-05-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

Birthday Party #1

2008-05-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

Isaac's second birthday isn't officially until next Sunday, but since my brother and his wife were in town from TX for Grandma's retirement, we decided to celebrate Isaac's birthday too.

Here's Isaac with his fun aunt and uncle.

Isaac was pretty excited about his new picnic table. I always love the pictures of all the guys trying to put together the new toy :)Doesn't he just look like he's wishing he had a little brother or sister to share it with??

Isaac loves Elmo, but he was way more excited to eat the cake than look at it!

This one's from that morning - I just thought it was cute!

Ethiopia Video

2008-04-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

This video was put together by our agency. All the footage is from a recent trip they took to Ethiopia. We like it!

It's Finally Spring!!

2008-04-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Isaac is so thrilled about the warmer weather recently. He loves to go outside and help Daddy work on the yard. It should be a fun summer!

Not much to report in terms of the adoption process. We had our first of two home study visits last week and the second is this Saturday. Then they have a few weeks to get it written up. Having the home study done will be a big step in the process, so we're looking forward to that. Thanks for your continued prayers for our baby!

Gotta go! Mom's got the camara!

Big News!

2008-03-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our adoption blog! We look forward to sharing our journey with you as we begin the process of bringing home our baby from Ethiopia!

We began the process about a month ago, after God clearly laid it on our hearts that this is where he wanted us to go. We found an agency that we liked, and (since it was an out of state agency) had to then find a second one in MN that could do our homestudy. Since then, we've been working on all the paperwork for both agencies, getting references, having things notarized, going to the doctor, getting fingerprinted (three times!), and talking to adoption workers! Now that we're nearing the end of the initial paperwork, I'm actually a little disappointed because I'm running out of ways that I can make things move along. Now we have to wait through the processes and formalities to the day when we can go to Ethiopia and bring our baby home!

We chose to do an international adoption because we knew we wanted to adopt again, and - though we could have called up our county and had another foster baby placed in our home - we didn't feel emotionally ready to go through all that we just finished going through with Isaac...uncertainty, visits with birth parents, etc. Ethiopia was the country that God just seemed to be leading us to. We are excited that this gives Isaac a sibling that shares his African heritage, which we feel is important for him.

Although there is no way of knowing how long this process will take, our agency says it typically is between four and seven months for the whole process (we're definitely thinking it will be more like seven). We'll see! We're hoping for a referral of an infant; babies in Ethiopia are referred as young as three months. After accepting a referral, it will be another couple of months before we can travel to bring him/her home.

So that's our news! We'll keep you posted as we know more, and if there's nothing to report about the adoption, I'll just post pictures of Isaac. :)