Letting go

As far as this adoption procedure goes, frustration leads to lots of second guessing... what should we have done differently to make everything go perfectly? I realized yesterday that the answer is "nothing". If we had done just one thing differently, we probably wouldn't be waiting for these precious twins to come home, and that idea is just unbearable. God chose them for us and God will choose when they come home. I feel some peace in trying to let go of the need to be in control of the timing, and just accepting that it will happen.

A new weight loss plan!

This weekend, Emily and I went and cheered on her former teammates at the Nebraska state meet for gymnastics levels 7-10. I haven't seen many of the other moms for a few months, and several commented that I appear to have lost weight. I shared my secret... the international adoption diet! The pounds just stress away! I think I've lost about eight pounds since January.

And, by the way, congratulations to the 2009 Nebraska State Champions in levels 9 and 10, Premier Gymnastics!

Feeling down

The week is almost over and we really have no news, good or bad, on the status of our case. Also, Anna has struggled all week with migraines. Both situations make me feel very helpless.

Didn't pass again

Just got word that we didn't pass.

Here is the latest word from our coordinator:

"I just got off the phone with Shimeliss at Hope Adoptions. He said that your case was not approved because MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs) did not provide their recommendation to the court in time. According to Shimeliss, Hope has to provide their information to MOWA 8 to 10 days prior to the court hearing but MOWA only has to provide their recommendation 24 hours before the court hearing. Unfortunately, because of the difficulties with MOWA in that region, the reports were not provided on time. Shimeliss says that MOWA is not very organized there and is having some difficulties but that this doesn't mean they don't want the case to be approved. The good news is that they were able to get the court to leave the case in "open" status. That means, whenever MOWA does get the report ready, they can go to the court with the MOWA recommendation and should be able to get the court approval right then, without having to get another court date. He is hoping to get this resolved this week. I will check in with them daily until I have some answers."

I would like to ask everyone to pray for this to be resolved as soon as possible.

Sometimes, bigger really IS better

We got a new car this weekend to accomodate our soon-to-be larger family. It's a 2009 Buick Enclave with eight passenger seating. My old Pacifica had over 101,000 miles on it and was starting to seem a little decrepit. I like my new car. :)

Spring is in the air...

... at least for the past few days! I know that in our area we could still get a snowstorm at any time, but the birds are coming back and the baby calves are out and looking so cute at the surrounding farms. So I'm jumping the gun by a couple of days and changing my wintry blog to a spring blog!

Frustration

Today we got word from our agency that whoops, our court date is March 23, not March 13 as they have been maintaining for the last two weeks. Argh! I am so angry! So now we get to be all stressed out for another week and have sleepless nights and who knows what else... and we sat around waiting and waiting all weekend before someone could tell us that today. Yes, we are all human and mistakes are made, but this one has greatly upset me. Not happy.

STILL Waiting

I'm trying not to get discouraged or pessimistic. It's hard.

Waiting

Due to some extenuating circumstances, we still haven't heard if we passed court or not. The waiting is torture. :(

Round two

Our second attempt at passing court is tomorrow... we're on pins and needles here.

Diving in The Windy City

Anna had a regional diving meet in Chicago this weekend. We drove eight long hours to get there, made longer by the fact that we couldn't leave until late Friday afternoon; we arrived at our hotel at about 1:00 a.m... yawn! Saturday morning, we went to Navy Pier for lunch and some shopping. This is Anna (on the left) posing with her two teammates and her two coaches.

Little Taylor dove on Saturday afternoon and she did great. Saturday evening we had dinner with my parents, who drove up from Indianapolis to see Anna dive. They treated the whole team to a tasty dinner. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Anna and Elyse competed on Sunday. Anna placed 29th out of 35 competitors which is really quite good... it was her first big meet and her first meet ever with the tougher standards of USA Diving. She hit all of her dives and just needs a higher degree of difficulty. She's only been diving for one year. It's hard to get decent pictures of diving with my camera, but here she is doing one of her dives. She's the blur in the middle. :)

I really love my dog

This is Bruno. Although he's looking mighty jaunty in his bright kerchief, he is actually recovering from surgery. He had to have some suspicious lumps removed today. Our vet thinks it will all be fine, but I'm worried anyway. Bruno also has cataracts which might need to be removed this year too. He's my senior citizen dog; our other two are young whipper-snappers. I love him lots. :)

Postponed.... :(

Our case was postponed until March 13. Apparently of the six cases heard from our agency today, five were from the Nazret area and there is a "new requirement" that wasn't met so the cases were continued. The bright side is that we were assigned a court date that is only two weeks away instead of two months. Our coordinator, Lisa, said that Grace from Hope is confident that the cases will pass next time.

Of course we are disappointed. I hope you will all continue to pray for us to successfully bring our girls home.

Jitters

I am a nervous wreck. Our court date is February 27. Since Addis Ababa is 9 hours ahead of us (see the clock on the left side of the blog), that means that our case will come before the court sometime in the wee hours of the morning while we are sleeping. My stomach is in knots.

Thank you all for your prayers and well-wishes. I hope to have good news to post tomorrow!

Just one more week...

...until our court date.