WE TRAVEL!

Just heard from Sue early early early this morning. We are OK to travel for the 14th. Which means...we fly out next Friday or Saturday to bring our Henri home! Another family is in Ethiopia right now and posted this photo of our little Henrik. So sweet.....

More from the beach....

Me and my Jeffy...

Our little piece of paradise for the week....

Kristin, Mike and Mom (freezing) on the beach...

Goodnight moon...still waiting for a date to pick up Henri...maybe tomorrow we will know?

A very long, long day...

I heart NSB, FL

This is the first year of our family get-away to New Smyrna Beach, FL. Mom, Dad, Jeff and I arrived on Saturday night, and Kristin, Mike, Emma and Nick arrived late, late, late last night. Kallie to arrive on Wednesday. Here are a few of our photos so far....sandcastles, boogie boards, Nick showing his best "moves." More to come....

Merry Christmas!

Hope your holidays are merry and bright.

Houston...we have a VISA!

The best Christmas present of all...we just received our notice from our local immigration office. We have been approved for two children, under the age of five, and are now OK to apply for our I-600 for our little Henri. Yay! We are hoping this means that we will be able to travel to Ethiopia on the earlier date (January 14)...but will wait to confirm with Sue. She is traveling with two children from Ethiopia--bringing them back to their families. Can't wait to talk to her when she finally settles back in.

On a totally separate note...having just turned 36...I couldn't resist sharing. Our neighbor's little boy, Tucker, is sweet as can be. A few weeks ago, I played hide and seek with him in their front yard. Then, Jeff showed Tucker how our doorbell sounds like chimes if you hold it down. Today, I just walked in from work, the phone was ringing and I heard the doorbell chimes begin. There was little Tucker waiting to tell me about the dentist (yikes) and how he wanted to play games. When Carrie, his mom, mentioned I might be busy, and might not be able to play, he asked, "is her dad there?" Poor Jeff...this is what happens when you turn 40. :)

I posted a few new photos of our nursery. Not quite as fire-hydrant yellow. Enjoy!

Two more photos...

These photos are from Lindsey, who sent me the other pictures of Henri from when he was a baby. Not nearly as cute as my favorite smiling photo...but such a treat to have the photos from Henri's past. More to come later....

New photos of Henri as a baby!

I just emailed with another family from the area. They traveled to Ethiopia this fall to bring back their child...and she just sent these two photos of our little Henri. What a small world! We are going to meet up, she thinks she has video as well...which will be so great to see. Of course, Henri is much older...and much bigger these days. I absolutely love this photo of him smiling. Is he not the sweetest little thing?

P.S. We just heard from Sue...he's up to 16.5 lbs! Great news.

Sweet Santa...

A few of our favorite holiday photos: Henri to come home in January, Santa suit not included.

Our Dancer....

Here he is...our own little Michael Jackson. The last photo they sent, is of Henri pitching a fit because they made him get off the couch. Yikes. Not only standing on the couch but dancing on the couch. This might not be as easy as we had hoped....

New photos...

A few new pics from Ethiopia...the good news...we have confirmed that Henri is able to sit up on his own. The bad news...apparently he loves to stand and dance. This does not bode well for parents who have no children in the house. Must baby-proof and learn to live on no sleep, lots of child entertainment...yikes.

More pictures coming....

Henri waves...

Just had a quick email from Sue. She had a chance to see Henri at the Transition home and said that he was doing great--had great eye contact and is very sociable. She also said he loves to wave his hands and she thinks he might be pentacostal! Ha! I might be outnumbered now on worship service. Jeff likes contemporary, I like traditional. Looks like Henri might lean toward contemporary. What's a Lutheran to do?

I am so relieved to know that Henri is responding and interactive with others. Sue tried to Skype...but I missed the call. Hopefully I'll have a chance to talk to her over the night...or early in the morning. Now that we have passed court...it's so hard to wait. We just want to bring that little Hanky Panky home! Here's our first "posted" photo of our baby boy. Now that we have passed court...we can share his sweet smile.

WE PASSED COURT!

Not to sound like a nervous nelly...but of course I woke up every few hours to check email, and see if Sue was on Skype. Jeff is working nights this week, so I don't sleep great anyway. I woke up at 4:00 a.m ish and didn't have any messages. I just checked my email now...and it is official...we passed court! We had a great message that we are going to be parents. I texted, emailed, and paged Jeff at the hospital. I think we are both a little bit in shock because very very soon we are going to have the little one we have waited so long to have, actually home. In the next few days, we will know when our official embassy appointment is...but we are expecting January 14. That means...in just about a month...we will be traveling to meet our little one! Very exciting, exciting news!

Court tomorrow!

Or today...it is now 5:12 a.m in Addis Ababa. Sometime today our case will be heard in court, and hopefully we will have our little Henri at home with us, soon. If everything goes as we hope, and we pass court, we will then wait for our embassy appointment date. Our projected date would be January 14. There is the chance that we won't pass...not because of anything intentional...but if our paperwork is incomplete, including documentation from Ethiopia, our case will not be successful. If that happens, we would have to wait for another court date, probably end of December, early January, and then after passing...an embassy appointment in mid-February/early March-ish. It is all out of our control...but boy do we pray that we pass tomorrow/today. And if we do...we will be sharing with everyone the great news. Say a prayer for us tonight, and keep your fingers crossed that all goes well.

Baby room photos...

Finally...here are a few photos of our little Henri's room. I took these at night...and swear the room is yellow, and not like a fire hydrant...more like a yellow rose...but even in these photos it looks a little pink with the lighting. I'm going to blame it on energy efficient lightbulbs. We still have a long way to go...artwork, a rug, baskets for his shelving area...but we have started and it looks much better than it did before. Sorry it took so long to post, we have been just swamped. Jeff with school, me with work and adoption homework. Did you know that in order to adopt, you have to complete a certain number of hours of homework? It's a good thing...honestly...I sometimes think that although this process has been long and painful at times, it almost seems shocking that if we were to be pregnant, we could just have a baby with no study, no social worker evaluation, no financial planning, no essay questions. And...I haven't even started to read the books I want to read! Enjoy the baby room...baby to hopefully enter soon. :)

Bye bye pink...hello yellow!

Thanks to Papa and Grandma Schultz...the Lobster Bisque is now Sunbeam yellow. Much more Henri like. :) We hope to have everything put back together later this week...photos to come...too exhausted to post.

7 kg

or 15.4 lbs. That's how much our little Henri weighed today. Yay!

Court date...December 1st

On Wednesday, Sue emailed to let us know that our court date is December 1st. It's all starting to happen...can't wait to bring our little Henri home!

Bedding for our baby...

In letting go of the pink...we purchased gender non-specific bedding for Henri's room. We have the painter coming on Saturday to give a price quote to re-paint the walls yellow. Once that is done...we'll be going crazy with the dots. I love Target...and it matches perfectly with our red chair...it was meant to be!

Submitted to court...

Sue emailed to let us know that our paperwork was submitted to court yesterday. Now we wait. Not like we haven't been waiting for years already...but this is a good wait. Hopefully in the next two weeks or so...we will be assigned a court date. Once we have that court date...as long as everything goes well in court...we should travel to Ethiopia about two months after that date. Now the planning, anticipation, and organization really begins. Painter coming to give a price quote for the pink room Thursday morning. Can't wait to have Henri home...

Rockin' red moose!

I have been dying to buy the red moose for our future child for months. It's a sweet little something that has been at IKEA calling our name everytime we went to visit. Thanks to a gift card--the Rockin' Moose is ours! Well...Henri's. Can't wait to have him rockin' his little heart out in his room.

Speaking of room...after four years of a beautiful "lobster bisque" pink room in anticipation of our daughter from China...we have broken down and are letting go of the pink. Henri is already going to have an identity crisis with the pink jumpers he keeps wearing...and just yesterday...we received new/old photos of Henri when he first arrived at the transition house in Addis. Pink jumper and bib...with the words...DIVA. :) When he is 15...he's going to love that shot!

Lobster pink no more...we are painting the room a sunny yellow/gender non-specific color. We bought gender non-specific bedding at Target, and will look for a new rug in the next few months. I'll post photos soon. Right now...it's just a patch of yellow on a very pink wall. :) Who chose that color anyway? :)

What we know....

We don't know much. Last week we found out that Henri was from an agency in Hosanna. Mostly...we know that we will celebrate his birthday on June 20th. He weighed 7 lbs when he was brought to Addis. In August, he had already gained 3 lbs. Now, as of October 9th, he weighs 13 lbs.

He had a great health check when he first came to Addis, and he just went to the neurologist on Oct. 9th to confirm that all is OK. He has a habit of always having his tongue hanging out. The report states he is interactive with others, has good control of his head and neck, and they feel he is a healthy baby boy.

My cousin Linsey, who adopted two boys from Ethiopia and is a nurse, thought a tongue sticking out was a sign of malnutrition. His aunt, Dimpy, always sticks her tongue out when she is concentrating--and I do, too. Maybe it's just another sign he is a part of our family...

Info for Henri...

Henri is from an "E" orphanage. E stands for the person who runs the orphanage in Hosanna.. which is 4 hours from Addis. Just ended a chat with families...learn something new every week. Trying to piece together as much history as possible for our little one.

Might be in for a long wait....

I'm just about to jump on our agency's chat...but we did see a post today expressing concern about the wait time for getting a court date. Although I am a constant worrier...I'm not going to freak out yet. The Ethiopian courts have been closed for the month of September. They open on October 13th. Unfortunately, our agency has dossiers that were waiting in Ethiopia before courts closed, and were not given a date. So...they are anticipating a giant backlog...and it could be much later than we are hoping to bring our little Henri home.

Our dossier is in DC. It arrived this morning...and hopefully by early next week...it will be ready to be sent to Ethiopia. Maybe our best case scenario...is that the court processes everything right away, and by the time we are in line, we are assigned a court date right away. Realistically....could be January before we are assigned a date...meaning March or April to bring Henri home. We are grateful anyway...but we sure would love to have him with us! The wait is going to be excruciating.

Off to DC

It's official. We sent our dossier to DC yesterday...now we wait for it to be authenticated, and then it is off to Ethiopia. This is the first big step in our way to bring little Henri home, now we wait for a package from FedEx. :) Between the copying, sending, documenting, re-sending, we feel like valued share-holders in FedEx (which is no longer FedExKinkos for those of you who have a fondness for Kinkos Copies...as I did). Here is our celebratory photo...after we completed our dossier. Cheers to Henri!