End of Homestudy and Vacation

Today was our last visit with our homestudy coordinator, now we just wait for him to write it up and finalize it then we apply to immigration to do our fingerprints for our child's visa. After this is complete we send our dossier (or paperwork out the yingyang) to Ethiopia and wait.......... We hope to have the dossier sent by sometime in August. We have no idea how long the wait will be to get our referral. Before the slow down in March we had heard of people who requested a 3-5 year old boy get a referral in a week but that won't happen anymore. Because of the slow down they can't give any time frame, no one knows but we are expecting at least a year wait for a picture and then 6-12 months longer to bring him home. This amount of time can be discouraging but we still feel God telling us to proceed and it will all work out to His glory.



We are excited to announce some friends of ours are bringing their 8 year old boy home from Ethiopia this coming Saturday. Samuel and Will can't wait to meet him and play soccer, basketball, etc... with him. We are going to the airport next Saturday for the welcome home party.


The Brangers did have some fun last week, we took the boys on a cruise to the Bahamas. We booked this vacation last October before the adoption was in process. I struggled with still going but we had already paid for it and it will be the last vacation before we go to Ethiopia. I'm glad we went, Samuel and Will had a blast (voted the best vacation yet by both of them). We saw beautiful beaches in Freeport and Paradise Island, I always say I'm closest to God at the beach, it's my favorite place in the whole world and always so amazing. The boys loved the water slides on the ship, the food, the comedy shows, towel animals at night, the way the natives yelled at each other, putt putt, ping pong, etc... I ask them what they thought the first vacation their little brother should take and they both said "a cruise!!!!!".
Beautiful Lacaya beach in Freeport, Bahamas

On the ship before dinner

Going down the racer water slides, Will won this time.