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.

Orphan Summitt

We met with our homestudy coordinator on Wednesday and he was wonderful. He and his wife adopted a three year old boy from Korea 30 years ago. He went over some orientation items, our safety check list for our home, and gave us more paperwork to fill out (he said he didn't send it all at once because then it's really overwhelming). We meet with him again on June 8th for our home safety study, he said we weren't being graded on how clean our house was, darn :).

On Friday I went to the Orphans Summitt VII at Southeast Christian. I went to two sessions on having a multi-racial family. It was wonderful! In the second session there were three adults who were adopted by white parents, 2 South Koreans and 1 biracial from Detriot. They gave great insight and I realized Mike and I are "very white" (a term they used) and we are going to have to help our little guy understand and embrace his race and ethnicity. They did an exercise with beads, each color representing a race, with each question you were to put a bead in your cup (your race, your husbands, kids, doctor, pediatrician, neighbor, boss at work, hairdresser, etc)... then you put your adopted childs race in the cup. I got a little choked up when I put the little guys in because he was the only non-white bead. We have got to do better and I'm going to need some advice on how to do this better. The picture of my cup is below, can you see his black bead in the center...

After the seminar I went to Mimi's Cafe to meet with other America World families and people that work at America World. The creator of the agency was there, it was neat to meet him, you see him in the intro video but meeting him and thanking him for what he's done means much more. About 40 were there including families and employees, it renews your paperchasing spirit to talk with others that are doing the same or have already been there.

On a non-adoption note Samuel ran his first 5K this Saturday and I ran with him. He did great and never walked once. We finished at 29:55, he finished two seconds before me because that is what moms do, he said all week he was going to beat me and he did.

Homestudy

I'm new to this whole blogging thing so I know there hasn't been any new post, sorry. We have been busy at home. As you can see my boys looked very handsome at Easter, I don't know how long they are going to let me dress them in matching outfits. I hope I can do it at least once when our new son is here.

Samuel's soccer team played in the Jefferson County tournament this weekend and for the second season in a row they were the tournament champs, Yeah!!!! Go Celtic!!!!! Will's team hasn't been able to play much because of all the rain we've had and this weekend is Derby and all of Louisville shuts down, so no games :( .

Mike and 2 of our friends ran the Louisville marathon last weekend, it was the first marathon for them. Mike did fine except for all of his bathroom breaks, I think he counted six times, maybe he should get that checked out. :)

I haven't been doing anything exciting except the normal mom stuff AND trying to get all the paperwork done for our homestudy. They call it "paper pregnant", it's overwhelming but I'm trying to do bits at a time. We meet with our AWAA social worker next Wednesday, this will be our first face to face meeting, we've had a number of emails with all my questions. I'm excited to meet him, he adopted a 3 year old boy from Korea 30 years ago. I'll let you know how that goes. I know Ethiopia has become a longer wait in the past 2 months, I told my friend Allison who's also adopting from there that I just want to submit my dossier and then wait, that way I know it's out of my hands.

I met a mom this weekend at the soccer tournament who has 2 boys from Ethiopia, one is now 9 and the other is 5. They have had the 9 year old since he was 5 and brought the now 5 year old home in September. This gave me a lift meeting her and the boys, she was so encouraging and the boys were adorable. The 5 year old was speaking great English and she said he had adjusted very well. God gives you these moments, I was overwhelmed and my new worry is attachment disorder, then God brings this mom with her 2 boys in and I feel refreshed and renewed. Only God can do that!

Adoption

Mike and I have been thinking and praying about adoption for over a year now. Little did we know our friends Allison and Jamie had also been praying for us too. We become very serious about it in January of this year after a sermon our pastor did on declining Christianity in every generation. We knew we had the desire and the means to help someone on the other side of the world know God. Mike and I felt God leading us to Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a large population of orphans (over 1,000,000) due to poverty and disease. The more we researched Ethiopia the more we fell in love with it. We discussed adoption with our two wonderful boys Samuel and Will and they were very excited, they even argued over who would share a room with the new addition. Mike and I were both in agreement that we wanted another boy ("our three sons") and we wanted an older child, 4-5 years old. Most people want babies and older children seem to be overlooked plus we are done with the baby thing :). Everyone has been very excited and supportive of our decision, we have wonderful families and friends that we thank God for everyday. This process will probably take around 2 years, recently Ethiopia has slowed down the referral process in order to avoid corruption. We are willing to wait and view this slow down as God getting our little guy prepared for his new forever family. Please pray for us and him, I have already had restless nights over the paperchase process and I can't even think about what our little guy is doing right now because I would go crazy. We pray for him, his health and safety and that he is being treated and cared for lovingly. We can't wait to meet him and become his Mommy, Daddy, and two wonderful big brothers.

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