Here is the story.....

Funny how you can be expecting something, yet not.

I knew our referral could potentially come at any time - yet I was still preparing myself to wait months.

So last Wednesday after I picked up the older two kids from school we went directly into errand running.....haircuts, post office, walgreens, etc. My cell phone rang right as we were pulling into the driveway around 5pm - which was the hubs. He asked where we were and then almost seemed hesitant in saying something (I assumed he was trying get a sense of if he was going to be able to go out for a run when he got home as he often does) - finally he said have you checked our email lately? We just got a new email that says "Calder referral" can you wait until I get home?!?!  OH MY GOODNESS!!!!  I'm exclaiming that over and over in the car as I'm pulling it into the garage. The kids, of course, want to know what is going on. I inform them and then they all start SCREAMING with excitement.

After waiting 8 months since the beginning of this adoption process to find out WHO our little gal is, I now have to wait 20 more minutes. I think that was the longest 20 minutes of my life. I was literally shaking! I couldn't believe I was about to see her face. To find out her name.

Jason finally got home and we were able to see who she was.  It a very surreal moment. I was very surprised at my reaction. Her sweetness was beyond words. However, I could have never imagined how I would be affected by her story. Far to often I look at adoption from the view point of the adoptive parent - adding to families, having more love to give, giving a child who is in need of a home a family. This process is crazy (yet exciting) - I mean you are finding out who your child IS!  This moment made it personal. This moment made me see first hand the other side of adoption - the loss and sorrow involved in what brings children to this point. I just expected all joy when seeing our baby's face not sadness intermingled with it.

After our myriad of emotions and going over her paperwork and pictures a million times over, we decided to head over to our parents house for the revealing of the surprise news. With Jason's parents it was easy.....we needed to drop off some printed pictures that we had for them from our recent trip to Yosemite, so we just slipped the referral pictures in - knowing that Jason's mom would review them immediately. She got about 5 pictures in and saw our little miss and started SCREAMING (wow that runs in the family!) we even got some covert video of the reaction - how fun is that? We then headed over to my parents at 8pm.....and anyone who knows my folks know that they are normally almost asleep at that time :) So my mom knew something was up when we walked in, that we had to have gotten our referral, saw the pics and started SCREAMING as well (yep, our kids have no hope....) It was such fun!

Then came nighttime - I got not one wink of sleep that night. Seriously. Not one moment. This mama's brain was on the move. Praying, thinking, exited. There was no sleep to be had. An entire night awake. This has only happened to me one other time in my life - after Jason and I got engaged. Same thing. Total awake(ness)! I'm sure one day our little girl will LOVE that story.

So what is next?
Since our sweet girl is already in our agency's foster home, we should get new pictures and updates on her weekly. I will not be able to post pictures of her online until she is "officially" ours - but if you see us in person we would love to share with you a glimpse of her cuteness.

Here are the next phases of waiting for us.....
- we wait for a document from the Ethiopian gov. so we can get a court date.
- we wait to find out a court date
- travel to Ethiopia for our first court date (hopefully will happen this summer sometime)
- little gal will be legally ours in Ethiopia, but she will still need to get her visa through the US embassy.
- travel back to Ethiopia once she clears embassy to bring her home!

We are looking at the end of the summer as the earliest possible date to bring her home - if every thing goes as smooth as possible. However, we know we need to anticipate longer, the road of adoption can be bumpy even the slightest hangup can add time to your "timeline".

 Please continue to lift up our family and this precious child in prayer.