We passed court!!!

You guys are not going to believe this -- after hearing yesterday that we had a new court date of October 27th, we were all, "Well, at least we can take a break from anticipating/worrying about the phone ringing for a week." AND THEN this very morning I got the call from our caseworker that we passed!!!! Of course I was totally confused and like, "Huh? What about our court date?" Our caseworker said she didn't know why we were given a new court date and then passed the next day, but we definitely passed.

We are officially her family!!!!!!

And today is our new little girl's birthday! She turned 3 years old! Exactly one year ago today she became an orphan. And now precisely one year later, after an extended, unexplained wait to pass court, weeks after all the other families from our travel group passed, it was made official that she is our daughter. Oh God does write the most amazing stories, doesn't He?!!!

Although 3 years old she weighs 26 lbs, which is what our other children weighed as 1 year olds, but all indications reveal she is mostly healthy. We can certainly testify to her preciousness, friendly personality, and spunk from our visits with her! We are so thankful for the privilege of being her family, thankful for all the ways she's already changed us and she's not even home yet! So that's the big question, right? WHEN can we go get her and bring her home?

Nobody would like that answer to be tomorrow more than us. It's been 11 weeks since we had to say goodbye to her in Ethiopia and being home without her has been harder than we ever imagined. The missing of someone who's never been here is inexplicable, really, but so is leaving a child behind in an Ethiopian orphanage. However, we do have to - deep breath in, deep breath out - wait some more. Although she is legally our child in Ethiopia, we must now clear the U.S. embassy to be able to bring her home to America. The embassy process used to take 4 to 6 weeks, but lately as the embassy has begun doing more investigations, it is taking many families closer to 9 or 10 weeks and some even longer, although there is still potential to clear quickly!

We are so excited to be on the last leg now, marveling at God's faithfulness, and dreaming of the day all four of our children are not only on the same continent, but we can tuck them all into bed under one roof! At the same time, we have been through enough adoption training to know that when we step off the airplane with her in our hometown, it will not be "happily ever after". It will be the beginning of another tough journey of adjusting to our family of 6 and helping our new little girl heal from from the hard things of her past.

We really appreciate your support throughout this long, emotional roller-coaster of a journey!

***Just like I don't post my other children's names on this blog, I will not share our new daughter's name, but if you'd like to know, feel free to email me at itfeelslikechaos AT yahoo DOT com (just replace the AT and Dot with the appropriate symbols; I didn't type it exactly because then those pesky spammers would get me!). I have, however, lightened up a bit about sharing my children's pictures!***