January 11 - Our son turns four in Ethiopia. This is such an enormous bummer for us. We never anticipated in a million years that we would miss this birthday. In our original time lines, he would have been home with us for six months when we celebrated this birthday together.
January 14 - Our first court date - this is the day we are hoping we get the MOWCYA signature as well. There hasn't been consistency in this particular signature for other cases so we really don't know what to expect. At this point, we are so grateful to at least have the court date scheduled and are filled with hopeful anticipation that we will also get the required signature. IF this happens, we could FINALLY be traveling within 2-3 weeks.
January 22 - This is the day we first heard about these two precious children. My friend Carrie told me over and over and over "You will NOT be expecting it when you get the referral phone call". And I always told her that was impossible - after 18 months waiting for a referral, every single day I would anticipate, "What if it happens today?" I had thought through every possible scenario - What if I'm in the car. What if I'm at home with the kids. Will we be eating a meal? Will I be on a walk? Will I fall on the ground? Scream? Yell? Cry?
I know it sounds a little crazy but I'm not exaggerating - even if I had an appointment or was at the library or any location other than my home - I would consciously think about having my phone where I could hear it and think to myself, "What if I get the phone call here?"
Carrie was right. The day we got the phone call I was not anticipating it one iota. Not a bit.
Because the length of the process had taken so long, we had to re-do our home study. This required an interview by a caseworker with our entire family. It was a Wednesday and Ryan was home from work in order to meet the caseworker at our house. It was 10:30 in the morning.
The caseworker was asking us questions about why we wanted to adopt, asking our kids how the process has been for them, etc. Ryan's phone was sitting on our coffee table, face up. (He kept it out in case he heard from work.)
Suddenly, it rang.
We were both angled right over it while we were leaning in, talking to the caseworker. The caller ID was the name of our agency. They never call us. I had talked to our primary caseworker A LOT through emails or if I would call her with questions, but never was there a situation where she called us.
So we both looked at the phone.
Then we looked at each other.
We looked at the caseworker and told her it was our agency.
We looked at each other again. "Why would they be calling us?"
And then after three rings or so, I may have firmly said, "Answer it!!!"
And so, our entire family (and our home study caseworker) sat around the phone on speaker, as our caseworker told us about these two kids. Originally, we had given age parameters for 0-3 years old and these two children were 3 and 4, slightly outside that age range. She was calling to see if we would be open to considering them. They were siblings which is something we had really hoped and prayed for.
I think I always imagined I would be sobbing tears of joy or screaming like a crazy woman once the call came. Surprisingly, we were all pretty calm and simply finished the homestudy interview. Overall, our family was incredibly excited but so caught off guard at the phone call while we were updating our home study. Also, since the kids were older than what we originally planned/anticipated, and for a few details we needed more information on, we really felt like we needed to think, pray and talk to our family about it.
Later that day we got pictures of them, called our parents and a told a couple friends, asking them to pray for us. There were a few details of information that were incomplete that we needed to wait for. So for three weeks we prayed and prayed, asking God to make it clear to us. By February 13 we knew and called our agency to officially accept the referral. We told our kids on Valentines Day the following day. That's another story. :)
January 22 will be forever burned in our minds as the first day they entered our hearts.
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