Our Life Since Referral

It's been 2 weeks since we officially accepted our referral of "Tihun"---pronounced Tee Hoo Na.  Her nickname at our agency's the care center is Toonies.  We are planning to give her the name Amayah and we will keep her Ethiopian name as a middle name to honor her birth Mother.  We want her to have as much of her history and heritage as possible.

It has been a whirlwind of activity and emotions since the day that we finally got to see our daughter's precious face.  We have gone over her paperwork and medical files and officially accepted her referral. We have filled out her acceptance paperwork and sent in the first half of our last payment to our agency.  We have also had the joy of finally being able to shop for her, now that we know her age and size....this has been great therapy!  We carefully picked out items to include in her "welcome" bag.  We found a printer who could quickly print up a special t-shirt for her that had 3 pictures on the front...one of her new sisters, one of her new brothers and one right in between with Todd and I.  On the front of the shirt it says Tihun's Family and on the back it says "I Am Loved".

We are anxiously awaiting to hear when our court/travel dates will be!  We are hoping that we can get dates early in November so that there will still be a chance to have her home by Christmas, but more realistically,  we will probably get a late November/early December court date and then not be able to bring her home until January some time.  But to me, that's ok....I'm just glad to be on the other side of the mountain.....the waiting, the constant changes and the ever present "things unknown" are things I definitely don't mind leaving behind!  But who am I kidding??  We will still have to face all of these things on this side of the mountain so I guess what I mean is that I am just glad to finally be able to know who it is that we are waiting for.....this is making things so much easier for me.

Along with all of the referral excitement we have still been having people schedule appointments to see our home.....we have had at least two showings since getting our referral.  I am happy to say that, barring any unforeseen events, we have sold our home!  We just accepted an offer last night and we will be singing the official paperwork on it today!  Tomorrow we will go out and see more homes and hopefully within the next week--or two--we will have made the decision as to where we will soon be living.

So right now we are:
*Trying to patiently wait to hear about court dates
*Getting school work going for this year
*Looking for a new home
*Buying more boxes and starting to pack the rest of our stuff for our BIG move
*Shopping and more shopping for our new little blessing
*Organizing our trip details and what we will need to bring for us and Amayah

And.....

*Starting the sewing projects for Chloe and Amayah which are matching quilts and a couple matching dresses for them.

Whew!

Quoting from Bob the Builder ........"Can we do it?!  YES we can!!" .......and The Little Engine that Could......"I think I can, I think I can"......

Maybe I should just stick with "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"!!  =)  Yeah...that's better.

Oh boy.....

Blessings on your day....