Travel Prep

Today we scheduled a conference call with Dove International to talk about our next steps, including preliminary information about our travel. We also have a packet of information coming that I can't wait to get and pour over everything in it. Each step brings her a little closer to home. We still expect to be 4-6 months out from being matched to a baby, but it could be anytime, so they want us to be prepared.
Our call will be on February 4th, and I'll let you know what we talk about. ;)
The call is expected to be an hour and a half. Please pray for us that all the information soaks in, and that we think of the questions that we need to ask to be prepared.

Baby Names

For me, a name brings a new level of bonding and preparation that we don't have yet. Recently, a good friend of mine had a baby, but they were keeping the baby's name a secret. Can I tell you that it drove me absolutely crazy?!
One of my biggest frustrations is that we don't have a name for our baby. We talk about our baby or our baby sister, but it doesn't flow well for me. She needs a name, but yet we won't settle on a name until after our referral comes because we want to incorporate her Ethiopian name as her middle name.
Megan and Emily's names came so easily for us, and probably this little one's name will too as soon as we get her referral, but until then nothing seems to work for me to refer to her as my child that I already love, but I don't even know her name.
Tony and I had a date night last night (love those :) ) and we talked about names for our baby and nothing was jumping out for both of us.
So, to anyone who is still reading our blog, what are your favorite baby girl names for us to consider for baby girl Weber #3?

Our Dossier Has Arrived in Addis Abba

I woke up this morning to the DHL e-mail that our dossier has been delivered to Addis Abba, Ethiopia. That means that all our paperwork, that we've been working on since August, has been delivered to the people who will match us and send us a referral for our daughter. This starts another chapter of living with unknowns. Technically, they have everything they need and could match us immediately, but we've been told that the typical wait time right now is 4-6 months. But, this is also the step where some families get "stuck". So please continue to pray with us that God will guide the process and bring our daughter home to us as quickly as possible.


Tracking history...

Date and time Status Location Service Area

1/9/2010
8:15 am Shipment delivered. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
7:59 am With delivery courier. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
7:46 am Arrived at DHL facility.Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
7:46 am Transit through DHL facility Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

1/8/2010
10:22 am Depart Facility Frankfurt, Germany
7:59 am Processed at DHL Location. Frankfurt, Germany
7:45 am Transit through DHL facility Frankfurt, Germany
5:00 am Depart Facility Leipzig, Germany

1/7/2010
11:10 pm Processed at DHL Location. Leipzig, Germany
10:27 pm Transit through DHL facility Leipzig, Germany
6:02 am Depart Facility Cincinnati Hub, OH
4:01 am Processed at DHL Location. Cincinnati Hub, OH
3:03 am Transit through DHL facility Cincinnati Hub, OH

1/6/2010
7:11 pm Depart Facility Seattle, WA
7:11 pm Processed at DHL Location. Seattle, WA
7:10 pm Transit through DHL facility Seattle, WA
6:05 pm Depart Facility Portland, OR
6:04 pm Processed at DHL Location. Portland, OR
3:49 pm Departing origin. Portland, OR
11:47 am Scheduled to move Portland, OR

1/5/2010
1:40 pm Shipment picked up Portland, OR

Show Hope Grant Application

Yesterday, Thursday January 7th, our application for a grant was delivered to Show Hope. Please pray with us that we will be selected to receive one of the grants from Show Hope. The grants can be as high as $3000. This would almost get us to our final payment, which is due when we accept the referral of our baby and help us bring her home.


Who is Show Hope?

Show Hope is an organization originally founded by Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth out of their desire to see more children find their way into forever families. Though many families they talked to were willing to adopt, the financial costs to adoption were simply too high. Originally named after the Chapman’s first adopted daughter, Shaohannah Hope Chapman, Shaohannah’s Hope has grown far beyond the initial vision of helping a few orphans find homes. In 2009, after changing the name to Show Hope, this organization has seen an amazing explosion in growth. From a six-story caring facility in China, equipped to provide surgeries and medical care to special needs orphans, to multiplying the effects of the adoption grant program by assisting churches in setting up their own adoption funds, Show Hope continues to expand in it’s remarkable worldwide impact. Please check out their website at http://www.showhope.org/ and look at what they are doing today.

Dossier Travels

Here is the journey of our dossier from Tuesday night up to now (Thursday night). Keep on movin' DHL and get our dossier to Ethiopia!

1/7/2010
11:10 pm Processed at DHL Location. Leipzig, Germany
10:27 pm Transit through DHL facility Leipzig, Germany
6:02 am Depart Facility Cincinnati Hub, OH
4:01 am Processed at DHL Location. Cincinnati Hub, OH
3:03 am Transit through DHL facility Cincinnati Hub, OH

1/6/2010
7:11 pm Depart Facility Seattle, WA
7:11 pm Processed at DHL Location. Seattle, WA
7:10 pm Transit through DHL facility Seattle, WA
6:05 pm Depart Facility Portland, OR
6:04 pm Processed at DHL Location. Portland, OR
3:49 pm Departing origin. Portland, OR
11:47 am Scheduled to move Portland, OR

1/5/2010
1:40 pmShipment picked up Portland, OR

On Its Way

This afternoon we got the e-mail we've been waiting for. Our dossier has sent by DHL to Ethiopia! That means that we could be matched at any time, but realistically we are expecting to be presented with a referral (a packet of information, including pictures of a child) within 4-6 months.
Whenever I order something on the internet, I can become obsessive about watching it work its way across the country until it arrives at our doorstep. With our dossier, we have been given a tracking number and I am wondering how many times I will check its progress until it gets there.
This means that our work is basically over for now, and we wait, and we dream, and we pray. Thank you for following and joining us on our journey. We are grateful for each one of you!

Just Love Coffee

We have been so blessed by the outpouring of support from so many of our family and friends, but we still have a lot of expenses coming our way before our journey is over. We have found a coffee company that sells fair trade Ethiopian coffee, plus they will help us fund raise for our expenses. Specifically we will be earmarking the money raised to go toward our travel expenses.

So, if you love coffee, or know someone who does, we'd love to you to check our the website that they have designed for us. $5 from each bag of coffee sold will come back to us to help fund our adoption.

www.JustLoveCoffee.com/WeberFamily

Nazareth Water Well

Our adoption is changing us in many ways. Besides growing our hearts as we prepare to welcome our daughter into our family, our hearts have also grown to love Ethiopia and these people on the other side of the world. It used to be simple to ignore what was going on, but we just can't anymore.

While we in America have favorite brands of bottled water because we prefer the taste of one over another (and the fact that we "need" bottled water in the first place), there are people all around the world who don't have access to clean water.

Tomorrow we will be donating to the Nazareth Water Well, through Life in Abundance, as a family in honor of our baby sister, and also to honor the One who gives Living Water. John 4:1-14

Bringing one baby home to join our family is going to change and bless our family in so many ways, but we also want to help and love on those who will still be in Ethiopia. Will you consider joining us this Christmas?

Nazareth Water Well

What: Integrated Water Well Initiative

Where: Nazareth, Ethiopia

When: When our goal of $11,000 is met!

Why: Based on the 2007 Population and Housing Census, the total population of Ethiopia was estimated to be 77 million making it the second largest populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa next to Nigeria. The average household size is 4.8. The overwhelming majority (about 85%) of the total population are living in the rural areas.

According to the report obtained from water utility partnership, in Africa, it is estimated that about 300 million people are without access to safe water and another 500 million lack adequate sanitation. In one year, over 500,000 die before the age of 5. Water related diseases are the single biggest killer of infants and the principal cause of illness in adults in Ethiopia. Water related diseases are a particular threat to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Ethiopia has the lowest coverage of access to safe water and basic sanitation in the world. Where there is coverage, the level of service may be poor. The poor water and sanitation situation has contributed to high infant and maternal mortality rate and Very low economic productivity which had a direct impact on progress towards meeting the MDG targets.

Women and girls spend hours every day collecting water from distant sources, and in addition are expected to cook, collect fire wood, and care for the sick which directly has impact on girls education. In general, the water crisis has an impact on the overall development of the country
The majority of the ten top diseases within the entire country are related to water and sanitation problems.

Who: Building Arizona Families + Life in Abundance International = Partners in a Common Cause

To donate to this great cause, go to http://liaint.org/nazarethwaterwell/

Baby Sister

When we get our referral, we plan to change our baby's Ethiopian name to her middle name and then we will chose an American first name. But, that has caused us to hold off on choosing a name for our baby because we want to make sure it sounds good with her Ethiopian name. So in the meantime we've just been referring to her as our baby sister, especially with Megan and Emily. Emily, especially, refers to her as "baby sister" as if that is her name.

While I was Christmas shopping this week, I strayed into the baby section and found this shirt. I already plan to decorate her nursery in pink and brown, and sorting through clothes last week, plus submitting the dossier made things seem so close! Plus, it's Gymboree and it was a great sale price. :) And, actually, they didn't have it in the size I wanted, so I went home and couldn't stop thinking about it. When I checked the website, they had free shipping. So, the shirt is on it's way to wait to be worn by our baby sister.

Final Stretch of our Dossier

Main Entry: dos·sier
Pronunciation: \ˈdȯs-ˌyā, ˈdäs-; ˈdȯ-sē-ˌā, ˈdä-\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, bundle of documents labeled on the back, dossier, from dos back, from Latin dorsum
Date: 1880
: a file containing detailed records on a particular person or subject

Dossier was a new word for my vocabulary when we started this process, now it's an everyday word in our family, but we are finally in the home stretch before this huge packet of information about us heads around the world to match us to our baby. Pregnancy was draining physically, but adoption is draining mentally. I agree with a friend who explained the process as an excersise in paperwork.

Last night I wrote a letter to the orphanage introducing our family and explaining why we want to adopt a baby from Ethiopia. Tony also wrote a letter to the Ethiopian government stating that we will care for and raise this child to the best of our abilitly.

Tonight we headed back to Costco for another set of passport photos that will be on her documents to bring her home.

Tomorrow we will go to Phoenix to get two of our documents state authenticated (a step about a notrary), one of which is our power of attourney that will be used to grant the orphanage power of attourney during the time after we've legally adopted her and before we can bring her home.

Then we will deliver these last documents to our social worker, and they will head out on the next leg of the journey.

Tomorrow also brings a very large payment to the adoption agency, and we have been so blessed by the generousitly of our friends and family, the success of our garage sale, and above all, God's provision.

Then, we wait to be presented with a baby. It could be weeks or it could be months (and in some cases years, though we are not expecting that with Ethiopia). While we have been busy working on getting everything together, this will be a stage of waiting and trusting God while everything is out of our hands.

Preparing

After we had Emily, we "knew" we were done having babies, so we have given away almost all of our baby things. But in the past months we have started to collect again, and I started to save Emily's things once she out grew them. Well, the pile of things had just been growing in one corner of our office (which will become our baby's room) and it was too much for me. Yesterday I undertook the task of washing everything we have been given and have saved, sorted by size, and headed to Wal-Mart for storage boxes. We have a much more livable solution now.

I-171H.....CHECK!!

Well another step checked off our list. We just received our "NOTICE OF FAVORABLE DETERMINATION CONCERNING APPLICATION FOR ADVANCE PROCESSING OF AN ORPHAN PETITION". In English, this means we have been approved by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) to adopt our baby.

World AIDS Day

I have to admit that today is the first time I have ever given World AIDS Day a second thought. In the US, AIDS has a stigma associated with it and I ascribed to the mindset that it won't affect me. But now it has.

A friend of mine recently loaned me the book, "There Is No Me Without You" which is a biography of one woman's efforts to help the countless children who have become orphaned because of AIDS. I am quickly learning many things I never knew. And many things that are as far removed from my little suburban stay at home mom life as can be, that is until we opened our hearts to prepare to open our home and our lives to one of these orphans.

Not every child is going to be adopted by US families, and that isn't solving the root of the problem. The Lazarus Effect that is highlighted in the videos below are about getting the needed medicines to the HIV positive people in Africa. In the US, HIV has become a chronic but manageable condition, but not an immediate death sentence as it still is in most of Africa. The turn around of the people in the video is due to access to medicine.

So, today is World AIDS Day. Today Emily and I went to Starbucks and bought our drinks and some Christmas gifts so that Starbucks will donate to Project (red) to fight AIDS in Africa. On one hand I believe that it is a marketing scheme by these corporations who have so much power and influence and could do so much more. But, they are raising awareness, and now, so am I.

Custom Necklace

Here is an example of a custom necklace that I made for a friend, listing her daughters' names. If you want a similar necklace or have another idea of something you would like for yourself or for a gift, contact me and I can create it for you! Custom necklaces are $30, including the pendant, necklace, and shipping.

Thank you so much for your support! All proceeds from the necklaces go toward paying for our adoption.

joy pendant

Here are pictures of my newest pendant that I am handmaking and selling to raise money for our adoption. The necklace is $20 and includes free shipping. Please contact me if you want one or more!