I Will Pull This Blog Over!

For those of you who are still checking in with us... We got an email from the agency on Thursday night that our court case is scheduled to be heard on June 12th in Ethiopia. So far every case our agency has been able to present has been approved so we are hoping to get through on the first try as well. They did have two cases though that did not get heard on the original date- hopefully that won't happen to us. If we get through court successfully she is legally our child. Once the agency gets her passport, adoption decree and (I think) birth certificate from the courts we can make travel arrangements. There have only been 2 groups of families in front of us so timing is still hard to know but the documents will be issued about 2 weeks after our court date and they will want us in Ethiopia about 2 weeks after that. We are hoping to stop for a few days in Europe on the way to Ethiopia but with the tight timetable- we aren't sure it will be do-able (or at least do-able for an amount of money we can live with)

Normally, once a case is through court, the family can post photos. I think our agency will make us wait until they have the documents. Once we can post, we are hoping to link this blog to a new blog for the baby. I am currently looking at private hosting companies for the new blog. Blogger (we have been told) is blocked in Ethiopia and internet connections will be dicey, slow and (gasp!) dial up. In the best of circumstances a bad combination. If we have to go through a "back door" to post (like we did in Beijing) the blog will likely be unusable. We are looking at our options now but rest assured- the plan is to blog during our trip.

More info to follow soon

Several weeks ago B. and I accepted the referral of a baby girl currently waiting for us in Ethiopia. She is currently 5 months old and unfortunately, due to Ethiopian law, we are not allowed to post any photos of her until she is legally our child. We are currently waiting for a court date in Ethiopia. We are hoping for a date at the end of May, but more likely June. Once our case goes to court, provided nothing unforseen happens, she will be our daughter. I am checking my email 100 times a day just in case we have a date scheduled but so far we are still waiting for the Ministry in Ethiopia to assign us a date. Stay tuned- we will keep you posted.