Dancing boy

Family fun

This weekend we went to a ranch for my birthday. We brought the kids and had a great time. I read "There IS No Me Without You" over the weekend....Beau and I enjoyed our last trip with our two "older kids" where Beau and I could read and relax while our kids swam in the pool. This is the first trip we could actually read poolside as our two kids just learned how to swim:) Next trip with more kids will be a bit different....though of course we are so looking forward to having new additions to the family.

A quick thought about the book I read. I wish I could convince everyone that I know to read this book. I think it would help you all understand more deeply where our hearts are during this process. The book looks "big" but it reads really quickly and is so wonderful. It would explain to any of you what is happening on one of God's big continents and specifically in Ethiopia. I think the book also helped me to better define why we are doing the adoption and has given me greater vision on ways we must be helping God's children in so many ways.

This above video of Caleb (Dancing Boy)is from a previous trip. I put it here because I just figured out how to do it:) It does fit well though as Beau and I talked a lot this weekend about what we want for all of our kids....looking forward to having more kids in the near future. Most importantly we want them to live a life dedicated to the Lord, where they can enjoy His presence and serve Him well today and forever. We can have lots of laughter in these days with children....we so look forward to bringing more kids into a life were they can be loved, be healthy, and have many fun memories.

OFFICIAL HOMESTUDY APPROVAL

We got our official homestudy approval today. Anne at Gladney told us she FedEx'd it to CIS this mornning. The next step is for CIS to schedule our final fingerprinting. We should receive the letter for this from CIS within four weeks or so, maybe sooner and maybe longer.

FBI CLEARANCE

We received our FBI clearance letter today for the fingerprints we submitted three weeks ago. This week the homestudy approval letter should go to CIS from Gladney. After that, we will wait for the next fingerprint form from CIS to get a second set of fingerprints. Then we will wait for the final CIS approval letter. After that, we are very close to sending the dossier to Ethiopia.

HOMESTUDY APPROVAL

We received a preliminary copy of our homestudy approval today. If all goes well, it should be sent to CIS this week. After that gets processed, we should receive the instructions for fingerprinting for CIS. We already sent in our fingerprints for FBI clearance (to West Virginia), and we are waiting for the processing of those fingerprints as well. If I understand correctly, after all that, we will be close to finishing the paperwork before finalizing our dossier.

HOMESTUDY SCHEDULED

I just got a call from the lady who will be doing our home study, Amy. We are scheduled for this Tuesday (July 10) at 8AM. This is a big praise, as we can't do anything else in the process until the homestudy is completed. She will spend some time with our kids and the bulk of the time with the two of us. We are excited to be getting to this step in the process.

TRAINING

As part of the adoption process, we have to have training credits. This is aligned with the Hague Convention standards for adoption. We need 10 credits (5 training things). These need to be done before we leave for Ethiopia. This is a combination of books (our selections related to international adoption) and classes (in person at Gladney and on-line). We went to an Ethiopia Adoption class at Gladney on June 1st, and that counts as 2 credits. We have picked out a video which will be a second course. We will then write three book reports. One of our reports will be on Are Those Kids Yours? by Cheri Register. It has been a really good book to read, and we should be done in the next day or so. We also wrote a report on Does Anyone Else Look Like Me which is an excellent book.

Natalie will go get shots this week! Since I have been to Africa a couple times this year, I have all the shots. Natalie will also speak to the clinic about our kids (Caleb and Hannah), what shots they would need if we bring them to Ethiopia with us.