Baptism

[I]'s 8!

Can you believe it!? He turned 8 in April, but we waited until May when his Grandma and Grandpa T were coming. Due to when [D] could get off work, we were in Rome the weekend before his baptism. I would not recommend traveling right before a baptism because it was a little crazy getting everything planned when we got back. (It didn't help that our internet died right before we left for Rome.) But everything turned out beautifully! [D]'s foot was also healed enough that he was able to do the baptism without problem (something that would not have been possible in April). It was an added bonus that [T] became officially our daughter the same day. In fact, our adoption agency tried calling us with the good news during the middle of the meeting, but of course we weren't able to answer. It was definitely a very special day for our whole family!

A little pre-baptism advice.

All of us!

The Best Adoption News

We are pleased to announce to the world that we are now the proud parents of [T] Hatcher. Our adoption court date was today and we passed court, so now in the eyes of the Ethiopia and the world, we are officially her parents.

We are so excited!!! We will be traveling in July to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to pick up [T] and accomplish the immigration paperwork at the US embassy . We will be traveling from Italy to Ethiopia and then directly to the United States.

Thank you all for all of your prayers and support while we have been waiting for this day over the last 2 years. Please continue to pray for us as we wait for our appointment time with the US embassy.

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Adoption News

On April 5th we FINALLY received the police clearance that we've been waiting on since December of last year! That is the good news. It basically allows us to move forward in the adoption process again. Now we need a court date. Before, parents weren't required to be present at the court, but as of May 9th that will be changing. We were hoping for a court date before then, but it is now May 2nd, and we still haven't heard anything. It just doesn't look like that will happen. There is a possibility that we will be able to get a waiver since we have already been out to visit [T]. once. Otherwise, we will be visiting Ethiopia an extra time--one more time for the court date and then 2 months later to pick her up. We are really hoping to hear soon when our court date is so we can make plans for the summer. And really we just want to bring [T] home. In August it will be a year since we received our referral, so we have definitely been waiting a long time for this. Here is a more recent picture of her. She is getting bigger and we want her to be getting bigger before our eyes, and not simply through photos!