Austin's Flag Football and Olivia Being Silly

Nick gave me a new video camera for my birthday so today I tried it out at Austin's Upward flag football game. Ok, so I need to work on my camera skills but it's a start. Olivia was hamming it up for the camera as usual. I could not get her to do something "normal" for the camera, she just wanted to goof off and make weird faces. :) Austin was practicing before the game and trying to play it cool with the other boys. Poor thing, he runs so funny but he is really fast. Unfortunately I did not catch any spectacular plays on video today. A few weeks ago he made his first touch down, of course it was the one game I missed due to being out of town. :(

WWWOOOHHHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

We are finally done, we really are done this time! :) Every document for our Dossier is notarized, authenticated, and certified and ready for the trip to Washington and then the Ethiopian Embassy. I know the lady at the Secretary of States office thought I was nuts, I gave her a big hug after she certified the last document. I am just so excited to get the Dossier out of my hands. We will officially be a waiting family in about 2 weeks. :)

It is really hitting me now, this is really happening. My little girl is somewhere out there right now. It makes me wonder what she is doing this very minute. I can't help but imagine and play out different scenarios in my head. Hopefully she is happy and healthy and enjoying the love of her birth mother right now. I know difficult days are ahead for my little girl until she comes home. She really needs our prayers. I just can't wait to see her face, know her name, and hold her in my arms.

Oh, and Happy Birthday to ME! Today is my 28th birthday.

One More Page.... again

Well, I thought we were finally going to be done with our Dossier and be able to hand it over to our agency for the final processing and again one little piece of paper is holding us up. I went yesterday to the Secretary of States office to have all the documents certified. My birth certificate is a certified copy that I just received from the department of vital records but they did not HAND SIGN it so the Secretary of States office will not certify it!!!! If I had not had my friend there with me for support I think I would have lost it. So now I have to drive to the north side of ATL to get a new "hand signed" birth certificate and then take it back to the Secretary of States office. UUUGGGGHHH! I am not sure if Satan is trying to frustrate me or if God is trying to slow me down because it is not time yet.

Oh Happy Day!

We received our corrected approval from immigration Saturday!!!!! :) :) :)
I am waiting on 2 documents that I had to send out to be county authenticated and 1 piece of paper I had to send to Texas to be state certified then I will take everything to the state of Georgia to be state certified and then we will be done!!!! It will be a huge relief to finally have this part of the process done and be officially waiting on a referral.

Sponsor a Child

Nick and I had been thinking of sponsoring a child in Ethiopia and we finally did it. We wanted to help a child to be successful in their own country also. We have sponsored an 8 year old little girl in Guraghe Ethiopia named Atelo through World Vision. For only $35 a month it provides food, water, medicine, education, etc. for her and her family. We chose an older child because they really understand more and she will even be able to write us back and forth. We chose a girl because girls in developing countries have even less opportunities than boys. She is beautiful and we hope to meet her face to face when we travel to Ethiopia to pick up our daughter. I urge everyone to sponsor a child. By not eating out once a month you can provide so much for a child. We will be choosing another child to sponsor in the next few weeks. Click on the "Sponsor a Child" title above to learn more and locate a child to sponsor.