Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope this is a wonderful holiday season for all that brings in a wonderful new year. I know the next year will be one of adventure for us! By this time next year, we should be the proud parents!

In the meantime though, this holiday season just doesn't have the normal vibe. We celebrated Christmas early, on December 15th, so that my brother could be with us. A few days later, he was on a long journey to Afghanistan where he will be serving for the next 12-18 months. While I am so proud of him, and know he'll do an amazing job, it's hard to not feel scared, sad, and a bit hollow. I hate that we will be bringing our children home and not be able to introduce them to their uncle. The feeling of worrying and missing a loved one while they are deployed overseas is difficult to describe. It's a very familiar feeling, although I'd nearly forgotten how consuming it can be. My dear husband Joe was in Iraq for a year, and returned in April 2004. I'm thankful we had a relatively long break between the deployments, but still wish Zak wasn't gone. Please keep his safety in your thoughts and prayers.

As for our current adoption status:
Our dossier arrived in Ethiopia last week, and is now being translated, registration, and legalization process. That should be completed soon and we'll get a date that we began "Officially Waiting!" Our agency has told us to expect approximately a 3 month wait for a referral, although I think that's a bit optimistic. Once we get our referral, it has been taking 6-8 weeks for families to get a court date, after referral acceptance. Because of this recent slow down, it's averaging about 3 months after referral acceptance before families are traveling to pick up their children. I can't imagine how long 3 months will feel, but since we won't be doing much of any nursery prep and shopping prior to accepting our referral, it'll give us a good amount of time to do all that before we leave. See... I'm still being optimistic about things at this point! ;-) Gotta stay patient and keep that good humor!

Enjoy your Christmas turkeys/hams and delicious family dinners! I'm off to fix a low key lunch and get back to cleaning house and taking DOWN Christmas decorations! We've already got our tree down and back in its' box, and most of our outside lights have been taken down too! Please keep our little girl, Chloe (our mini dachshund) in your thoughts and prayers too... her meningoencephalitis (or whatever it is that's really affecting her) came back with a vengeance 3 days ago and her prednisone dosage has been increased. She walks like she's drunk and shivers in pain. :'-( We'll get this kicked soon, I'm just sure of it!