More court dates...

Quick post just to say that two families received court dates today for mid-April. One of the family's dossier arrived in ET on 2/23, two weeks before ours got there. Of course, there might be court recesses for Easter, so we might still be four or more weeks out. But, we can hope...

Curls and Pics

How I wish that I could post pictures of the girls...but I can't. In case you were wondering, the government of Ethiopia is very protective of its children and will not allow pictures or full names of any children to be posted on any public forum unless that child is legally yours. So, they are T & R (safer even than Tse and Ro) until we pass court successfully--which we are still waiting to hear when our court date will be. We are estimating that we will hear in about one more month--but we shouldn't even do that. Estimating anything regarding a time line in this process is just asking for trouble! (0;

Yesterday we received pictures from a family that traveled to Mekele two weeks ago and took care packages to the girls for us. They took pictures of both girls receiving their bags. T & R were priceless! R didn't seem to understand the bag, but T had a smile on. One picture was a close up of side view of T, her hair has grown out some (they often keep the childrens' hair cut very short) and she has the most gorgeous curls!!!! Not too tight, not too loose. I'm envious and do hope that they leave it this length. R's hair is just like mine...it is frizzy with a mind of its own. (0: As I mentioned in my previous post about care packages, I included in this package a flow chart with pictures describing what will happen in the future regarding Mom, Dad and airplanes. Hopefully they look at it and will understand a little better what will hopefully be happening soon.

Next care package to be taken mid-April. I better get workin' on stuffin' some more love into a one gallon bag!

Anatomy of a Care Package

First of all, a quick update on the adoption...a number of families (at least four that I know of) received court dates today! Yippee! Their first court date is scheduled for April 7th, right around the corner! What does this mean for us? Well, things are moving. Generally, dossiers are processed and court dates scheduled in the order that they are received (generally, not always) so when four cases go to court, our file moves that much closer to the top. Hopefully.

You've got to take every small celebration you can get! (0:

Anyways, on to the adoption dilemma facing me this week...

The only gift is a portion of thyself. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

How do you choose what to put into a one-gallon ziplock bag that will soon travel thousands of miles to be placed into your daughters' hands--mind you, these are daughters that you have never met? That is what I was faced with this week, and I am so lucky that this is actually the THIRD time I've been blessed with such a conundrum. You see, it is the tradition of our agency "family" that when parents travel over to get their child/ren, they take care packages for waiting parents' children with them. These packages are limited to one, one-gallon ziploc bag per child that should not weigh more than 2 lbs. For a parent it is a way of reaching out to your child, telling them that you are here and waiting for them.

All parents travel to Addis Ababa, for that is where you meet with the U.S. Embassy to get your child/ren's visa to travel back with them to the U.S. Our agency has two care centers, one in Mekele (northern ET) and one in Addis. For children living at the Mekele center, they are transferred to the Addis care center shortly before their Embassy date so that their parents can be with them during the week-long Embassy preparation time. They then get to travel to their new home once the visa is issued.

Our girls are at the Mekele care center. Not many parents make a side trip to Mekele during their trip to ET, especially since even if their children are from Mekele, they will have been transferred to Addis by the time the parents are traveling. So, on the rare occasions when someone does travel to Mekele (usually to see and learn about the area that was an important part of their child's life), the parents of waiting children living at Mekele get the chance to send care packages that will be delivered directly to them by another parent...and it is a BIG DEAL!!!!!!!!! Yes, we can always send packages with parents just traveling to Addis, but it sometimes will take more than a month to get to Mekele, and it is not given to them by another parent (i.e., someone who understands how emotionally important that little plastic bag is and what it represents to the giver). We have been lucky in that since the first moment we signed the paperwork, families have visited Mekele regularly. For nearly a year, our girls have had to sit aside and watch their friends receive bags while they received none. Their first bags were so huge for us, as we hoped they were for them. It was our family reaching across the miles between us to say "you are loved...we are here, waiting, for you. Yes, you."

So, three times I have sat in front of bags trying to stuff shoes, clothes (every picture of Tse that I have shows her wearing clothes that are too small!), treats, books, hair bands (I never knew there was so much stuff out there that you can torture a girls hair with!), etc. Do you know how much fits into a one-gallon bag???? Not much. So I have had to do triage. Usually a shirt and pair of leggings makes it in, one book, some little candies and gum, a photo album and ALWAYS a letter from Colt and I and some hand-drawn cards by the boys (I talk them into drawing hearts instead of lightsabers...it's a tough battle...).

This last bag was a surprise, since the family traveling did not think they would have room and suddenly found space. They leave next Weds., and I found out Weds. night. So, yesterday was a mad adventure of bag stuffing.

How do you stuff your love into a one-gallon bag?

Seriously, how?

I want the girls to know how I love them so much that I physically hurt that I cannot be with them. I ache that I cannot protect them, cannot kiss their hurts or make their eyes light up with joy. I--who am rarely at loss for putting words on paper--cannot even tell them this in a letter for they do not even read, much less speak my language! I put pictures in albums, but for all I know they're just thinking "why am I getting pictures of these weird albino people and their dogs (eeek!)?" There have been stories that some kids have come home unprepared for what was occurring--they had been told they were going to come to America, make money, then come back to ET. Who knows what our girls have been told? How are the nannies truly to even know how to prepare the children when they have never seen America, never met the parents or might not really understand the whole process. When the children are transferred to Addis, most Mekele kids speak Tigrinya, not Amharic, and all the nannies in Addis speak Amharic, not Tigrinya, so even they (who see the parents come and go through the Embassy process) can't explain to the girls what will be happening.

So how do I prepare them for all the changes that are going to occur in their life soon, and fit it into a one-gallon bag? Hmmm? Well, in the second care package I included a picture of each one of the family, girls included, with the Tigrinya word for brother, sister, mother and father under each respective picture. Hopefully it will prompt one of the nannies to explain if Tse cannot read that. In the most recent package I included a flow chart with pictures of Colt and I flying on an airplane to ET (picture of girls and the country of ET), then a picture of Colt and I and the girls flying on a plane to Utah (pictures of the state and country). The pictures were labeled in Tigrinya (mother, father and daughters) as best I could do, and at the bottom I put pictures of all of us--boys and girls and dogs included--smooshed together and put "Forever Family" in Tigrinya underneath. Do you think it might get the message across? I don't know, but it was my best try with only a few hours notice. It's now on it's way to Iowa, and then on to the girls next week.

So these are some of the frustrating things that you have to deal with...trying to fit your love in a one-gallon bag. But, whether they understand it or not, they WILL understand it soon, and I guess that matters more than anything.

So, to leave you with a thought...what would you put in your one-gallon bag to a son or daughter you had never met but loved dearly?????

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes...

These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes
Nothing remains quite the same
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands

If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.
~Jimmy Buffet

For those of you that know of all our troubles over the past two years regarding adoption, you can skip this post (unless you are a glutton for punishment). For those of you that missed out on our adoption soap opera, here goes...

I think that I will go back to the beginning, because it's like a river that you can never truly understand until you see where it sprang from the mountain-side. The following is an excerpt from an article that I have written for an adoption magazine (hopefully they will publish it, but who knows):

For most of my life I have felt something deep within me, a pull towards something—or someone. Over two years ago, my husband and I decided to adopt from Africa and suddenly that inexplicable pull within me made sense. I knew that there was a little soul, or perhaps two, waiting for us to find them there. In the spring of 2008, we thought that we had found them in the form of twin three-year-old Liberian girls. One had tested positive for Hepatitis B and although we had not initially felt comfortable with caring for such a special need when first completing our adoption paperwork, it is much different when the disease has a face and she has already snuck into your heart and grabbed hold. After researching the disease exhaustively and speaking with infectious disease specialists, pediatricians, and parents who had adopted children with Hepatitis B, and also considering the risks to our two biological sons, ages five and three at the time, we felt that it was something that we could manage.

We openly discussed the decision with our extended families. There was a lot of support, but there was also enough fear and doubt that we knew it would cause major issues within the extended family. My husband loved the girls so deeply already, and felt so strongly that it was God’s will, that he was prepared to move forward with their adoption. I was not. I loved the twins dearly as well, but what kind of family would we be able to provide for the girls? They would not have the wholeness of love and support that they deserved and I worried that the angels would feel the chasm caused by their adoption. Hepatitis B, though manageable and often never expressed, IS a disease with deadly inherent risks. Although we saw a little girl, not a disease, we also knew that our decision would bring risk that would not be a choice to others. So, at my urging, we let them go…and we forever lost a piece of ourselves in doing so.

We forced ourselves to move forward. We decided to switch countries to a new program our agency was opening up in Uganda. I had felt the switch would help us to move on from the girls (who have since been referred to a medical doctor and his wife, but have not left Liberia). New programs are a risk, especially in the predictable unpredictability of Africa, but our agency had worked in Africa for over two decades and had been sponsoring children in Uganda for 18 years. We felt relatively secure in the switch and the need seemed so great.

In March of 2009, we accepted the referral for a little girl, Angella, and her brother Samuel. They had no known birth dates, no pictures, and minimal background information but all medical tests had been completed. With a birth mother sick with HIV and unable to care for them, we felt that they needed us as much as our heartbroken family needed them.

Our family spent the next several months loving this little boy and girl that we had never met, inviting them into our hearts and home. Samuel and Angella became invisible members of the family, already accepted by my two biological sons as their new brother and sister. When we had first decided to adopt from Africa, I had read all the books and felt certain we were up for the challenge. I knew that adopting from Africa would be wrought with many unknowns such as ambiguous aging due to malnourishment and unknown dates of birth, little if any medical or family history, and process delays. The only certainty is that nothing ever goes as planned. Armed with this knowledge I did not let the unknowns phase me for it was to be expected.

We finally got pictures of four-year-old Samuel in May of 2009, but still nothing on Angella. We began to have serious concerns when our agency director and her daughter spent a combined seven weeks in Uganda and were unable to see our children. Samuel and Angella were supposed to be living at the agency foster house in Kampala, but when the agency director arrived she found the children had been placed by the Ugandan representative in a "private foster home" where only he knew their location. He had done this with a number of other referred children.

In the meantime, the Ugandan lawyer working for our agency had claimed to have processed our paperwork and believed that we could receive guardianship as soon as late October or early November of 2009. Our hearts and heads became tangled and confused as we suddenly felt the excitement of possibly bringing our children home soon coupled with a deep worry that something was still not right. We began to hope for the best, but decided to make sure that it wasn’t the worst.

We contacted a friend of a friend—a Kenyan high school teacher attending graduate school in Kampala—and asked him to try and locate the children and assess the situation. He is a delightful, bright and energetic man who embraced our family and our cause and vowed to find the truth. With our agency’s support, the Kenyan dogged the Ugandan representative, flung aside his lies and diversions, and finally exhausted him into allowing him to meet the children. At a pre-arranged time, they traveled winding back roads (no street signs) to a small brick house where outside waited a boy, approximately 5-6 years old and a young girl, possibly 3-4 years old, dressed in boys clothing. A woman was also with them. The Kenyan went to speak to the boy, who began to address him politely in English until being harshly reprimanded by the representative. The boy would say nothing else during the short visit, and the girl cried the whole time. The representative allowed only a few pictures before hurrying the Kenyan away. When our friend was able to scan and send the pictures to us we were horrified. The boy looked nothing like the picture of Samuel that we had (twice his size and different facial structure). I remember emailing the Kenyan, tears streaming down my face, writing simply “these are not my children!” Our Kenyan friend was quite certain the whole thing had been a set-up.

Though not as alarmed as we were, the agency director requested the children be moved back into the agency foster house. It was supposedly done and we received interim reports that they were doing fine. We did not trust the reports and asked our Kenyan friend, a man we had come to hold dear to our hearts and trust implicitly, to look in on them when possible. Every time he was able to visit the house (it took him a week just to find the house thanks to the agency representative’s attempts to derail him), the children were not there.

Our Kenyan friend and I urged our agency director to go to Uganda secretly and expose what was going on, but she was committed to traveling at a date that was already pre-arranged and known by the representative. In late October of 2009, our agency director traveled to Kampala. She arrived at the foster house at 1 a.m. to find it without power or running water and only four beds filled with children, instead of four times that amount. She contacted the representative and he said that he was angry at parents for wanting their children moved here and there and so he took all the children back to their relatives. It was apparent they were not coming back.

Since that time, it has been revealed that the Ugandan representative likely portrayed a number of children as orphans or relinquished children for referrals when they were not such, and faked their medical tests. In this elaborate scheme he borrowed children intermittently when needed to stay at the foster house, and was able to siphon thousands of dollars off of parents (who paid monthly foster care fees), and the agency (who repeatedly paid for utilities—that still never were paid for—and bogus employees, inflated school fees and incorrectly done paperwork). There was indeed a “Samuel” and “Angella” and they did “stay” at the foster house for a short time, but Samuel was moved back out quickly after being brought in and it is now evident they were not even brother and sister. Some of the children may in fact be orphans, but all are now in the care of pastors or relatives in contact with the representative and to get to them would likely lead to more extortion.

“How could the agency not see this?” you might ask. “How could you not see the warnings?” you might ask. Well, we did. They did. We just reacted too late and the representative held all the power. The agency director was suspicious of the representatives actions early on, but was trying not to alarm him for fear that the “hidden children” would be lost if he became wary. Part of the story that is not apparent is the elaborate lengths to which the representative went to camouflage his deceptions. Obviously, he was good at facades. He rented a house to serve as a private foster house where two babies were supposed to be living—moving in their cribs, toys, bottles and clothes for two to three days at a time and housing the babies with the biological aunt acting as their foster mother there while adoptive parents or the agency director were visiting. He would then move them back to their biological mother in another town when the visitors had left. He was also a man the agency had had a long, proven relationship with. He traveled around in a beat-up car with a trunk full of fruits and vegetables, handing them out to people in need whenever parents or the agency director would visit. Many who have met him initially held him in high esteem and saw a man working selflessly and tirelessly for the children.

So where do we go from here? Two years into the process, we have gone through four miscarriages (and yes, that is exactly how it feels…it is a visceral, devastating loss). We still have a room with beds that have not been slept in, toys gathering dust and dolls that have yet to be hugged. We have lost all the money we had painstakingly set aside for the adoption. But we still feel the pull. So, we are looking forward once more. A little…no, a lot more wary and a lot less starry-eyed…but not less hopeful. We believe that we had to follow this path in order to find who was truly waiting for us. We found a Kenyan brother who will forever be a part of our family. We found within ourselves strength to overcome emotional and financial loss and persevere when the hour seemed darkest. We have begun to search waiting child lists, like rainbowkids.com, and have realized there are hundreds of children with special needs already in the system, just waiting to be found. For many, the only special need that they have is to find a family simply willing to discover the joys of adopting a toddler or older child. We are convinced that there are two little souls waiting for us and that we will find our happily ever after.

Why Adoption? Why Africa?

First things first, the NEW news is that the requirement for parents to travel twice might not be a done deal--supposedly the Ethiopian Federal Court made the decision, but the ET government might not allow it. Soooo, everything proceeds as it did previously until the government decrees the change. Whew! Although, I have to say, I was actually loving the idea of going to see the girls early.

This brings me to the entry for today...why adoption and why Africa? I get asked this quite a bit, usually in round-a-bout ways. As you have already seen, dealing with Africa is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates--you seriously never know what you're gonna "git" from one day to the next. It is a roller coaster ride with tall mountains where everything seems to work so fast it's breathtaking, followed by low valleys where laws change overnight and on a whim--often wreaking total havoc on those of us trying to hold on as we go careening up and down. So why put yourself through that? Seriously. And the money? Adoption is not cheap, and international adoption is really not cheap. Factor in having a good chunk of it stolen, and it just really doesn't make sense. Seriously...it doesn't.

Well, welcome to adoption. It doesn't always make sense. It just is. It is a choice, but for most of us it doesn't feel that way. If you talk to most adoptive parents, I bet that they will tell you that they felt "driven" to adopt. Whether it was their only option for a child or whether, as in our case, it was something that they just felt they were supposed to do--it is a drive that comes from deep within. Once you decide to adopt, it seems to envelop you body and soul and you KNOW that you will do whatever it takes to find the child or children that are meant for you. Because, once you decide to adopt you realize that there is someone waiting for you...there is a reason you were brought to this decision and this journey. It doesn't make sense, it just is.

Colt and I first discussed adoption after we had Noah. My pregnancy with him was very difficult and I have had hormonal problems (migraines and continuous headaches) ever since then. I became very worried that my issues were hereditary (my paternal grandmother and maternal aunt suffered with similar issues), and we discussed adoption-not wanting to take the chance of having a girl and passing the awful pain down to her. Although I biologically can have more children, the idea of adoption has taken such root within us that even if we were assured that the hormonal issues would not be passed down (and, technically there is a very good chance that a biological daughter of mine would NOT have the issues that I have had), we still would not veer from the path of adoption. We both just know now that it is what we are meant to do. And, that Africa is where our children are.

We did discuss domestic adoption, but ruled it out do to complications that we had seen others go through regarding birth parents changing their minds, etc. For me, there was never really a question as I have been pulled since I was very young to Africa. It has always been within me and as we discussed adoption, I knew why. My big-hearted husband was not as picky about where, so he let me point us to the continent and then we both decided on the specific country. Colt and I discussed countries and looked at agencies and finally decided to take the leap in December of 2007. We hopped on the roller coaster and here we are, still hanging on for dear life.

I often get comments from people that don't understand why we are choosing to adopt from foreign shores when there is so much need here, in our very own community. Well, we agree there is a need here, and throughout the U.S.. But Colt and I firmly believe that a child is a child, no matter where they are from. Every child deserves a future, every child deserves a home, a family, LOVE--no matter where they were born. Orphans or children in foster care in America DO NOT have it easy, but most will at least have the opportunity for a future thanks to the foster care system. For most orphans in third world countries, their countries are simply unable to care for the massive numbers of orphans and relinquished children and so adoption can literally be a matter of life or death. Without adoption, thousands more of these children would be out on the street.

I am not trying to act the part of the martyr and make it seem as though adopting internationally is more ethically imperative than adopting domestically. It's not. I honestly believe that every child deserves a loving family and a future EVERYWHERE. There are 148 MILLION orphans worldwide (Unicef 2008)--that's half the total population of the U.S. There are also millions more children that are abandoned, sold or trafficked. In the U.S. there are 500,000 children in foster care, 130,000 of which are available for adoption. They all need homes. Colt and I simply feel that we are meant to adopt from Africa.

The transracial aspect may cause some questions in others as well, though no one has asked me about it directly. There are a number of advocates that believe children should only be adopted within their race. Our response to that, quite simply, is that we don't. We believe that what matters most is that you raise your child with love, stability and ethics. We are NOT color-blind, nor will our children be. We will do all that we can to raise all our children to be proud of who they are, where they came from, and be comfortable in their skin whatever color it may be. We will talk of racism, because chances are they all will feel it one way or another. I may not raise Tse and Ro the same way an African American mother would, or their Ethiopian birth mother would if she could, but I'm not raising my boys the same way my white friends raise their white kids. The beauty of human nature is that we are all different. I am me and you are you. I can guarantee you that my girls will be loved and cherished and raised to know the beauty that exists within their gorgeous brown skin.

It is absolutely amazing how strongly you can love a child that you have never met, but you can. I loved Wyatt and Noah (in between bouts of intense nausea) before I ever "saw" them and I love Tse and Ro with only a picture showing me that they are real. It does not matter where they were born or of whose flesh they came from. Love doesn't sprout from flesh, it grows within the heart.

"Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart - but in it"

Author: Fleur Conkling Heylinger

A Refresher Course on Adopting from Ethiopia...

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
--- Mark Twain

Our dossier is in Ethiopia! Wahoo! In the whole scheme of things, it is a small step...but with two years of no progress, every little step forward means so very much to us!

Now our dossier, the bundle of painstakingly prepared paperwork including police clearances, letters of reference, birth certificates, medical evaluations, etc., all of this will be translated into Amharic and then sent to a number of government entities, including an adoption committee who will hopefully approve our right to adopt. If we are deemed acceptable, then a court date will be scheduled--generally within two months. At the court date, a judge will either award us parental rights of the girls...or most likely fail us due to missing paperwork.

It is uncommon to "pass court" on the first try--most pass on the second or third court date. The culprit is usually a missing letter from one of the governmental agencies that is required to provide input to the case. The letter generally appears and as long as everything else looks good, then at the second or third court date, SHAZAM, you become Ade and Abo (Mom and Dad in Tigrinya, the prevalent language spoken in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea). The Embassy date is then scheduled for one to two months after the court date, and this is when parents normally travel to pick up their new child/ren. The Embassy date is when the U.S. Embassy issues your child/ren their travel visa to go home.

So for our adoption budget we have factored in one trip to Ethiopia for the Embassy date to bring the girls home. Not that we actually have a budget seeing as a delightful man in Uganda decided to bilk us, and a number of other families, out of all the money we had set aside previously for the adoption...but I digress...that is a blog for another day.

Anyways, as Africa is prone to do, She has thrown another speed bump in our way to make things slightly more difficult. There was news yesterday out of Ethiopia that a new rule will require parents to be present at the first court hearing, after which the Embassy date will be scheduled 8 to 12 weeks later. So, this essentially means that we will now have to budget in TWO trips to Ethiopia. Hmmm.

The positives are that we are able to meet the girls and get to know them--and allow them to get used to the idea of us--before we're dragging them onto a plane to a different world. Seeing them before the court hearing also allows them to receive an R-3 visa, which allows them to be U.S. citizens the minute they touch ground in the U.S. That is a nice perk!

We also will get another glimpse of the country of their birth, and that is a wonderful opportunity.

The sad drawbacks are the obvious financial difficulties (at least an extra $4K), but also that this requires more time away from work--which could be even more of an OUCH should this all transpire during fire season. Fire season is one of our hopes for actually PAYING off the adoption bills! So not only will it cost more, but it will leave a dent in the paycheck that we count on to get us through the year and pay for such extras as...extensive court and agency fees! Ah, well, we've been through much worse.

Another drawback: after finally meeting our daughters, and becoming their parents, we will have to leave them. That will not be easy.

Colt is in Boise and we haven't discussed it much yet, but I am choosing to look at the new requirement as another chance for Discovery--a chance to make Mark Twain (and, I am sure, my mother and my Kenyan brother Francis) proud and throw off the bowlines and follow the African trade winds. It will be a chance to meet my daughters earlier, and an opportunity to be with them at the exact moment that a judge [hopefully] blesses us with the awesome gift of becoming their forever parents.

So, it might not be all that bad...

Our Story...

We witness a miracle every time a child enters into life.
But those who make their journey home across time & miles,
growing within the hearts of those who wait to love them,
are carried on the wings of destiny and placed among us
by God's very own hands.
--- Kristi Larson

so here we are...waiting for the wings of destiny to bring us the daughters that we have never met but have come to love dearly.

we have waited for them for over two years, and spent most of that time not even knowing that these two angels were who we were waiting for.

two years...and counting, because we are not on our time here. we are waiting on God's hands and African time, which is an unpredictable phenomenon all its own.

We are the Mortenson Family:

Colt, a wildland firefighter with the USDA Forest Service who continually strives to balance his movement upward in management with the down-to-earth importance of swinging a pulaski.

Kristin, a full-time Mom who all too often loses herself in the world of Transformers, legos, email and laundry.

Wyatt, a delightfully shy seven year old with dreams of becoming a fighter jet pilot, master jedi knight, astronaut and in his spare time, a trash truck driver.

Noah, an engaging five year old with a penchant for weaving amazingly creative tales, making up words, and pushing Mom's buttons. His nickname is Smiley, for good reason.

Sage & Silver, the four-legged weimaraner family members that provide the howling melody to our family cacophony.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice;
it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
--- William J. Bryan

We are in the process of adopting two daughters/sisters from Ethiopia. Although we started the process of adoption two years ago, we didn't realize that they were not ready for us yet and so we began a journey that taught us many lessons. We learned that destiny is a matter of choice and that although God knows where we are to end up...the path that we take to get there--and our following it to its end--is our own choice. Colt and I have felt strongly that our destiny is to adopt and this commitment has weathered many losses, much heartbreak, and incalculable corruption. Our sons have built two more siblings into their lives and prayers for two years. Twice now they have loved siblings and lost them. In doing so they have learned that they have a capacity to love that does not diminish but instead continues to grow. Perhaps it has taught them that adding two more to our family will not add competition for a finite amount of parental love, but instead will just add to the crazy homemade love that Mom and Dad already provide.

We found the girls smiling back at us from a waiting child list. They are not biological sisters, but were raised by a caregiver as such. They have been cared for by International Adoption Guides in northern Ethiopia since June of 2009. In January of 2010, we left our previous agency and country of choice (Uganda) to answer their smiling request for a family. We knew then why we had gone through all that we had...it was for them, to get us here, to get us ready. They are our sweet Tse and Ro and they are waiting on us.

Please follow us on our journey to bring home our girls...