Another day in Ethiopia- Fun with friends and embassy appointment

I am not even sure what day it is anymore! I just didn't want to skip a day though so you will all be a day behind.

Anyway, Thursday was a good day for us and we were busy busy! My mom was not feeling too great, so she just stayed back to rest which it ended up being the perfect day to do that. 

First, the kids and I took a walk to the guest house down the street and met up with our friends the Formans who were with us for court in December. They are here for an “extended stay” while they sort through all the mess of paperwork that needed to get done to get submitted for embassy. They were able to get their two newest kiddos the other day for good and were just submitted to embassy yesterday. They are here until the visas are issued so that may mean only a few more weeks or another month or more. It is great that they can all be here to bond as a family, but I know they are going to be ready to be home after all of this!

The kids were really cute together and played soccer a little and had fun rolling down the hill just being silly kids. 

After our little visit, Dani picked us up and we headed to Layla house- our adoption agency’s office and also an orphanage setting for some of the children who are waiting to be adopted. Oh my, it’s a good thing these little ones already have families! Precious! We have been here a few times before, but this time it was really fun to be able to interact with some of the babies whose families I know!

This is little Eyob. His smile just melts anyone who will make eye contact! We were with his family for our court trip too and they are just waiting for his visa to being him home… c’mon embassy- speed it up for our friends!  

As soon as we walked in the door, several of the toddlers made a bee line for me and held their arms up to be held. I tried to hold two at a time, and then finally sat down because there were about 3 more that were fighting for my attention.

 I tried to get Nati and Mihret to come over and play, but they were reserved most of the time. They preferred to take pictures and videos and laugh while mom tried to juggle everyone! :)

Finally, towards the end Mihret started picking up the babies and tried to copy me to help them stop crying- she is so very sweet and tender!

After that it was time to head to the embassy for the big appointment. In typical fashion of our agency, no one showed up with us or told us if we were supposed to bring anything to this critical appointment. Nice. So Dani dropped us off in front of the U.S. embassy, and I prayed hard as we stood in line. All I had was my passport and a notarized power of attorney for Randy and I just hoped that it would be enough. Of course, it was because the embassy already had everything and the appointment did not last long at all. Out of curiosity, I did ask the worker why our case went through so very quickly when every other case has been taking much much longer to clear and amazingly he said that this was one of the most cut and dry, straight forward cases that they had seen. Pretty incredible considering all that we had to go through this past year and a half - not to mention that even our adoption agency warned us very early on that getting through the embassy might be our most difficult part of the entire process. Ha! God showed them! 

We left and I just had this huge sense of relief that it was finally finished! This was the last step and we were cleared! We will get their visas on Monday morning so that we can fly home that night and they will be officially U.S. citizens!

My mom was feeling a little better that evening so she went with us to have dinner with Fekadu and also the children’s mother. It was good, but hard… as expected. That’s a whole other post for later though, after I have had some time to sort through it all and process how I am feeling about the whole thing.

The kids were exhausted and pretty much fell asleep instantly when we got back to the guest house. My mom and I snuck downstairs to try to call home and post some pics without the greatest of luck. As we were looking through pictures, we were cracking up together as we thought about all of the funny crazy experiences we have been having. She definitely has some stories to tell and hopefully I can get her to post some of them while were here so you can hear her perspective on this adventure! The kids are warming up to her more each day and it has just been a huge blessing to not only see her bond with the kids, but to see how much closer our relationship is becoming in just this week! More to come soon!