Our homestudy is complete and approved! Yippee!!!! It has been sent to USCIS so they can pre-approve visas for the kids. We have also sold out lot and celebrated our third anniversary. Laird and I spend last week putting together our dossier and we will send that off to our agency tomorrow. Then we're going sailng for the weekend to celebrate. J is ready to start high school including four honors classes and volleyball JV - and a new puppy of her very own that is cute as a button! T is off to college, marching band, working and taking ballet. B is working, too, and almost has health insurance!
Next on the adoption front, we will get our referral and sign a paper committing to adopt the three siblings who jumped out at us from the Waiting Children video. And then we work to get the house ready, get our shots for travel, collect donations and clothes of various sizes, learn Amharic, and wait wait wait. We hope to travel in January - that is best case scenario. Could be more like Spring. If anyone would like to help us pull together World Party for March 2009, we are forming a committee now. It's pretty turn-key since we did it all last year, but we will need some committed helpers to make it happen, as we will be traveling close to the date. We especially want to add to our advertising effort.
Please take a moment to watch this video of Michelle Obama's speech. It moved and inspired me as a mom, as a woman, and as an American! The world is turning towards respect, dignity and love for ALL. There is Hope. Even if you don't plan to vote for Barack Obama, even if you would never vote for him, please just take a moment to listen to Michelle's words and to think about all the people of this country and feel proud.
