This is my phone not ringing....


And it is still not ringing....

No news...

is not good news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can they drop this fabulous bombshell on us and expect us to wait to hear anything from them?

7:45 am PST-Ok, I know they are not in the office yet, but maybe??
8:35 am PST - Come on already, I have to leave soon!
9:02 am PST - OH no my cell phone battery is dead. Give it a quick charge before I have to leave.
9:30 am PST -Heading out the door with nothing!
11:46 am PST-Run home to check just in case
12:25 pm PST-Home for the rest of the day..maybe I'll hear something
12:31 pm PST-E-mail from Julie stating we will have to wait until Monday to get our number. I am glad they at least told us, so I am not expecting news any second!

Until Monday....Sharon inspired me to have a poll.

What number will we be on the girl's list?

(Add your guess to the comments and on the poll in the right hand column.)

FYI: On the last update there were 16 on the girl's list. There are EIGHTEEN dossiers in office, authentication, en route to Ethiopia, or in Ethiopia waiting for CIS and I would guess they all get numbers too! Our dossier was accepted on April 2. What's your guess? Sherlock Michelle I am expecting you to be the closest with your keen detective skills!!

Jumping for Joy!!!

That is what I was doing when I came home from getting my haircut this afternoon. My mom was watching the kiddos for me and I thought I would check my e-mail real quick to see if there was anything important. What a surprise when I saw I had 8 new e-mails. I read the first one from Michelle and it said something like "I am freaking out for you!!!!! You will be a number this week!!!!! Are you so happy?" I had no idea what she was talking about. The next said something similar and so on until I got to the one from our agency stating the change in procedure and then I understood what everyone was so excited about. It just warms my heart to have other families to go through this experience with and share the ups and downs.

So what am I rambling on about you ask. I think God works in funny ways sometimes. We have had lots of prayers in the last few weeks (thank you everyone for supporting us) that we would receive our FDL, so that we could finally be a number on the list and be waiting for the referral of our daughter. Well our FDL has not come, but we get to be a number and begin the real wait for our little girl!!!

I have been frustrated with the process, because we will wait up to 4 months for our FDL and then have to wait another 6 months for our referral. I never understood why we couldn't be waiting for both at the same time. I guess since the referral time has increased AGCI realized that we could wait for both our referral and our FDL at the same time.

What this means for us is that we will be put on the list in the order that dossiers were received at AGCI. I have no idea where that will put us on the list. I know there are at least 16 families before us on the girl's list and expect that there will be another half dozen or so put on before us due to the recent changes. I am guessing we will be in the 20-25 range, but again that is just a wild guess. Hopefully I will hear from our case worker tomorrow with some sort of news and will post it as soon as I know! I am just so excited to be officially waiting!!!!

Thank you everyone for your support along the way and I am glad to be able to share our joy today with you.

USCIS is a big ....

tease! We got a very official looking envelope in the mail yesterday from them and all it had was a booklet in it. My brain knew it had only been 2 weeks, but my heart would have loved for it to contain our FDL! Do they not know that we are waiting with anticipation? Could they have not just handed us the booklet at the office? Adoptive parents are not to be messed with. I think they had better start following the warnings on this sign!

A big CONGRATULATIONS to ...

Brian and Autumn who received their FDL today!!! They made it on the list and will probably get a referral this summer!! It is so exciting to see God at work moving the adoption processes along.

Traveling dossier

I received the redone background check and mailed it to AGCI Tuesday. Christy, our case worker, called me Wednesday to let me know she had already received it! So..our dossier if off to Washington D.C. today for authentication. Yeah!! Our dossier will have a lot of miles on it before it reaches its final resting place. It went from Shelton to Portland to D.C. and then it will go back to Portland and then finally to Addis Abba, Ethiopia. It will be a world traveler before this is all over.

Think of Me

Don't be fooled by the Lakers jersey this is not a basketball video, but instead a powerful video about the wealth and entitlement we feel as Americans. It also shows you what your dollar is really worth around the world.

According to Global Rich List (GlobalRichList.com), if you earn $37,000 per year, you are in the top 4 percent of wage earners in the world. If you earn $50,000 per year, you are in the top 1 percent of wage earners in the world. Put in that perspective, most of us are doing just fine and would be considered rich.