One Month Home

Easter Sunday Morning

Eli Dilyet - Home 5 days

We have been home a little over a month now.   Eli has been doing great.  He absolutely adores his brothers and sister.  He is also a nut!  Jonathan and I were just talking the other night about how quiet he was in Ethiopia that first week, and how at the time we thought how nice it was to finally have a quiet child.  Ha!  Eli is our noisiest yet!  It has been amazing to watch his personality unfold over the last several weeks.  His siblings really bring out his nuttiness.  We are just so glad to have him home.  

I know I am way behind on blogging, but I am planning to catch up and post about our trips to Ethiopia.  The last few months have been a little crazy with Jonathan's job change, 1st trip to Ethiopia, moving, home study update, 2nd trip to Ethiopia, and then more doctor appointments in the past 3 weeks than I think my other 3 have had combined over the last 6 years.  Thankfully all of the doctor appointments have gone well, and all the test results have come back great.  There was a concern that he may have a more serious underlying medical condition that caused a birth defect, but it turns out he doesn't.  We are obviously thrilled with this news and thanking God for protecting him.  We still have more doctor visits ahead of us as the birth defect still needs to be corrected, but it is wonderful to have answers and to know what it going on with our little man.  

Cleared!!!!

The US Embassy cleared our case on Monday!  Tickets are booked, and we fly out on Sunday afternoon!

Update

We are still waiting on our US Embassy clearance.  For those who may be interested in the timeline, our file was submitted to the Embassy on February 9, about 6 weeks after passing court.  It took two weeks before we heard anything back.  At that point, the Embassy requested an interview with a birth family member.  (These interviews are becoming the norm for all cases it seems.)  The soonest appointment date they had available was 3 weeks out.  So, Monday (March 19) that interview will take place.  We are hoping to wake up that morning to an email saying that our case is cleared...which means, if all goes as expected, we should be traveling in the next couple of weeks!
Please pray with us on Sunday night before you go to bed.  Pray that the interview goes smoothly and there are no discrepancies from what is already in our file.  I will hopefully be posting an update on Monday saying we are booking our plane tickets and packing our bags!!!

We Passed!

We passed court on December 27th (on our court day).  I should have posted this a few weeks ago, but life has been nuts.  I will post again soon with more details from our trip.  In the meantime, here are some pictures.   The next step is US Embassy.  Hopefully we will hear something in the next couple of weeks.