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.

T-Shirt Fundraiser & We Got a Court Date!!!!!

I got a very exciting call this morning from our caseworker...we have a court date!!!!  December 27th...which means we will arrive in Ethiopia on Christmas Day!  We will meet our precious one on the 26th and appear in court on the 27th!  We are ecstatic!  

Things have moved so fast, and we still have some funds to raise.  (A little more than we thought...if you thought flying to Africa was expensive, try flying to Africa at Christmas.)

We have teamed up with Adoption Bug and Show Hope for our latest fundraiser.  We are selling several different super cute designs to help raise some of the remaining funds.  Just go to our family's page at adoptionbug.com/TheCrispins, and order a shirt.  We decided to include several Show Hope shirts in our fundraiser because they have become an important part of our adoption journey through a very generous grant.

Here are just some of the T-shirt designs.  Please click on over to our site at Adoption Bug, place an order, and help us bring get to Ethiopia this Christmas!

Click here to see the rest of the designs!

Just Love Coffee!

I know I have some friends out there that are coffee connoisseurs.  Now you can purchase some yummy coffee AND support our adoption at the same time!  Just click the link below and you will be taken to our Just Love Coffee store.  A portion of each sale benefits our adoption fund!

www.justlovecoffee.com/TheCrispins

Referral!!!

Well, it actually came a couple of weeks ago, but we were waiting to post because some family members were on vacation and we had to share with them first.

I know what you are thinking though...”I thought you still had like another year or more on the wait list?!”  I know...so did we.  We got our referral on August 17th.  Exactly one year since we started the process.  We had been on the wait list for a little over 3 months, and the current average was over 15 months.  To say that we were surprised is the understatement of the century.  Because we were open to medical needs, we knew it was a possible to get a faster referral.  We just weren’t expecting it because everything else about this process has been so much slower than all of the estimates.  

We accepted the referral of a precious 14 month old, and because of the nature of the medical need, we really can’t share any more information at this time.  I wish we could post a picture, but we can’t do that either until the adoption is finalized.  I will just say....Oh.my.goodness!  I cannot wait to have this precious one in my arms.  

As if we didn’t know already...God has shown that He is still ever in control of this process.  The referral a year ahead of schedule had us a little panicked because we thought we had another year or more to save up for the remainder of the cost.  We had applied back in April for a Show Hope grant and for whatever reason had still not heard back.  We got the letter in the mail yesterday...we got the grant!  I am continually amazed by what He has shown us throughout this process.  I can’t wait to see what else He has in store for our family!