YESSSS!!! WE GOT A REFERRAL!!!!!! :)

BIG NEWS!!! BIG, BIG NEWS! WE GOT A REFERRAL!!!!!
WE ARE SO EXCITED!! I don't know if we can tell his name, I'll have to check on that!
He is 12+ months. A little older than we thought...but just perfect.
I can show you his picture. Well, actually I can't.
I can show you a picture of some of him.  You can't see his face, because that would be considered child exploitation until he is legally ours.
He is SO HANDSOME, I can tell you that!! He is just amazingly good looking. :)

If you are reading this and waiting for a referral, I am so sorry. I know what it's like to watch other people get theirs and wait for your own.  We are beyond excited and a little overwhelmed to know we will be traveling in 8-10 weeks...could be less. AWESOME!!!!
If you aren't up on the way adoption works {pretty much if you haven't adopted or aren't adopting, you will need this lesson}...here is how it works
1. Do all basic paperwork, homestudy, fingerprints, etc.
2.  Mail Dossier to selected country and wait.
3. Wait, wait, wait.
4.  Wait some more.
5.  Receive "referral" or paperwork that shows your child, information about them, etc.
6.  Accept referral, begin paperwork to go to court to claim your child.
7.  Travel to Ethiopia once you have a court date and travel approval.  Meet your child!!! Go to court.
8.  Once you 'pass court', the child is legally yours, but you cannot take them because you have to wait on papers to process the US Embassy.
9.  You return back the US to wait. THE WORST PART.
10.  Wait on embassy approval. WAIT seems so long. DREADING THIS PART!  Could be 8-12 weeks...
11.  Return to pick up child.
12.  Return home and try to begin the new, challenging, amazing life with an adopted child.

We are on step 5.
Step 5 costs a lot of money :)
Now, let's back up.
So many people have been generous since we began our process of adopting.
I found the following timeline, and I wanted to share it with you.

Okay. What is today? January 16th. We got the referral last night. January 15th. So the updated timeline should look like this:

How neat is that?!?!  We found out we were PREGNANT January 15th last year...found out we were "PREGNANT" with a child in Ethiopia...who is already a year old...on the same day, one year later.  WOW. So neat.  That is clearly from the Lord, nothing in our own power.
I sure wish you could see his face. He is so handsome.
Here is the deal. We have calculated with costs to travel (roughly $2000 per plane ticket, two people, two trips, plus probably an extra seat on the way home, plus 10% of our ticket for a lap baby...), referral fee $8000, costs to stay at the guest house, driver ($50/night), plus tons more small fees that you probably don't care to hear about...the total we have left to pay is around $24,000. Overwhelming, yes. The Lord has already provided $14,000 of that.  We have already paid around $8,000.  All this to say, we are trusting and believing that the Lord will continue to help us raise the rest.
We have a limited amount of t-shirts left.  If we could sell all of these at $20, that would be $1,100 right there!  Don't you need a t-shirt?? They are super cute...I will try to post a photo tomorrow.
I will post a list of available shirts tomorrow....and beg you to grab yours up!

Thanks for being excited with us.  We are truly overjoyed. We cannot wait to meet him, bring him home, and make him a part of our family...

Adoption is not easy. Not cheap. Not what God intended. God intended us to be with the people that birthed us.  But SIN is in this world. And sadly, it isn't always like that.  There are children starving to death, or dying with no clean water. There are children dying of treatable diseases.  So, we are going to push through some of the "hard" and the "expensive"...and the "scary"...because we feel like God has asked us to do that.

Am I scared? YES.
Am I possibly terrified to miss my best friend Hayley's wedding...in almost exactly 8-10 weeks from now....YES.
Am I scared to see how Eli will sleep? How he will eat? How he will transition into our family? ABSOLUTELY.
But I know that God has asked us to walk this road. So here we go!

Thanks for joining in the journey with us!