Our Gotcha Week

We are coming up on a big week for our little family. Yesterday marked the first day of being united with our girls in Ethiopia. We have been a forever family for one entire year. My sweet parents sent us this in honor of "Gotcha Day".




Given that we had such a ROUGH start in Ethiopia (feel free to dig through old posts if you want to read about us being covered in barf for an entire week), we have opted to celebrate the day we first set foot back in the US as our "Gotcha Day" this year. We were never so thrilled to find ourselves in the LAX airport as we were on March 15, 2009. On that day, our new life here at home began. In a few days, we'll be celebrating with the little ladies by having a special family date (Junia loves family "dates") to our small local airport that has a cheezy little restaurant where you can watch the planes land. We'll share some ice cream and talk about how we flew over the moon and through the night (if you don't have this great adoption story, get it!) to bring our precious daughters home.

Much more to come on this one year anniversary of so many things - bright eyes and smiles, lots of talking, fluffy pink carseats, mornings that begin WAY too early, lots of talking, wiggles and giggles, swirls of curls, did I mention lots of talking? and falling in love with two amazing little ladies. Our girls. Forever.

Speaking of amazing ladies, I just discovered, thanks to several blogger friends, this inspiring company, Raven and Lily. Check out what two motivated and talented women are doing to bring dignity and independence to the lives of empoverished women around the world through design.

Raven+Lily: EMPOWERING WOMEN THROUGH DESIGN from raven and lily on Vimeo

We are also thinking today about all of the families currently in process on Ethiopian adoptions who have now been told that new Ethiopian law will require them to travel to Ethiopia TWICE to finalize their adoptions. This will add thousands of dollars to many families' overall adoption expenses given the need for even more international airline tickets. No doubt recent unfavorable media coverage of Ethiopian adoption factored into this decision to change Ethiopian adoption law. It appears that there has also been a problem with adoptive families showing up to claim children they had already adopted in Ethiopian court only to end up leaving the chidren behind as they felt the children were not what they had agreed upon with the adoption agency. It blows my mind that people could/would actually do this and it is understandable that the Ethiopian government would want to keep this from happening by creating a way for families to have a "right of refusal" prior to finalizing the adoption. As I have been trying to encourage families I know who have been discouraged by this recent development, I am reminded of a verse that meant so much to us during our process, a process that was also characterized by many frustrating - and seemingly endless and senseless - delays:

"For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay." Habakkuk 2:3

Adoption is ultimately an act of faith and it is God who can and WILL complete the good works He begins in the hearts of families who open their lives to His call to care for those in need.