Little things..

Hello! It's been awhile...

But don't be fooled. Our lack of updates does not equate to slacking!  We have been busy busy preparing for this little one as well as taking some time out to celebrate some important days...like Valentine's Day and mine and Isabelle's birthdays!

We have a bit of a tradition in our house now in making each others birthday cake!  We each place our order (well, I've never really placed an order for mine... ;) but Brandon and the girls place their order and I do my best to make them a cake of their liking - decorations and all!  I struggled with Isabelle's last week as she wanted "Ariel" and not just any ole Ariel, but "Mermaid Ariel".  Do you think you can find Princess MERMAID Ariel in a store when you're looking??? Six stores later and this is what we wound up with ----->

It turned out much better than I thought it would and Isabelle was thrilled! At the end of the day, that's all that matters.  My best memories were of my mom always baking us a birthday cake as kids.  LOVE those memories.  I am happy and honored to pass it on to our girls :)

Last years...

Brandon has jumped on the cake making bandwagon with the two girlies as assistants. You must be careful in mentioning things around here however as I must have mentioned sprinkles at some point and you can see how last years turned out.  Tasty, yet a bit crunchy!  This year there was a little more restraint on the sprinkle application and the frosting did not come out of a can - I was soo impressed! It's fun to see them venture further and further into the baking world and even more fun for the girls to see their daddy bake - who knew a boy could bake?!

This years...

Every holiday that comes to pass we look forward to (hopefully) celebrating with little Haile next year. We are always day dreaming and talking about what we will do and how we will do it with a new little one around….or perhaps two.  Did we tell you that in our official paperwork we said we would consider twins or an older sibling? If not, well…yes we did! Twins would be a handful (to say the least) but soo much fun! We wouldn’t want to split a sibling group up so we would consider adopting both.

We are incredibly close to submitting the Country Dossier for translation and then the official waiting for a match begins!  We are waiting for a document from Homeland Security as well as a Criminal Clearance document. YES, we passed!  We just need the official paperwork ;)  We received a text from USCIS on Friday stating Homeland Security was processing our docs! So those are on their way.

Two weeks ago, we spent a lot of time at the Secretary of State's office in Salem Oregon.  What a treat! As you all know how much we LOVE Salem and always revel in the opportunity to spend as much time there as possible. If you don't know us, that's a joke! The staff was very friendly and helpful but apparently there is a computer system they look up the notaries in to confirm they are valid (ie authenticate them).  They do this FOR.EVERY.DOCUMENT. They struggled for about 2 hours with one document and to make a very very long story short, we had to order the document for a THIRD time and take it back this past Friday.  Luckily they were able to authenticate the document this time.

All in all, we have 27 of the 31 required documents authenticated.. A little fun fact for you…. Oregon charges 10$/document for authentication, vs 2$ per document in Vermont.  We had one document from Vermont. lol This doesn’t include the authentication in Washington DC that will happen after we submit all of these and before the translation I mentioned above. Confused yet? :) Whew! I'm surprised I made it through the paper maze.

We have been busy raising money with our vacation rental. We are happy to report we were full 23 of the 28 days in February and are booked all but 1 night this month! We could not be happier and feel soo blessed. It's really making a difference and we’re having so much fun meeting different people from all over the US.

We are 14% to goal in our fundraising! We are soo thankful to everyone who has donated time, money, prayers, and advice during this journey! We certainly couldn't get through it all without you!.  It may seem little to you, but every little bit is HUGE to us!

We are working on a few others things as well. We will be in the Portland area March 18^th and are setup with a fundraiser at Sweet Tomatoes from 5-8 pm. Sweet Tomatoes will donate 15% of all proceeds from families that bring in our special flyer and have dinner.  Contact me if you would like a copy of the flyer.  Everyone is welcome and we will be there to catch up with a bunch of our friends who we’ve missed the last few months. We'd love to see you there!

We are slowing building credits through airbnb that we plan to use for lodging while in Ethiopia.  We are busy doing research and talking to other families on where they stayed and if staying at someones home vs a hotel is a good idea?  We trust the airbnb process in the states but have never ventured this far from home. We want to make sure we are safe, close to the orphanage as well as the US Embassy. The orphanage is most important as I'm sure we will spend every waking minute we can there!

Airbnb would be a much cheaper way for lodging and hopefully have some of it paid for with these credits. If you are not an airbnb member, you can sign up for free through this link: www.airbnb.com/c/adrake1  You will receive $25 off your first $75 stay, as well as airbnb will give some credits to us!  If you plan on taking a vacation, check the site out. We've traveled all over the US and had excellent experiences and so far as a host, we've met wonderful, caring, tidy people!

I have a secret little prayer (well, not so secret any longer) but that we wouldn’t have to travel twice. Generally for an Ethiopian adoption you travel twice.  First to meet your child and work through some of the court paperwork, then a second time to bring them home.  There could be a 3 month period in between. :( As I hear more stories of families traveling once and having the entire process only take 6-7 weeks I keep praying perhaps we can travel once and stay the entire time from beginning to end.  I don't want to miss a beat with this little girl. She is going to grow up too fast as it is!

Obviously we will need grace where work and family schedules are concerned, as well as finances, but if it’s meant to be I know it will happen! It would likely save us a lot of money in the long run with saving on two round trip tickets.  I keep getting a pit in my stomach when I think of traveling once to meet her and then having to leave her until we are allowed to come back and bring her home. Prayers please.

I don’t know if I’m just becoming more aware, annoyed, or what, but there have been a lot of blog posts and other negative things flying around about Ethiopian adoption lately.  It's difficult not to want to read it all, or research every little tid-bit but it's also difficult to comprehend how a few people have become experts in an area that is difficult to navigate much less understand every idiosyncrasy of the Ethiopian government. At some point you have to trust, and not allow yourself to go crazy trying to discern everyone's comments and experience(s), or lack there of.

We're trying to be wise, then practice patience and leave the rest up to God.

xoxo ~The Drakes