Catching up

I have had zero blog time lately. I'll give you some updates:

• Signed and sent paperwork this week that formally accepted our referral - WOOOHOO!
• Wrote the big mega-check for the bulk of adoption expenses. I think (?) now all we have left to pay for is travel. I am constantly thankful for Craig and his skill in tracking our finances :) Anywhoo, Praise God for provision! The fact that we could write this check is no small matter...definitely a big victory!
• Found a yahoo chat group that is made up of Holt families. I have only read a few messages and have already learned sooo much more from those ahead of us in the process. It is likely that through this group I will also be able to connect with families that we are going to travel with :)
• Just today received a disk from Holt of pictures from a recent staff visit to Ethiopia. On the disk are pictures from the Durame Center (where Levi is) as well as the Care Center in Addis (where we will pick him up), the new medical clinic Holt helped open in January, and pictures of local families that have been helped by their preservation projects. I LOVE that Holt is so into humanitarian efforts. We looked and looked and we think we found about 6 pictures of our little guy amongst the other kiddos. There are at least 100 pictures and they are not labeled. It truly is driving me a little bit crazy tonight not knowing for sure :) I don't want to bug the agency too much, but maybe in time I will be able to confirm that Levi is in the pictures I think he is. I'm thankful for this disk for so many reasons. Simply to have more pictures of our little one is great. From the pictures we are able to see that the staff is really loving on these kiddos...it makes the wait that much easier. There were also many pictures of the centers as well as local people. I had hoped on our trip to get some pics of local people, but wasn't sure if that would be a very kind/appropriate thing to do. Now that we have these pics I won't feel as though I need to take pictures constantly, instead I will feel more free to just enjoy and interact with the people around us. What and AWESOME gift from Holt!

I am crazy tired, but so need to get this written down. Please forgive me for lack of literary skill :) Here is our referral evening in a nutshell: I had just called Craig a little after 5pm to discuss our date later that evening and had begun my message on his voicemail with "no baby," because at that time we didn't have one yet :) Right at 5:30 I got a call from our agency and Stephanie told me that this was our referral call - Yay! She told me we were matched with a 4 month old little boy and that she would email more info and pictures soon. I don't remember saying much but "Yay!" and thanking her profusely. Meanwhile the kiddos were sitting at the table eating an early dinner and I came out of the bedroom crying. I quickly explained to Juliana that I was crying because I was happy and not because I was sad. Now, understand, when I cry it is not pretty. It is usually snotty and loud. I told her that this was the day that God was going to show us our new little baby and she jumped up and down screaming with me! It totally suprised me that she was so happy, but that was a moment that will stay in my heart for a long time. Jumping up and down with pure joy with my little girl - I LOVE it! I immediately tried to call Craig, but got his voicemail. I couldn't leave this exciting news on a message so I hung up and decided to wait until Craig got home to tell him. We formulated a plan to make a sign that Juilana could run out to give her daddy the minute he got home. It said, "Congrats abat (father in Amharic) , It's a boy!" He got home, totally didn't suspect a thing since I had just called him a few minutes earlier saying "no baby". He was mega-surprised and we caught it on tape :) We gathered around our email so that we could see pictures of him and read his info. Mmmm...happy day!