We are home

It is 7 am and Levi Dereje and I are up after sleeping much of the night - Yay! He did not sleep much of the trip home...and neither did we, so we were all ready to hit the beds when we got home at midnight last night. This may have been a blessing in disguise because if Dereje were on his normal schedule he would have been awake all night and ready to go to sleep late morning. I will post pictures today after Craig gets up and can help me find the flash drive. Our kodak camera died on us midway during the trip, but before it did we had transferred some pictures to our flash drive. One of the families from our travel group had an amazing camera, took tons of pictures, and offered to send them to us after we all get home and settled. So generous!

This was a trip of a lifetime and we are loving little Levi Dereje Merrihew! He is generally a happy baby, except when you don't feed him fast enough! Juliana was ecstatic to meet him yesterday at the airport and kept hugging/smothering him and saying "Awwwwww". Evan, on the other hand, was not so interested in his new bro :) I look forward to seeing what a few days of having him home will be like from Juliana and Evan's perspectives. Sorry I don't have pics yet. As soon as I find that tiny little flash drive in our sea of luggage I will get them posted.

An email from Erin

We are LOVING this little guy, Dereje. He is so very cuddly! He knows his name, Dereje (da-ray-jay), so that is what we have been calling him (as opposed to Levi, which we have been calling him for months). He has the most beautiful long curly eye-lashes! It seems that everyone notices them. We were able to get him to smile today and giggle just a little bit. I was able to feed him for the first time today and after I fed him he fell asleep in my arms - so sweet! We won’t get to see him again until Monday, but on Monday we get to bring him to the hotel to be with us for the day. We are so looking forward to it!
We have had a chance to play with and hold many of the other kiddos. If you are a Holt parent we probably loved on your little one today! It has been amazing to watch the nannies taking care of the kids. They do such a good job of loving each one. This morning the babies were getting some sun as the nannies changed their clothes. Each one would get rubbed down with skin moisturizer and laid down on a blanket. I watched as a nanny did this for one little one and as she did it I could hear her very softly talking, almost in a whisper. I have a hunch that she was praying over that little one. When they are talking to the kids they are very animated and loud and this was quite different. The care center is amazingly clean.
Internet has been hard to come by. Tonight we are at the Hilton for dinner and internet usage. I don’t know if I will be able to send another update before we leave or not. I already have 3 pages of journaling so there will definitely be much about our trip that I will post after we get home.
Tomorrow we will go to church in the morning and then to the National Museum in the afternoon. The care center is closed on Sundays so that the nannies can have a break from all of us crazy parents J I may not be able to post again until we get home. If you are family reading this, know that we love you all and will be very glad to be back home again and introduce you to our sweet Levi Dereje!

HE'S HERE (or rather, THERE)!!!!!

(A quick introduction of sorts - my name is Michelle and I am a good friend of Erin's. She asked me to update the blog while they're in Ethiopia, as internet access is spotty at best.)

CRAIG AND ERIN HAVE MET LEVI FACE-TO-FACE! When Erin called this morning she was so overwhelmed that all she could do was cry. She said Levi is BEAUTIFUL (but I think we knew that already). She said he seems pretty laid back, simply content to lay in her arms (YAY!!) and look around. They did get him to smile once, which I'm pretty sure made her day. :o) They are looking forward to spending more time with Levi tomorrow morning then shopping in the afternoon.

In other news, Erin wanted me to tell everybody one little interesting bit of information: they only have electricity in Addis Ababa at night; weird, huh? In the middle of the night, when everybody is sleeping and nobody really needs electricity...although they did find it useful LAST night, as their bodies still thought they were in Nebraska so they were wide awake!

Craig and Erin are praising the Lord for His goodness and grace to them in giving Levi to them...and them to Levi! Truly our God does care for the orphan!

Eppley Airfield

We are sitting back and relaxing at our gate in the airport. I have flown a handful of times in my life and as we went through all the checkpoints in the airport it made me wonder how in the world we are going to do this with a baby on the way home! Well, I guess we will find out :)


WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WE ARE GOING TO AFRICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So call me crazy, but as we passed cars and pedestrians on the way to the airport I wanted to yell this to them. I decided that wasn't the most gracious thing to do, so instead I just yelled it to Craig. Our next stop will be Detroit, then Amsterdam, Netherlands, then Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA!!!!!!!!!

Last post from home

Ahhhh! Finally we are 2 hours from leaving home for Omaha where we catch a flight in the morning. You have no idea how many times I have imagined the drive to the airport to get Levi. This is going to be soooo FUN!

Hopefully you will hear from us at the various airports :) We just found out that at the rural care center that we will be visiting on Wednesday of next week, we will also be staying the night at a local hotel. They have told us it is more like camping than staying at a hotel. Ha! I can't wait to tell you about it!

Signing off for now,

Erin and Craig . . . and soon Levi!

...to any of you bad guys thinking of checking out our house while we are gone. You will find only a few things that the world would consider desirable at our home. Our treasures will not be there. . . two will be with family and one is in Ethiopia :)

How may I help you?

Here is the phone conversation I promised earlier. Juliana is playing the part of Craig. Craig is playing the part of Friendly Ethiopian Hotel Clerk. Yes, Craig was calling for a strange reason so you can't be too hard on the other end of the line for seeming confused. We wanted to make sure the phone cards we bought would actually work to call Ethiopia, so Craig thought he would give it a try ahead of time. The man on the other end was very friendly and the only humor we find in it is that we have never been somewhere where we have to work to communicate...so this should be an adventure for sure!

Craig: Hello, Union Hotel?

Ethiopian: No.

Craig: Hello, Union Hotel?

Ethiopian: (pause) Yes. Sorry. Union Hotel. How may I help you?

Craig: I'm just checking to see if my phone works.

Ethiopian: (longer pause) How may I help you.

Craig: Just checking to see if my phone works. Thank you. Bye.

Ethiopian: Yes, Sorry. Goodbye