keeping busy as we wait

People keep asking us "so what's happening with adoption?" There's not much going on with our adoption except that we're waiting on a very important piece of paperwork called the I171H, which should be arriving in the next few weeks from the Greece USCIS office. Our "dossier" (compilation of paperwork including homestudy, background checks, etc...) is on Conoleeza Rice's desk right now. 

During this waiting period we have many things to keep us busy. Learning Arabic is the top thing to do on our list. It's funny, the other day I was doing some online research of Ethiopia and Arabic was listed as a necessary language to learn for visiting this country. I'll get right on that! :) The language that is spoken in Ethiopia is "Amharic," a semitic language that is related to Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. 

On Thursday my parents are flying across the world to come visit us!! That will help keep us distracted too!! We can't wait to see them! It's been over a year since we've seen them. We sure have missed them!! 

Here's a picture of the future grandparents just hanging out! One day the dog that's in my dad's arms will be replaced by a cute little dark skinned child! :) 

 

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dark skin!

Today I was working in the kitchen and I looked over at the fridge. There are times when I just miss our nieces and nephews. I miss playing with them and laughing with them!! 

I looked at the picture that Joshua drew for Uncle Tim and I realized that Joshua must like dark skin like we do. I have always loved dark skinned babies and children! I can't wait to shower our little dark skinned baby with kisses! 

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looking at video cameras

I recently found my husband looking at ads. That's one of his favorite things to do! He compares prices, searching for the best deal!! He loves to do research about electronics and likes to know about all of the features! We are thinking about buying a video camera for the upcoming adoption. We thought it would be nice to have some footage of the first time we see our child and some of the other "firsts." We have a small handheld camera that takes shorter video clips too. 

Because we're living overseas we will need to go visit our baby before he/she goes through court in order to get a certain type of visa that allows the child to become an automatic citizen upon crossing US soil. We would love to have some video to bring back home with us as we wait for the court date. That will definitely be a hard time. The second time we go back for our child we'll leave Ethiopia with our child and go straight to the states to take care of the citizenship and visit family before coming back home. 

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waiting for our I-171H

Here's an email we sent to some friends that we share a post office box with. We're waiting for our I-171H to come!!! Our finger prints were processed and they were waiting on our Home Study, which has been approved and sent to them. Since we live in the Middle East, we use the USCIS office in Greece. 

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Hey guys!

We just want you to be aware that we are currently waiting on a very important piece of adoption paperwork that will be mailed from Greece. If you see it in the box, let us know ASAP!!!!

:) Tim and Jeni

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