Emotions since referral

One would think my one and only emotion right now would be joy. It is my main emotion but other ones keep creeping into my daily life:

JOY- definitely happy,happy,happy about this referral

RELIEF- a huge wait has been lifted from our life in knowing that we have a referral and we can move forward.
              

PANIC- will I be a good mom to a child who has lost so much already? Will I be able to meet his emotional
 needs? Am I to old to be patient with a toddler?

WORRY- I worry that something can still disrupt this adoption. I've been through something similar. We
were matched (did not have a referral) with a sweet little girl from Ghana and then everything fell apart. There are many changes happening with Imagine right now and I pray that they will be positive.
               

HURT- A little hurt by people who we are close to who have not congratulated us and refuse to mention anything about what is happening. I wonder what their reaction would be if we were pregnant?

NERVOUS- A little freaked about traveling to a country like Ethiopia. Excited but nervous. AHH!!!

SAD- Sad for all my blogger and Yahoo friends who are anxiously waiting for their referral. Sad for all that
my little guy has lost in order to get to this point.

IMPATIENT- I was fine for about a week and now I just want to know when court is. It will be at least
another couple of weeks before we find that out.

HONORED- That we were chosen to be this little guys parents. What an amazing privilege!!!

AMAZED- That God was in control and decided we needed a little boy. Amazed that we have been
matched with this little guy since the beginning of November. What took them so long??



I don't talk a whole lot about my family. I don't want them to feel like I invade their privacy.But I had to mention that my oldest who is now 16 1/2 just got baptized last Sunday. What an experience. He has matured so much over the years and is so much fun to be around. Not everyone can say that about their teen son. God has done great things in his life. He has blessed me immeasurably. Thank you God!!
I also need to mention that he just bought his first motorbike and car. Next picture you see of me will be with  a full head of grey hair.

SURPRISE AND SHOCK

YES!!!! We have our referral.

We have a referral of a handsome little guy.

I know what you are all thinking .Where's the girl you have been waiting for for 2 years?

We received a phone call this morning (of course I was out shopping and my husband got the call) that they have a 2 year old boy for us. We were shocked to say the least. I raced home and checked my homestudy update and sure enough the last line read  "a child 0-42 months". How did we miss this?

It took me all of 1/2 a second to look at that picture and fall in love. Hauntingly big sad eyes. I was hooked.

It's not that we never wanted a boy. We have 2 boys and 2 girls right now. I love my boys to bits. We just thought that a girl in a third world country has less options when they grow older. And if I'm honest with myself I love dressing up little girls (pretty shallow-Right?).

I believe that if God wanted us to have that girl He would have made that happen. For some reason He wants this little dude in our home and we are thrilled.

It didn't take long for our kids to adjust to the idea. They are already in love with him.

Adoption update

No, not a referral. I wish I would be sharing that with you. We did have the pleasure of more paperwork and more money deposited into our wonderful government. Apparently we needed to have our birth certificates and our marriage certificate certified once again. Up until recently, these documents did not expire when you do your update. But now somehow doing it once is not good enough. Okay so we did that. The problem then is that these documents don't have the same date as all our other updated documents from Sept. So we need to send them away to get a Statutory Declaration. A Satutory  Declaration is a list of all documents that you need and they need to be notarized, legalized and authenticated by the Ethiopian Embassy here in Canada.  No document can be dated after the Statutory Declaration that we did in Sept. so we need to do a new one. This does cost money (not a huge sum in light of everything we paid) and it takes time. Time, time, time, time!!!! The days and weeks seem to feel like they drag on. I have a strong feeling we are close but when you are told this will all take up to 3 weeks, that seems like forever. This is all supposed to prevent delays in courts in Ethiopia so I guess that is a good thing. We'll see if it works. I just wonder what's going to come out of the woodwork next.