Happy Birthday to Sierra!!

Happy birthday to my oldest daughter!! Sierra is having her 17th birthday today! Hard to beleive that she is that age already. We will celebrate by going to lunch with Bailey today. (She will play hooky for an hour) Grandma and Grandpa Frihauf are coming up this afternoon for dinner and overnight to spend time with us. We miss them so much! Wish all the family could be here! We miss you all!
Then on Friday morning we will be leaving to go to New York to watch Aaron run in the Indoor Heptagonals at Cornell. We are so excited to watch him. We are so proud of him and how well he has been performing and also keeping up with grades and life in general. He will graduate in May!!

Love you Sierra! Happy Birthday!

Travel Plans at Last!!

We have confirmed a travel date of March 22nd and we will return with our two boys on March 31st. I can't beleive this is finally happening!! Our Embassy date is on March 27th. We have also had some communication with Tigist in Ethiopia and confirmed birthdates and formal names. So their formal names are KIDUS GEREMEW MERRILL born on January 10, 2003, and NATNAEL AFEWORK MERRILL born on March 9, 2001.

So by the time they come home they will truly be 5 and 7. Natnael will have his 7th birthday without us, but a friend of mine, Kristy, will be traveling to Ethiopia that week to pick up their daughter. So I will send cards to both of the boys for her to give them. She has promised to take a lot of pictures also.
We are so excited and can't hardly beleive we are at the final stages!!

Congrats to Bailey!

Bailey's 9th grade basketball team won 3rd place in the conference. We traveled to Casper, Wy for the tournament and the roads were horrible. Welcome to winter travel in Wyoming!!

Bailey is #5 in the back row!

Congrats Bails!!

News from Ethiopia

We haven't heard much since we passed our court appt on Feb 5th. We are still waiting to confirm travel plans and to do that we must have a confirmed embassy date. This is what Cheryl had to say when I heard from her on Thursday.
So once again, we wait.....

Hi Lisa,
I did receive your e-mail and passed it on to Tigist the same day. I then didn't hear from her for 4 days and just now received some e-mails from her. She said the Internet connection in Ethiopia is struggling with all the people using it and it keeps going down.

She has the information about your travel plans. She wrote that the problem is there is no one to issue the government letters that must be used to first get a birth certificate, then get a passport and then a 2nd letter that is needed for the Embassy. The part of the Ethiopian government handling adoption cases is small - 3 1/2 people with one person very much in charge and their 2 full-time and 1 part-time helper and as you know, Ethiopia is being flooded with agencies across the US, Canada and Europe placing children from there. Christian World Adoptions hired the lead Ethiopian government person away to work with them about 2 months ago and no one has replaced this person. Tigist told me it took almost 3 weeks to get a letter for another family, for BC's and passports, and she still needs the letter for the Embassy. She has been working on getting the letter for your family and several others but does not have them as of today.

Happy Birthday to Clinty!! Look at all that smoke....

Saturday was Clint's birthday. Our celebration was very subdued,but enjoyable. As long as he has some of his kid's around and carrot cake (WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING), that is all he needs. I am sorry that Aaron and Erica could not be here with us. I was at the girl's basketball games all day starting at 10:30 in the morning and ending at 6:00 pm. Clint had to work all day Saturday to try and get caught up. So just another day and birthday! We love you so much, Clint!!

There is not too much news to report on Natinael and Kidus. We still have not heard anything from Tigist about travel. Maybe this week! We did talk to a friend that has a home daycare and she has agreed to take Kidus. Since we think he is actually closer to three instead of five. He probably will not be ready for school for awhile. Thank you, Beth!!!

We Made It!!!

We finally received notice this morning that we made it through the Ethiopian courts on Tuesday the 5th!!!
This is an unbelievable process that has taken so much longer than expected. But the wait is finally coming to an end! We will wait now for an Embassy date and Tigist will let us know when that is and then we will finalize our travel plans!! Should be 4-6 weeks. Anywhere from the 3rd of March to the 24th of March will be possible. We will keep you all posted on travel plans!

Comments please! I know you are out there looking in but it would be great to know who is all reading and keeping in touch!
Thank you to everyone for all your support and encouragement along the way!

New Pictures!!

Here are the new picture from Rhonda. She traveled just a couple of weeks ago to get her son, Efrem. She was so gracious to get all these great pictures for us. She did not get to see Natinael as much as Kidus. Therefore, there are more photos of Kidus since him and Efrem are best buddies.

We are anxiously awaiting our court date on Super Tuesday for many reasons!! We will keep you posted!! Enjoy the video!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This just in from Ethiopia

"Nati is excited to see his new family and come to the US. He is a very loving and caring child. Kidus has completely convinced himself that Nati is his brother now and expresses love towards him always. It is so wonderful to watch. He was quite sad when Efrem left but I reassured him that he will be leaving soon also which made him smile."

Cheryl, the director at the agency had asked about any further information on the boys and this is what Tigist had to say.

Every bit of news is so valuable!
I will post pictures as soon as I have them from Rhonda.