Ashebir Update

We just got a new pic of Ashebir today! He's doing awesome! We'll post them as soon as he gets through court...
He's progressing really well - he's now about 25lbs and 31" - Funny, that's the identical dimentions of TK right now. It'll be cool to see how he develops when he comes home. TK grew like crazy when he came home.

more to come...

belgium will help us get to Addis

I'm in Belgium this week doing some P/T work with a friend from church. It is a blessing to do this contract work that will help us financially toward bringing home Ashebir.
We should hear something from Ethiopia by the Middle of October about a Court Date.

Together,
Pete

two calls away...

We're two calls away from a travel date now gang.
The courts are closed till Oct 1.

The next call we'll get will be for a Court Date that will put through Ashebir's paperwork.
Often, because it's the government... those dates change sometimes.

My guess is that the Ethiopian Courts will be backlogged when they reopen the first of October so I think we should get some kind of info by the second week of October. No one from our agency has made any commitments either way - they don't make guesses which is good I guess - so we might get a call earlier, or later depending on "the system."

The second call we'll get will be "Ok, he's through court, come get him." or something like that.

We THINK we'll be traveling Dec or Jan, but it could be before or after that.

So... we wait...

I must admit, I'm more anxious to go get Ashebir to get him home than I was with TK. The last trip, we were all going together, and I guess I didn't know exactly what to expect so I wasn't as anxious... This time, man... I'm ready to go get our little boy today!

Not because he's NOT being loved and extremely well cared for. He is. The nannies and nurses at the care center are TREMENDOUS! We couldn't be more thankful for their care, but I know now what an incredible joy it will be to bring our little boy home.

I'm also psyched because of what this trip could mean long term...
Not just for our family - that's a given - but for other families too.
This time, Amy and the girls aren't going with me.

I've specifically asked a few other close friends to join me on this trip.
The goal is to go for about two weeks total. The second week will be dedicated to the final paperwork, embassy visit to bring home Ashebir. However, the first week will be dedicated to traveling around Addis, and other parts of Ethiopia investigating opportunities where we could invest long term. I don't know exactly what that will look like yet, but I'm in the process now of looking into different non-profits and NGO's to visit and to meet with to see how we as Hope Church, or just individual families could begin to invest in for years to come.

If there is any reader here that has a connection to an organization in Ethiopia that we could talk about. Post your info here, or email me.

Anticipating "The Call" ;)

pete

Summer ends big.

If you didn't know already we moved. ... yes Again.
The first week of September we returned from Vacation, the girls started school and we finished moving our stuff from our 2nd Fl apt to our new place, we've settled in since then and we love it.

A few months ago, Amy learned about a home near us in Middletown that would become available to rent either Aug or Sept. When Amy told me about it initially, I was very skeptical...why? Because it was across the street. How rediculous would it be to move ACROSS THE STREET?!

But then she gave me the details..
Roughly the same amount of space, but FIRST floor (we're now on the second fl), Closet space and storage space (our previous apt had almost none). Also has a yard for the kids and a deck (neither of which we have now) to top it off it's less rent per month as well. So it was a no-brainer.

So, we confirmed the apartment with the new landlords, and gave notice to our current landlords and finalized the Sept 1st transition.
Only one problem...

We had booked our family vacation to Camp Spofford, NH 6 months ago - for the 3rd Week in August. Just in case that flew by you, it takes a while to pack up all your stuff and move. Trust me... this is the 7th move since we've been married (and I think it was 11 moves our family had in the first 18 years of my life and honestly that's why I wasn't really excited about moving again - that is before I knew of the new amenities.)

It worked out pretty well though because the new landlords allowed us to begin moving in our stuff the second week in August.

We arrived home from Family Vacation on Saturday 8/28 and attended a back to school bash for the girls elementary school. (which, by the way was an awesome event put on by a couple churches in our area. CatalystChurch.tv partnered with another local church and they did a fantastic job!)

That said, we had a busy afternoon and evening.

Oh... did I mention that Amy just started Nursing School? Yeah... she did.
Since we scheduled our vacation 8mos ago, we didn't know then that as a result of her registering for classes we learned that she would have her first week of classes... DURING our vacation.
Good thing we spent our vacation only a couple hours from home, so Amy was gone only about a day and a half of our vacation week as she began her pre-req courses the last week of August : Statistics, Chemistry and Lab, and Anatomy and Physiology and Lab.

She's doing ok.. she's taken a few quizzes so far and is pretty happy with them.
The program is actually an accellerated one that will give her a BSN degree from CT Southern Univ. If all goes as planned, she'll be accepted into that program and be able to finish the complete program in two years.

Therefore, I've taken a hiatus from my Master's program at Bethel Seminary so she can complete her nursing degree. We'll see what happens after that.

more on the adventure soon...