We received our fingerprinting appointment!

Yesterday was a good day!

Our friend Jahir is visiting us from Mexico; we took him to visit a few iconic places in Kentucky and ended the day with a delicious homemade Mexican feast complete with some of our closest friends.

The day started with us receiving our fingerprinting appointment at USCIS (via snail mail). Our appointment is scheduled for October 15th in Cincinnati, OH (only 3 weeks away!). Some of you may wonder why we are so excited about getting our fingerprints taken. The reason is, once we submit our fingerprints a final FBI background check will be ran on us, and we will be cleared by USCIS to adopt from Ethiopia!

The rumor is that we may have to wait up to 60 days after our fingerprints are submitted to get the final paperwork needed from USCIS to submit our Dossier. What is a Dossier? A Dossier is a packet comprised of all the forms necessary to complete an international adoption. Most Dossiers require birth and marriage certificates, background check clearances, fingerprint clearances, approved home study, employee letters, medical evaluations, photos, etc. Our Dossier will be sent to Ethiopia, translated into Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia), and then submitted to the Ethiopian government.

After our Dossier is complete and mailed to Ethiopia; we can officially celebrate because our long wait to receive our referral phone call and see our daughter for the very first time (via internet) will begin!

It's a Small World After All

We met a great couple last night, Nina and Wes. Ironically, they live only a couple streets away from us and are adopting from Ethiopia too! We shared the same Home Study Coordinator through All Blessings International (ABI) and she introduced us - we're really glad she did.

Nina and Wes received their referral two weeks ago and found out that they will soon be the proud parents of 2 1/2 month old twins (a boy and a girl)! We're so happy for them! They've been on an incredible journey to become a family and deserve all of the happiness in the world.

I think every waiting family imagines what their Referral Day will be like (I know, we do!) So it's emotional to witness someone else's Referral Day. Get your kleenexes out because we would like to share Nina and Wes' Referral Day video with you. CONGRATS NINA & WES!



Follow Nina and Wes' adoption journey http://whenwebelong.blogspot.com/

We're not the only ones who are excited ...

We're still waiting to receive our fingerprinting appointment with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We've received two official looking pieces of mail from USCIS and got really excited about each one; only to realize that one was a receipt (for our I600A application and biometrics fees) and the other was another receipt for our application/file submission to USCIS. So, we're still waiting and as we wait we've been sharing our BIG news with all of our family and friends.

Everyone we've told has been so excited for us and that makes us so happy! Thank you to everyone for your support - we feel blessed. One person in particular that is "over-the-moon" is my 9 year-old sister Kelsy. We visited her this weekend and she gave us these:

 "Ness" is suppose to be neice.

She also gave me 2 sets of these:

She kept a set, gave me a set, and asked me to keep a set for "her" (our daughter). When she gave them to me she said: "Love, is because she will be loved", "the crown is because she will be a princess", and "the ring is because you have a lot of jewelry, which means she'll have a lot of jewelry". We love her! She is so excited to be an aunt and we are thrilled to give her the opportunity, she'll be the best aunt (as you can see).

P.S. In case you were wondering who "Nola" is; it's the name that we like the best for our daughter. It may change when we finally see a picture of her but for now it's our favorite. Her Ethiopian first name will become her middle name and of course, her last name will be Walker!

Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

As many of you know we have been trying to start our family for almost two years. We have explored and experienced almost every infertility treatment there is and in the midst of shifting gears and preparing for a new treatment - we paused.

We began listening closely to our hearts, and one another and discovered what we both truly felt called to do was to adopt. The fact that we want children and there are children around the world longing for parents, just made us realize that somethings work out for a reason, and sometimes God has other plans for you.

Our next decision was easy; where to adopt from? We both knew that we wanted to adopt from Africa because of the extremely large number of orphans in need of forever families. Some people may wonder why we decided not to adopt domestically? The answer is simple. We choose to adopt internationally because of the cost; the shorter time frame; the fact that more people adopt domestically than internationally; the number of orphans abroad vs. the number of orphans in the United States, etc.

We've put together a video to explain why we've chosen to adopt from Ethiopia. We hope that this video will help you understand our decision and help educate you about the plight of orphans in Ethiopia.



Please visit our blog frequently to see where we are in the adoption process and hear about our latest fundraising efforts. We can not do this alone. We appreciate all of the support of our family and friends! The adoption process is long and filled with highs and lows, we will need all of you to get through it.

In the end you will have a new family member and friend; and we will have a daughter and be a family.

We absolutely cannot wait!