We received a referral for a beautiful 13 month old boy on Tuesday, Nov. 27th.
It has been a long wait (about 2 years), but it has been well worth it. We are all so excited!
We wish that we could post a picture of him here, however due to rules of Ethiopian government (as well as some other countries), we cannot post a picture of him until we actually have brought him home.
I received a call from our agency, Holt International, around 2:00pm on 11/27. They told me that they had a referral for us, and that they would be sending us an email of a few pictures, medical info, and any background information that they had for him. The email came about 5 minutes after I got off the phone with Holt.
I raced home to open the email with my wife, Natalie. This was something that we agreed to do whenever we received the call. I pulled up to the house with my iPad in hand. I went to our front door, and rang the doorbell. Natalie answered and I handed her the iPad which had the email ready to open. She opened it and was overwhelmed with joy, and as tears streamed down her face she said "Are you kidding me? Have you seen him?".
We called Natalie's sister, Brittany, first via Facetime, since she lives in Amsterdam. Brittany was also overwhelmed by the news. It was a very sweet moment between sisters. We began to notify more family. We called my Dad, my Mom, and more. Our oldest son, Drew, came home from school. We showed him the picture of his new brother, and he threw his hands over his mouth repeating "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh...." He couldn't hardly stand it. He and Natalie shared a hug as they kept looking at his picture.
As some of you know, our cousins, Jeff & Shannon, are also adopting from Ethiopia. We called them to tell them our news, and when we did, they surprised us with their own referral of a beautiful 9 month old baby girl. What is funny is that we asked for a girl and received a boy. Jeff & Shannon asked for a boy and received a girl. Funny how God works. He is most definitely in control and we (both the Blaine's & Britton's) are SO sure that God has put these specific children in our lives for a reason. It is so unbelievably cool that we have been blessed to travel down this path with them. Our kids are going to be so close and we are thrilled for that.
Natalie called her sister Chrissy, and her mom, Nancy. They both came over to our house. Our other kids, Pete & Emily came home from school too, so they all were shown his picture and given the news. They were also very excited.
This was probably one of our most exciting moments in our lives. Natalie commented that it was like the feeling when she found out she was pregnant, but almost better in a way. We are all on cloud nine and almost cant believe that it has finally happened. We can now have a fun family time of looking at baby names for the little guy.
We now have turned in our acceptance paperwork via FedEx to Holt. They will forward it to Ethiopia, and the next step is that we will be assigned a court date. This could be anywhere between 2-3 months from now. Then, we travel to Ethiopia and appear in court. Hopefully we pass court without any problems. We will travel back to the U.S. and wait to be submitted to Embassy. Once we are submitted, then we will be given a date to travel back to Ethiopia to pick him up. Oh...how exciting that will be. We are pumped for that day!
What is very sweet is the fact that our connecting flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is Amsterdam. This happens to be where my brother and sister-in-law live and are missionaries. We will not only be able to go to Ethiopia for our court date, but also visit them in Amsterdam for a little mini-vacation as well. We are also very excited for this. Natalie and Drew have been, but Pete, Emily, and myself have not. It will be fantastic to all go as a family.
Thank you to all of you who have supported us, prayed for us, and loved us. We love you too!
We are so blessed that we have been able to raise & save enough money to cover our adoption expenses. We now need to raise about $5000 more to cover our travel expenses over to Ethiopia.
We plan to have a another church garage sale (the 3rd one), and we also plan to continue to sell our "Five Million Minus One" t-shirts on Etsy.com. We know that this is God's plan for our lives, and we have trusted Him throughout this whole process, and he has never failed us. Money was one thing that held me back in the beginning from even starting this adoption. When I let go of the control of the money is when I began to trust that God would provide, and boy has He ever. He has definitely blessed us beyond our expectations.
We will keep you informed of how our journey is coming along. Talk to you soon.
--the Blaine family
On June 19th, 2013, we received the following message: "Congratulations, you have been assigned a court date of July 1, 2013. The next step in the process is to travel and appear before the High Court of Ethiopia on your assigned court date to testify in regards to your adoption."
We are taking our 3 kids with us to Amsterdam, as we have family that are missionaries there. All of us, including our kids, are so excited to visit here not only to see the beautiful city, but to spend time with family that we don't get to see as often as we would like. We will leave our kids there while the 2 of us travel to Addis. Then, once we are done with court, we will travel back to Amsterdam and finish our vacation with our family. I am excited for our adoption stuff, but I am almost as excited to spend a week in Amsterdam, as I have never been there either.
