Update

Wow, I have really neglected this blog. I guess I thought that since not much was happening on the adoption front that I didn't have much to post. But looking at the last couple posts, I realize that I left a lot of things hanging out there! So here's a rundown of the happenings here.

Regarding foster care: Our foster daughter is no longer with us. Last May she was moved to a home where she could be with her siblings. And it appears that the current foster mom will be adopting the kids in an open adoption agreement with the birthmom. We've gotten to see her several times since the move and she is doing great! We haven't had another placement since then, but we do respite for another little boy about once a month. Eli just loves having sleepovers with his foster sibs.

Regarding adoption: We are officially on the wait list! It took us forever to complete our dossier! Mainly because we were waiting on our tax refund to pay for it, and our refund was held hostage by the IRS until about October while we were being audited. But alas, we did get the refund and our dossier was sent to Ethiopia on 1/27/12. It will probably be quite a while as we wait for our referral. The current wait for a boy is 10-16 months and 11-18 for a girl. Our request was for one child 0-3 years or two kids 0-4. So, if you're interested, we are #76 in line for a baby boy, #75 for a baby girl, #40 for young siblings, #25 for a toddler boy, and #34 for a toddler girl (these are estimates, actually). So if each were referred equally, it looks like the best bet is we'll get a toddler boy. But you just never know!

Regarding church: So previously I mentioned that two of our pastors left to pursue other ministries. We had a couple months of transition and now Matthew is the preaching pastor and Mike (our former children's pastor) is the associate pastor (but still in charge of kids because he rocks at it). We were pleasantly suprised to lose very few members with the turn-over, and the church has been very resilient for the little church plant that it is. Our outside support keeps shrinking (because we don't need it so much) and we're very near to be being self sufficient. Praise God!

Regarding Eli: Elijah has been attending the school district's developmental pre-school program since he turned 3 almost a year ago. He gets to ride the bus and all! He loves it. And his teacher and speech teacher just gush that he is doing so good. We're hopeful that after a couple years of pre-school he will be able to jump right into Kindergarten without needing an IEP anymore.

I think that'll cover it!