Quick Update

We are pretty excited to have heard from our social worker and scheduled our home study visits. The first one is next Tuesday and the second one is the Tuesday after. It's so exciting to be one step closer to meeting our newest blessing! The home study is the last thing we need to complete our dossier, then our paperwork will be off to Ethiopia. Hopefully by this time next month we will be waiting for our referral.

Little Steps

It has been almost two weeks since my last post. I am trying to update the blog at least once a week but, alas, it is harder than you may think to take an ordinary life and make it interesting for others to peek in on. Not to say that anything I write on here is all that interesting. I do have some great things to write about when you consider that most of my posts are about my family.

We did make a little progress on the adoption over the weekend. We were able to attend two classes required for our home study. Every little step gets us that much closer! Also, our background checks came back and we were billed for our home study. This is something we had been waiting for. Now we are waiting to be assigned a social worker and for our home visits to commence. We met both of the social workers for our agency at the training and both were very down to earth and sweet ladies.

Here are some other highlights from the past week:

1. Faith got her braces on and much to our dismay she is still adorable. We were hoping that her cuteness factor would go down a bit considering all the interest she already generates from boys. At least Toby has the scary dad look down pat!

2. Toby came home safely from South Korea. He was only there a week but we really miss him when he is gone.

3. Eliza informed us that she is planning on helping the new baby with water, juice, and bath toys. This was the first time she has responded to our talk about the baby. So sweet!

4. We found ourselves doing a lot of laughing during school. It's amazing how sometimes the quietest of our children can be the silliest. I'll let you guess which one of our blessings that is =).

5. Ethan found himself the recipient of a very intense kiss from Eliza. I think it made his day and mine too. It happened after they had been apart for a few hours while the kids were taking SAT tests. When we started home schooling part of the reason was so that Eliza would have special time to bond with her siblings. It's great to see that prayer answered in the form of shameless affection!

Have a great week and remember, "This is the kind of love we are talking about--not that we once upon a time loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God." 1 John 4:10 (taken from The Message)

Celebrations

Today marks two years with our sweet girl, Eliza. I can't help but think about our first night together. We had the hotel crib up against my side of the bed and had snuggled her up for the night. I don't remember how many times this happened but I do remember sweet moments when she and I would wake up and gaze at each other through the crib bars. A few times I reached out my hand and held hers. She was so quiet and curious. Two years later and I am in awe of how perfectly God has formed our family. She is such a little Zimmerman!

Taken on Gotcha Day, April 7, 2008


Eliza Today--Such a silly girl

This post would not be complete without pictures from Easter. We had a great weekend. On Saturday we braved the cold and wind and met my parents at a tulip farm nearby. It was beautiful. Sunday we remembered Christ's resurrection at church and then hung out at home. The weather was iffy so we had an indoor egg hunt.

Two Trips

We just got the official word today from our agency that as of May 9, two trips to Ethiopia will be required for adoption. We are trying to stay positive. This does mean we get to meet our little one sooner--we just have to rely on God's grace to get on the plane without them after the first trip. We also will be able to bring them home on a visa that will make them a US citizen as soon as we get them home. I admit, we are concerned about the additional travel expenses. It will be exciting to see how God will provide.

Psalm 146

"Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord while I live;

I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation.

His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made the heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them;

who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed;

who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free.

The Lord opens the eyes of the blind;

the Lord raises up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous;

the Lord protects the strangers;

He supports the fatherless and the widow, but He thwarts the way of the wicked.

The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord!"

Goodbye Spring Break......

Tomorrow we start back up at school after our Spring Break. We did manage to throw some learning in this week. Unfortunately, I don't think it was much fun for Wolfie. You see, we visited Fort Vancouver with some friends of ours and while we were there, we were able to see the "furs" the pioneers would gather and trade with. When Eliza saw the Grey Wolf in the pile she was initially excited, until she realized the wolf was dead. As she put it, "Oh, no!" She seemed to get over it quickly but Wolfie was traumatized and later passed out on a bed in the counting house.

This is a short post but I do hope you enjoy the pictures and that you remember to count your blessings this week.

The kids with some of our dearest friends at Fort Vancouver
Ethan smiling in the jail =)
Wolfie passed out in the counting house with Ella, Eliza's best friend, looking on
Ella & Eliza in the room with the furs
What a good looking group!

Wolfie Visits the Zoo

In the last 13+ years of parenting I have seen some pretty cute things, but I have to say that this past weekend at the zoo I about burst from the cuteness. Eliza was pretty insistent that she wanted Daddy to come to the zoo with her and see the "yions". Well, her best buddy Wolfie came too. It was so sweet to see her. Whenever she saw an animal she wanted to share with Wolfie she would run to the wagon, grab him, and then hold him up to see the animal. At one point, she showed Wolfie some wolves. Emma and Faith asked her if they were his cousins. She was pretty sure they were his "brudders". All of the kids did great-and the adults did too! It was a very busy day at the zoo but one of my favorite trips there as of yet. Here are some pictures of the overflowing cuteness.

Wolfie found himself in a tough situation by the "yions". Luckily, Eliza was able to save him.

One very big polar bear decided to sit down right in front of Eliza. So cool!

Here is Eliza showing Wolfie his "brudders".

My favorite people by the tractor.

Dossiers, Band Aids, & Injera

A week has passed since our last post and we have been trucking along on the paperwork. We were contacted by the Ethiopia team on Monday and are now gathering the necessary papers for our dossier while we wait for our background checks to go through. For those of you who are not familiar with international adoption, the dossier is the document we send to Ethiopia telling them about us and requesting a referral. Our hope is that we will have everything notarized and ready to be certified before the home study is written up so that we can get it off to Ethiopia quickly. Even though we have been through one adoption with China, Ethiopia is a bit different. For one thing, we have found that the documentation required is less intense than with China. This is a welcome change and is one of the reasons the process takes less time.

Adoption is definitely a hurry up and wait game. You hurry up, get your paperwork done, and then you wait for a referral. You then hurry up and send in your acceptance documents. Then you wait to pass court and get the okay to travel. We have had much practice in the waiting after our experience with Eliza's adoption--we shall see if we have gotten any better at it.

In other family news, we are officially on Spring Break!!! We are taking next week off from school to hopefully enjoy some extra sleep and sunshine. I am not sure about the kids, but I know I am looking forward to it. This is the time of year where I get a little worn out and very ready to be done. I truly do enjoy teaching and learning with the kids, but I am not kidding when I say it is A LOT of work. It's hard to turn it off and just be in "mom" mode sometimes. Right now I am over analyzing my grammar in this post--have I ever mentioned that I prefer just about every subject over grammar?

Here are some important lessons I know I have learned in the last week. I'll share them with you in the hopes that you can learn from my craziness =).

1. If you put a band aid on your daughter's favorite stuffed toy--it won't come off easily. Seriously, we did this with Eliza's Wolfie last week when she got shots and spent a lot of time trying to pry it off piece by piece before bedtime. He still has some goo on him that Eliza reminds us to pray about every morning. If you remember you can pray too for "wolfie Doro band aid", as Eliza would say it.

2. God will and does find new and creative ways to grow you. Just go with it. Finding out we may have to travel twice to Ethiopia was not what we wanted to hear but I have no doubt the Lord will use whatever happens to grow our faith in Him.

3. Mommy time-outs rock! I took one of these a few days ago after dinner and really enjoyed sitting in a quiet room alone finishing up a book. Of course, what really helps is having an awesome husband like Toby who will hang with the kiddos.

4. Sunshine really does make even the most serious person cheerful. The girls and I were so giddy the other day about the sunshine we just had to dance in the kitchen. Really, even Emma, our most serious child, was getting down to the 50s music on my iphone.

5. When going to an Ethiopian restaurant in Portland for a cultural experience, the culture shock is more likely to come from Portland itself. Really and truly the food was so delicious and fun to eat. You use your hands and a bread called injera to eat even the salad. The drive around Portland afterwards in search of dairy free donuts--now that was a bit shocking to this small town girl.

I hope you all have a wonderful week full of God's many blessings!!!