OUR DAUGHTER!!

We got the call!! Around noon on Friday, Amy got a call on our house phone...it was our adoption agency coordinator. He said he had some info for us -- that was quite the understatement! :) We received the referral for our daughter!

Just like with T (her soon-to-be-brother), we can't share any real details yet, so we'll just call her S. She is from the same region as T (which is a blessing, they are coincidentally in the same orphanage right now) and she is about 3 months old.

It's amazing how you can feel the effects of prayer sometimes. This was definitely one of those occasions. We know a number of people - friends, family, our church - have been praying for our children recently and it's just awesome how things have moved along so quickly in the past few months.

Now that we're getting so close to meeting our babies face-to-face, I've been thinking about this long waiting period and it's much easier to see God's perfect timing from this end. It's easy to look at something you're anticipating so much and not realize all of the other work God is doing around you. There is so much he has done in our lives during this time. I am so grateful that He gives us more than we even know to ask for...

So, now what? :) We have been told that the average duration from referral to bringing the children home is about 6 months. The next steps are the completion of all the paperwork required to request a court date, the court date request itself, and the scheduling of a court date. Since the courts will close for the rainy season, we won't even be able to request a date until after 10/6. It's conceivable that we could get an October court date, although, like every step of international adoption, nothing is guaranteed...we'll just have to wait and see.

Please pray that everyone involved in the request process completes their portion accurately and in a timely manner and, of course, please pray for T and S...that their hearts may be calmed in such a tough time, that they continue to receive love and care from the orphanage staff, and that may be under God's hand of protection as we prepare to bring them into our family.

Thanks again for all your prayers. They do have eternal significance and we are extremely blessed to have all of you in our lives.

Love,
Phil & Amy

Who is Baby Girl Weinmeister?

Hey all,

We're still here waiting to find out who T's little sister is... We did find out Thursday that all the families ahead of us on the baby girl list are getting referrals right now. Sooo.... that will make us #1!!

We've also received a few updated pictures of our little guy :) He's growing like a weed!! Please keep little T in your prayers... we have yet to see a photo of him smiling. And in the last photo, you could see tear streaks on his sweet little face... I can't even imagine what he's thinking and feeling right now...

Thanks for all your love and support. It means the world to our family.

Love,
Amy & Phil

IT'S A BOY!!!

It actually happened!! 831 days after we first submitted our application to adopt (when we were adopting from Kazakhstan) and 155 days after our dossier was sent to Ethiopia to bring home our two little ones...just as it looked like another week had come and gone...we got a call at 4pm on Friday to tell us that our agency had matched us with a little boy!

We can't share any real details until the court date is completed, so we'll just call him "T" :) He is 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 (birthdates are not well-documented in Ethiopia) and he's a handsome little guy. It is absolutely amazing how much he has already become embedded in our hearts in less than one day. We received a few photos and some basic information about his well-being and his background. What we can share is that he has been through a very tough situation and we can imagine that he's having a hard time at the orphanage right now.

The fact that we received a referral for our son before our daughter was completely unexpected...we have been 1st on the list for a boy and 3rd or 4th on the list for a girl for a while. Since the wait is longer for a girl, the plan was to wait until a girl was available for referral and then to match us up with boy right around the same time. However, our agency decided to go ahead and match us with T on the hope and faith that we will be referred a girl by the end of summer.

It is such a major blessing to finally see the face of one of our children! Of course, this will make the wait that much harder, knowing that T is in an orphanage without the rest of his family.

We will definitely post more details as soon as we are allowed. Until then, there's not much more we can share. That includes photos... :(

Above all, we are counting our blessings and thanking God for continuing to guide us and open doors along the path to adoption. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers and we will hopefully have another update soon. Please pray for T's situation as well as for his birth mother.

God Bless,
The Weinmeisters

Eek.

Well, It's 1:30 AM and I can't sleep. Yesterday's call has me shaken. Seriously, I'm not a cryer, but the flood gates are now open!! I think I cried 5 or 6 times today... Everything that has to do with adoption sets me off. And of course, I can't seem to tear myself away from the blogs and message boards :) Just wanted to share...

A call...but not the call :)

Amy got a call at home today from our adoption agency. I think that every other conversation we've had with them has been over my cell phone, so Amy was a bit surprised. She actually was thinking that this was THE call...

It turned out that our coordinator needed a copy of a form and nothing more. It was a very hard day for Amy, to say the least. She is so ready to be a mother and this long period of waiting has definitely not been easy. This process can feel like a roller coaster, at times. We don't know our babies' names or faces yet, but we know they're there and waiting to be loved. We just want to go bring them home!

To follow with the roller coaster analogy, things did pick back up! I called our coordinator to see if just maybe the reason for needing the form had something to do with an upcoming match. Well, we're not quite there yet, but things are really moving along! I had called on Friday and was told that we had moved from 7th to 6th on the list for a referral for a young girl. Somehow, after we talked that day, 2 more referrals happened! So we are 4th! And, I was told that another couple is probably going to accept a referral in the next few days, which makes us 3rd! This is a blessing. Like I said, we are ready and we want to start taking care of those babies!

For any of you that don't know our exact referral situation....we are on a few waiting lists. Our request is for one girl and one other child of either gender. The children can be siblings or unrelated. So, we are in a wait list for siblings and, at the same time, one for unrelated children. Since referrals for girls take longer, they would hold off on a referral for a boy until there's a referral for the girl. Another awesome piece of news is that we're already at the front of the wait list for a boy...this whole time we've been thinking that we'd have to wait 2-3 more months for that referral to happen once we were matched with our daughter...so this really could be soon :)

Did I just make that clear as mud? I hope it makes sense.

Thank you for the prayers and the words of support. It truly does mean a lot to us.

God Bless,
Phil & Amy

I had a dream...

Last night I had my first dream that involved specific child ages and genders...

We visited our agency in NC to check in on our progress. When we got there we were told that everyone had to redo their dossiers and that Ethiopia wasn't going to give any referrals for a few months. While we were in the office, we saw two children in a room - a 1 year old girl and a 2 year old girl... Just then, the other Ethiopia coordinator walked by and said "Oh, these two will be the last referrals for a few months... and I'm pretty sure they're yours..." I started crying and scooped up the little one.

A few minutes later, our coordinator came into the room and shut the door. "I'm sorry...." he said, "we had to refer these two out quickly and your paperwork has all been misplaced. We had to go with the next couple on the list."

I couldn't believe it.... Well I could (since the adoption process seems to be full of crazy ups and downs), but that didn't stop me from laying into him about his incompetence (by the way... this IS just a dream... I don't really feel like our coordinator is incompetent... haha). Then I just cried.

Well, that was it... my first dream with ages and genders. Kinda funny my brain chose two girls, since I've pretty much thought it would be one of each... Guess only time will tell :)