Standing Together...and bringing "Baby T" home!

Friday, December 9, 2011

Submitted To Embassy

Woo Hoo!!! Yesterday our case was submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia..This is the FINAL step in bringing our little boy home!!! We are praising God for getting us this far in our journey that has definitely been bumpy at times.

source

Now what do we do??

I'm sure you can guess....

We WAIT!

Now we are waiting for the people at the Embassy to review our case. It could be a couple of weeks or many weeks before we hear back from them, but we are praying that it is sooner than later. Once we hear from them we could be cleared on the spot or asked for more evidence (we are proving to them that he was an orphan...). Hopefully our case is clear to them and we will be approved. Once we are approved they will set up a date for us to come in for our Embassy interview...we will of course take the earliest one that they have and hopefully be on a plane asap to head to our little boy. Once we have our interview CT will be granted a visa into the United States.

So, while legally he is our son he is not allowed to enter the U.S. until we have obtained a visa for him, which isn't as easy as it sounds. In the last five weeks our in country lawyer and staff were busy getting him a birth certificate, a passport, a visa medical exam and finalizing the required documents and paperwork that has to be turned in with his visa application...

Please pray with us that our case is reviewed and cleared SOON!! And of course for CT and all of the children waiting for their families....that they are healthy, happy and well cared for.

I'll leave you with some cuteness of our little CT hanging out at the Transition House... looks like he misses his mommy and daddy to me :(

Our most recent picture of CT

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Ethiopia Day 7: Our Last Day

November 5, 2011

Our last day in Ethiopia was hard. It was hard waking up knowing that this would be the day that we would leave our little boy on another continent without knowing when we would be back to get him. It was hard to have our last breakfast together. It was hard to give him his last bath. It was hard not to tear up off and on all day. But we tried to soak everything up and enjoy our last moments with our sweet boy.

CT hates baths....HATES

so handsome in his traditional ET clothing

already working the ipod

paytime

Most of the day was spent on a long and i mean LOOOOOONG trip back to his orphanage. A couple of days before a Muslim holiday in Ethiopia everyone from the city takes buses out to the country to stay with family to celebrate for the weekend....and apparently Monday was a Muslim holiday. Which means we picked the wrong day to drive the already dangerous road to Walissoo (I know I spell it differently every time, but it's spelled differently everywhere I've seen it...so surely one of my tries will be right?? We spent about seven hours on a very crowded and very dangerous road and this was the only day that I had to take anything for motion sickness. We typically love the ride out to the country, but this one was quite miserable. As much as we didn't' want to take our little boy back to his orphanage, we did actually want to live through it!

bumper to bumper

CT was so funny on the ride there...I got the best video of him being a total stinker! He is a mess! If it looks like he started to prefer daddy it's because he did! He liked me fine, but if daddy was in the room it was all about daddy...we are going to have to work on that because little does CT know he is going to be having a whole lot of mommy time in his life!

yeah...your baby not in a carseat on a dangerous road is nerve racking!!

a city on the way...people are so NOT afraid to get hit by cars...I'm pretty sure we grazed a few pedestrians.

two lane roads are for sissies

driving to the country is one big game of chicken

beautiful, right?

we saw kids ava's age using an ax, herding cattle, all kinds of things. I promise ava could not heard a turtle.

finally out

look close...that's a goat among luggage on top of a taxi bus

arriving to walisoo

arriving to the village of Chetu outside of wolisso

when you see this outside of a home it means they make and sell something that is like ET moonshine....it's outside a lot of homes in the country.

Leaving CT at his orphanage was one of the hardest things we've ever done and one of the most unnatural things I've ever done. It is just not in a mommy to leave her child and not know when you will be back. It's one of those moments that feels like you should be kicking and screaming, yet you walk away with a few silent tears in hopes to not upset your child. It was so hard to hand him off to his Nannies, but somehow we did it and pray that we will be back for him very soon...

trying to smile as we said our goodbyes

driving away...we will be back for you soon, sweet boy!

Ethiopia Day 6-We passed Court!!!!

November 4, 2011

It's official we are now the official and legal proud parents of Chester "Chet" Tamerat Miller!!!

If you remember our story then you know that we found Tamerat (I can finally post his name!!) at the beginning of May when he was waiting for a forever family . We accepted his referral the next day...that was six months ago and at times the wait seemed like it would never end. Would we ever get a court date?? Would we ever make it to court and officially be his parents?? We didn't know the future, but we had faith in the Lord that he would see this through.

There are definitely people who have waited longer than us, but six months from referral to court is longer than the typical wait, but the wait made this moment oh so sweet!

I wanted to jump up and hug and kiss the judge, but while she was friendly she was also all business and would probably have not loved that sort of gesture!! So instead I just cried and cried and cried (and cried and cried and cried). From the second we went into her room and she started asking us (and the five other families from our agency) questions I was just a constant and steady stream of tears. The moment we had waited on for so long was FINALLY here!! Those sweet, sweet words "Your adoption has been approved." Chet Tamerat was officially a Miller. We were officially his parents....and I was officially a mom of three!

We are so thankful for all of the prayers and support we have received over the past year. And while we know our journey isn't complete we have surpassed a big milestone and I am so very thankful for the peace that comes with finally being his legal mommy!

I am thankful for a God who redeems. Who gives orphans families. Who adopted us and loves us and shows us His grace and mercy. He is good. And I am thankful to be the mommy of Chet Tamerat Miller.