I just got some good news from Susan at Little Angels! Well, first she toyed with me and gave me the bad news: the national committee STILL didn’t hear our case in their meeting on Wednesday. Their backlog apparently goes back to last April. Susan heard of this at 9am on Wednesday, though, so she quickly wrote up another letter for the Little Angels committee that was also meeting on Wednesday afternoon. She listed out all the extra steps we did, the headache from the national committee, etc. And they did it! They approved Eden “clear for adoption” and approved us as able to adopt! It would have been nice if they had given us this approval 6 weeks ago…or even 4 weeks ago after we got the paperwork they asked for! I’m super happy they did approve us though, the backlog from the national committee is not looking so good.

Next Steps:
Our lawyer takes this letter to court next week and hopefully is seen on a Certificate of Urgency (2 days wait instead of 3 weeks). This first hearing is the appointment of a Guardian Ad Litem. This person is supposed to come visit and observe how amazingly wonderful we are with Eden, how she is thriving in our home, etc. We then have another court hearing 1-2 weeks after that where the guardian and a little angels’ social worker present their reports and (hopefully) the court grants the adoption. Its unclear if we have to go back to the national committee at that time or not. If we do, well, hopefully they’ve worked through their backlog! Worst case scenario is that we have to wait 3-4 weeks for the first visit, then 3-4 weeks for the second visit, then 4-8 weeks for the national committee…but thats where the humanitarian visa would come in: we could at least come back for a little bit to see Meghan/Andy/Gracie/family in the middle of all the waiting.

Eden turned three years old today! Saying that, 3 seems so much older than 2. (at least 50% older) And really, Eden acts it and then some. She does a great job expressing herself with words instead of just tantrums now. She loves to make conversation with anyone around her that will talk back with her. She plays with the “big kids” in the compound whenever they’re around (and they like playing with her). The best thing in the world, though, is to have things match: her hair ribbons, her shirt+pants, her shoes, her fingernail polish to her toenail polish, and the nirvana: her outfit to her doll’s outfit!

We celebrated with a grand ol’ party last night. Nearly everyone in the compound came for pizza, cake, and ice cream. We did an Elmo theme. He was splattered all over the plates, cups, noise makers, hats, gifts, and food. For some reason though, Eden and I were the only ones that wore our Elmo pants. But that was ok by her, at least we were matching!

Getting ready to sign for Eden

Chrissie's amazing homemade Elmo Cake

Izzy and Eunyoung made Elmo Cookies. They tasted even better than they looked!

It’s been two years since Eden came home, although it feels like she’s been with us forever.  We celebrated her Gotcha Day this year by having some friends over for dinner.  We had 9 adults and 4 kids and I think everyone had fun.  Last year I made Kenyan food to celebrate in the US.  This year we celebrated in Kenya and I made hot dogs, hamburgers and french fries.  Chrissie made a beautiful cake for Eden.  (You can see it in the picture below).  Eden had her hair braided on Saturday and Chrissie even included Eden’s long pigtails in her cake decoration.

We played a slide show of all of the pictures of Eden and it was fun for us to look back over all of the things we’ve done together.  Everyone commented on how small Eden was before she came home and Eden loved seeing her baby pictures.  We made it through cake and were visiting when the power went off.  It made clean up a bit difficult, but everyone pitched in and then headed home by the lights of their cell phones.

I’m looking forward to being home and adding this years events to her Gotcha Day scrapbook!

Our lawyer wasn’t able to move the date to get our travel order (Tuesday, October 18) so we had to reschedule our visa interview.  We are now going to the embassy on October 24 at 9:30am.  Thanks for praying for the process and for a successful meeting!

The time has come to pray like you’ve never prayed before!  On Monday, October 17, we have our visa interview at 9am.  (That’s 2am for most of you, so pray hard before going to bed next Sunday night).

We are still waiting on our travel order- a critical piece of documentation- but hopefully that will be ready next week.  Our lawyer didn’t realize our visa appointment was on the 17th, so he scheduled to hear the verdict on the travel order for Oct. 18.  Please pray with us that he is able to get in to see the magistrate next week, since we can’t go to the interview without it.

Otherwise, we have all of our supporting documents gathered together.  I’ve gone over the information they are looking for countless times, and feel pretty prepared.  The big thing is that they need to know we will return to Kenya.  We obviously plan to come back, since we need to finish Eden’s adoption, so we hope that won’t be an issue.

Last time the visa process seemed easy but we’ve heard that they are more selective with the visas now and the process has changed since we applied for Eden’s two years ago.  Please pray that we will have all of our documents, that the kids will be lovely while we wait and are interviewed and that the consular officer will recognize how important it is that we ALL come home for Gracie to be born .

We will post something as soon as we know!