was fantastic. Saturday morning Zach and I had our final adoption classes. They were good, and meeting more adoptive parents is always food for the soul.

After that the ladies went to get our annual pedicures and the men went to play golf.

The crew sans my mom (the photographer).

Lindsey and Kara (my sister).

Kara, my mom and my grandma with their wine, we lead a very rough life.

Dailah got her first shot at a pumice stone. Tickled a bit, too precious!

It is REALLY fun having a girl, did I mention that?

Watching this relationship this weekend was so fun. Dailah and her great-grandma. I think they were both smitten with each other.

This fish was even more heinous than pictured. Dailah was enjoying putting her finger against the glass and watching ugly fish swim fiercely towards it to try to eat it.

Dailah couldn’t reach the foot light so she got creative.

We just got an email telling us that our dossier made it to Ethiopia today! Yippee!

We also just got an email saying that the two trip rule will come into effect May 9th. Our agency is saying we just need to have our case submitted to court before May 9th (that would mean we’re good to go with just 1 trip) but other agencies are reporting that you have to have a court date by May 9th (if that’s true, more than likely we’ll be traveling twice).

Are you loving this ride yet?

It’s a really tricky thing. I think the two-trip rule is great…for people who are just starting the process, thinking about starting the process, etc. Anything Ethiopia does to strengthen their ethical adoption program, is a very good thing. However, for those of us so close to bringing our babies home, this news is difficult for various reasons.

For us…financial comes to mind, as we’re talking about thousands of dollars. There’s also the issue of Zach’s work, taking all of that time off as well as at least one of the court dates landing smack dab in the middle of summer (impossible for Zach to do). The biggest issue for me is that our boys are 6 and 3. For the last year and a half, they’ve watched adoptive parents come meet their friends and then leave with their friends. Our boys would be one of the first wave of kids who met their parents and then watched as their parents left them again.

Can you imagine? 6 and 3-years-old. After hearing Tariku verbalize his feeling of abandonment when we left him for a few hours when in Ethiopia, I cannot imagine the feeling of abandonment our boys would feel if we didn’t come back for months.

Again, if we were just starting this and our boys got to see months and months of kids meet their parents, wait a few months and then leave with them, it would be a different (better) story. But the fact is I have no doubt it will hurt the attachment/bonding process for us and our boys.

I do have to say I’ve been coping remarkably well (if I do say so myself). I attribute it all to Tariku. I was truly loco during his process and now he’s here and he’s ours and he was worth every single second of panic, even if they were seemingly justified. So I know our boys will come home. I know that in 2 years, whatever happens, I’ll be praising God for the little miracles snoring loudly in their beds.

So eyes on the prize, we’re one step closer to bringing our boys home. I think that’s worth a Wendy’s frosty and a glass of Merlot. Salut!

My bones hurt. 10 hours of garage sale prepping. Tagging more clothes, scarves and crap than you can possibly imagine. Thankfully Lindsey and my sister came to help, I really don’t want to imagine life (or garage sale-ing) without those two.

That’s it. This was me before the tagging. If you can read my shirt (and know Italian) it says “Life is Beautiful” and despite the exhaustion from the last 10 hours I still believe that with every part of me.

PS. Note, I moved our recycling “process” (under the Thomas train) indoors per Zach’s “request”. As you’ll remember, taking that to the recycling center is on my to-do list for the week. Perhaps tomorrow?

Cleaned out 2 of the 3 rooms I needed to.

All closets cleaned out. I purged a decent portion of my wardrobe and it feels so good. There is something to this whole “keeping things I only use” deal. The past year I’ve been extremely selective about what I bring into the home. I have to like it enough to use it every day or I just don’t bring it to the house at all.

I “announced” to Zach that I’ll never work again at a place that I need a suit or high heels so a lot of my dress clothes are going in the garage sale. Zach was excited about the paired down wardrobe, not so much at the notion that I’ll never work full-time again. (Joking, he supports me either way).

Finished Tariku’s post placement report.

Looked into health insurance but haven’t pulled the trigger, can I check it off yet or not?

I also managed to add a few more bullet points. I like to keep myself on my toes. 🙂

All this to say the first day of spring break was a success and now it’s time for bed.

But first, these, these are my TOMS (one of my TOMS). If you don’t have these in your closet, you need to get them. Every time you buy a pair of these shoes they give a pair to a person in the developing world in need of shoes. Word on the street is they are developing a sandal and if that happens, I’ll work on owning exclusively TOMS.

I LOVE spring break. A week with all of my babies around me? It’s all very exciting. They are excited too, they just don’t know what’s coming. This week we’re going to be very busy, or I am anyway. They’ll be playing outside (with temps in the 60’s-70’s of course they will be!) while I’m doing my own spring cleaning.

I’m making my list public so that I can be held more accountable. Granted, I still have to teach classes 3 of the 5 days but Zach can tell you that when I set my mind to something I very rarely fail at making it happen.

-Print off 2 pieces of adoption stuff

-More Partner with Youth stuff for the Y

-Start sorting through garage sale stuff (if you have anything you want to put in our garage sale let me know, I’ll take it off your hands-all $ going towards our travel to pick up our babes).

-Look into switching insurance providers

-Take back recycling and order recycling bins

-Clean out shoe room

-Clean out John Deere room (our “storage room” that still has a lot of Camp’s stuff

-Clean the house

-Steam the carpets

-Steam the couches

-Put away Christmas dishes (that is really embarrasing)

-Finish Tariku’s Post-placement report

So I’m off. Wish me luck. And have no fear, I’ll still make plenty of time for these people.

Have no fear…we did not get another dog, this is my brother’s dog, Bentley. Beeeeautiful!

my parents got tickets to the Family Series at the Civic Center. Saturday’s presentation was “The Hungry Caterpillar”. Who doesn’t love that book? The play was terrific! My babies had a lot of fun, which makes everything so much better.

Crafts pre-show.

The boys

Coloring the hungry caterpiller

Wonder

My babies and me, they were actually quite excited. No explanation as to why Tariku’s button is not buttoned.

Trysten

Dailah

Tariku

Excited for the show!

This is just a typical moment when the boys are near their daddy. Lots of laughs.

2 ladies I love. My momma and my baby.

Friday night found us heading to Altoona to visit my parents. Friday night also found us at Old Chicago cheering on the Northern Iowa Panthers. Both my mom and dad graduated from UNI as did quite a few of my close friends. So even though we’re die-hard Hawkeye fans, it was still fun to have a homestate team in the middle of March Madness.

One of my besties, Woody, a UNI alum and a good person all around.

The group (notice Zach holding on to his Hawkeye love).

Woody and her hubby, me and mine and my brother, Marcus and Lindsey. Love them all.

Our good friends, Jared and Beth, received their referral of a beautiful baby girl yesterday. Hop on over and wish them well.

I’m selfishly praying we might get to travel with them.

So humbled I get to call them friends. So thankful there will be a bigger habesha population in Iowa.

Dossier is off! Feels so good to get that off the chest.

What we know so far about the situation in Ethiopia is that they don’t really know for sure what’s happening with the 2-trip rule. I know that adoption agencies in Ethiopia are hoping to get more clarification in the coming weeks.

Our agency did call us soon after news broke about possibly needing 2 trips. They told us if we could get our dossier in to Ethiopia before April 9th then we should be grandfathered in under the 1 trip rule. This, according to them, doesn’t mean we need a court date by then, our file just needs to be in the system. Now, the thing is we are in the midst of an international adoption, nothing is certain. We’re riding these waves with a little bit of grace, little bit of humility and a lot of Tyelenol PM (did I just write that?).

We should know within the next few weeks whether we made it under the wire or not and if it really mattered in the first place (perhaps they’ll hold off on the new rule for a few more months).

Prayers and happy thoughts for that big stack of paper to fly on an angel’s wings to Ethiopia.

Until then, check out this guy. His second front tooth is finally growing in! Unfortunately his two front teeth look to be as large as mine once were. But he’s got the looks to pull it off just fine.