Concert this Saturday

Saturday, October 25th
6:00-8:00 pm
Chapters Books and Coffee in Newberg, OR
Drinks half price!!
$10.00 cover charge

This Saturday at Chapters there will be a concert by Phil Zahn and Trent Conant, two local artists. Phil just released a new CD and Trent will have copies of his CD available as well. Drinks will be half priced for the evening and there is a $10.00 cover charge. The artists and Chapters are generously donating all the proceeds to our adoption! This should be a great night and hopefully spread awareness about adoption in general, beyond just us.

It might be considered nepotism . . .

During the presidential debate this evening:

Aidan: "Mommy, are women allowed to be president?"
Me: "Yes, they are"
Aidan: "Well why isn't there a woman president or a woman trying to be president?"
Me: Well, I guess there hasn't been a woman so far that enough people thought would make a good president."
Aidan: (thinks for a minute, then his face lights up) "Mommy I know! Aunt Sonja!"

Top 10

We received word from our agency that we are #7 on the waiting list! We're thinking that means we will receive a referral in the next 2 batches, and usually the batches come once a month. I say usually, but because our agency's program is new, we really don't have a lot to base that on. It's been that way so far, but I'm trying to keep in mind that things could change. Still, it's getting exciting!

Congratulations!

. . . to Brandon and Sunshine who live down the street from us and just received a referral for twin boys, 11 months old. They have been so patient, waiting for a sibling group and finally had resigned themselves to the idea that they would have just one child, and then this happened!

Caution - Preschool ahead

Aidan will be starting his 2nd year of preschool on Tuesday. His teacher requested that the kids practice writing their names neatly with just the first letter capitalized, before school begins. Aidan was practicing yesterday and as he was erasing a letter and talking to me, he somehow jerked the pencil up and stabbed himself in the face, hard. He bled a lot and ended up with a Spiderman band-aid across his cheek but told me quite seriously, "homework can be dangerous, Mommy."

Adoption update

Well, I got an email from the Addis embassy that confirmed that our I-600A (approval to adopt) was received there, so all of our paperwork is finally in Ethiopia. That means that whenever we get our referral we won't have to do any extra waiting/stressing to get everything there and translated.

I also heard from our program director that the estimated wait time for us is 5-6 months from our dossier submission which was June 20th. So I'm estimating that we'll get a referral in November or December (rather than September or October as I had originally thought) and maybe travel in February or March. We would love to go earlier, but this way we don't have to worry about traveling over Christmas, and we have some time to raise some money. We're hoping that some people from our agency will get referrals this week though, which is always exciting!

More . . .

Check out Eric's post for some more cute pics from the wedding. The Black Widows were fantastic entertainment.