Anna's Birthday Wish

The day before my sister's birthday we received our referral for our daughter. Ryan and I decided to wait until the next day to tell our family since we would all be together for Anna's birthday dinner. After Anna opened all her gifts we handed her a birthday card from us...

Inside we included a picture of Nara...Under her picture we wrote "Guess who's turning 3 tomorrow? Meet your new niece who will soon be a part of our family!!!!"

Their reaction was priceless....

Hate the picture ended up being blurry but I think Ryan was crying too and couldn't hold the camera steady. After Anna finally could catch her breath she told us that her birthday wish had been for us to receive a referral. The day before (when we received our referral call) she blew out the candles on her cake from friends at school and made her wish. She wished again the night of her birthday while we were at dinner. Anna was so happy that God granted her 18th birthday wish and that she and Nara share birthdays one day apart! 

We are still waiting to be submitted to court. There were a few documents that needed to be updated since we have waited so long. Our agency encouraged us last week to go ahead and start working on them so we will be ready when they call us for court. We are almost finished with the updates already! Two weeks ago our dear friends Carmen & Trent went and visited Nara in our agency's transition home in Ethiopia. They put our sweet girl on the phone so we could talk to her! Absolutely priceless to hear her say mommy and daddy on the other end! We are so excited but I have to say this part of the wait has been hard on me in particular. Now that we know who she is and have heard her sweet voice I am wanting so badly to bring her home more now than ever! I am so thankful she is in our agency's transition home now where she is being taken good care of. The support, gifts and encouragement from all our friends and family has been overwhelming! We are so thankful for your continued prayers!  

Our Referral Day!!!

Wednesday started out just like any other normal day at work. I was in the middle of a haircut when my phone rang. Picking it up I saw AWAA on my caller ID. My heart began beating so fast. I just stared at my phone for a few seconds trying to comprehend if this was really happening. Could this really be the call we've been waiting on for so long!? I answered. "Hi Courtney, this is America World and I have Ryan on the other line. "This is your referral call." OMG! I think I was completely in shock and totally caught off guard. I felt like I could hardly breathe and you guessed it...Ryan was trying not to cry on the other line. Our family coordinator, began telling us about our daughter and some other info about paperwork etc. She also told us she would immediately email us our daughters file. She was talking so fast, or maybe it was just me hardly being able to contain myself, that I cannot remember half of what she said. I just couldn't wait for the email with pictures! It just so happened that I had a break in the middle of my work day so Ryan & I immediately rushed home so we could open her file together. I thought Ryan would never get home! That was the longest 30 min. wait ever!  Words cannot describe the feeling I had when we opened that email and finally saw her sweet face. The face we have longed to see for so long. Our daughter whom we have prayed over for more than two years now. Nara is a beautiful three year old little girl with big brown eyes (just like the Barbee's).  She has an adorable smile and a petite frame. We have decided to name her Nara. I keep finding myself staring at her picture that we now have framed in our house. So what comes next? Well...we wait lol! It usually takes anywhere from 6-12 weeks for a family to be assigned a court date. We will then fly over to Ethiopia where we will meet Nara and appear in court before a judge to state that we will love and care for her. We are hoping this will happen soon but at the same time we know that you never can tell. We are very blessed to have a great agency who has been very helpful during this time of waiting. We have also heard wonderful things from other adoptive families about the transition home where Nara is now. This makes me rest much easier knowing that she is being well taken care of. On December 1st, 2011 Nara was brought to the orphanage. Because our acceptance papers arrived at AWAA yesterday they were able to tell Nara today, exactly one year later, that she now has a family on the way! This brings tears to my eyes as I write this because I know without a doubt that God has been at work throughout this entire process even on our darkest days. Back in August I prayed so hard that we would get a referral by Ryan's birthday. When we didn't I was very discouraged. When we looked through Nara's file this week we saw that her physical & medical assessment was done on Ryan's birthday August 10, 2012. We may not have gotten a referral that day but God was at work getting her one step closer to being a part of our family. This has been a long process with lots of ups and downs, good days and bad days but she is so worth the wait!!!! Nara, we are on our way!!!!