No news was good news!

We're alive! I was just thinking, "we've received some news today that people may want to know. Maybe I should send out an e-mail." Then I thought, "wait, you fool! You have a blog!

As most of you know, we are the proud parents of a baby boy we adopted from Florida, named Caleb. He's a great baby with a personality that is already teaching me to be a better person, and he happens to be pretty cute to boot.


So that's probably the biggest news since we last posted.....

...funny how adopting didn't encourage a post on the adoption blog. Frankly I was amazed at how quickly the feeling went from picking him up, to him being family. Hence, all news on Caleb is on Carrie's family blog (follow the link to the left if you are interested).

Today's news is very much about adoption in all its bureaucracy. There's some good news and some bad news.

First the potentially-bad-but-with-some-good-side-effects news. We got word today that the Ethiopian government is leaning towards making adoptive parents present for court hearings. Seems like a pretty rational thing, but it would require Carrie and I to travel to Ethiopia for the court hearing. The courts in Ethiopia seem to be very unpredictable, so the trip would likely take a week or so. The upside is that it would give us a chance to actually see our baby before picking him/her up and we'd be able to visit the country and get to know it better. The downside is that it would take a week or so of vacation time that I've been saving to actually use to pick up the baby and have a couple days at home before having to go back to work. Also, there's the whole business of how expensive a trip for two to Ethiopia is. We've budgeted for one trip, but not a second, so we'll have to figure that one out. This isn't finalized yet, but appears to be the way everything is leaning, and even has an implementation date. I guess we'll do what we need to do!

Second; the good news. Yesterday the judge in Florida signed the order for the termination of parental rights for Caleb. While the whole idea of that sort of order is very sad to me, it also makes me happy to know that in 30 days or so we could finalize Caleb's adoption! Once finalization occurs we are cleared to have him sealed and blessed. Yea!

We are really excited to have him blessed because he'll be blessed with 3 of this cousins! 2 of Carrie's brothers recently had sons and another brother is expecting a son in the next month. How cool is that! If we get a boy from Ethiopia, and he's already born, or is born soon, our family will have an entire basketball team of boys within 9 months of each other!

Oh, and I'm really excited for the end of June to see our above average sized 10 month old black son being blessed with his three 1-3 month old white cousins :o) Should be quite a sight!...oh, and of course, a very special occasion for our blessed family.