Our Girls.....and the birthday boy

Wow, this has been a great week. Our agency director, Sue, is in Ethiopia right now and spent yesterday at the orphanage where our girls are living. She was able to get a bunch of new pictures. We were very lucky that she was able to send them to us. The internet is not real reliable in Ethiopia. They are so stinking cute!!!!!! I can not wait to show them off. There are a few pictures of the girls opening our gifts we sent with Sue. One picture shows M, who we are calling Ava, looking at the photo album we sent her. It just melted my heart. I wonder if she understands we are going to be her family?? Hopefully, Sue was able to find out more about the girls families from the orphanage director. I am so excited to learn more about them. We did get some more good news right before Sue left for ET. We received M's, (Ava's) birth certificate. We are still waiting on baby T's....I believe we are going to name her Eliza. We will keep the girls given names as their middle names. I haven't heard any more about Liza's birth certificate, but hopefully it will come as quick as Ava's did!!! Once we get that, I think we can apply for a court date. At this point it looks like we will have to wait for a court date after the closure. Rumor has it courts close August 6th or so. I would LOVE to get a last minute call to say we have to get to ET in the next week or so. But in all reality, it probably won't happen until October or November. Then we wait 6-8 weeks for an embassy date. So my prayers are .....let's see a miracle....get us to court before the closure!!! But if not, I pray we have our girls home before Christmas.

Tomorrow is Luke's birthday, he will turn 11. He has changed so much in the last year.....I can't believe he is going into middle school. I still picture him with tupperware on his head and a "passy" in his mouth. Man, did he love his pacifier. I will never forget when I finally took the "passy" away. I cut the end off and told him it broke and we needed to throw it away. He really didn't fight me about it. He walked to the trash can and said "bye bye passy" and dropped it in....he was so sad. Of course, I was in tears!!!! It was so sweet. I can still see his precious little face saying good bye. Hannah was in on the trick....and years later she finally told him the truth. He was so mad. :) Now he is into his phone...yes, we broke down and got him a phone for his birthday. There was really no way out of it. We got Hannah her first phone going into 6th grade....and Luke totally remembered and kept reminding us of it...for months now. Luke is wise beyond his years...literally, Luke is very smart- if I do say so myself. He is in the gifted program at school and loves it.....we call him the Master of Useless information. I swear that kid knows the weirdest facts about the strangest things. Just out of the blue he will come up with some fact about anything and everything. We always tease him about it, at least he is a good sport. I love that kid. Luke came to us and wanted to be baptized a couple years ago. We, of course, were thrilled. Our pastor picks out a verse for everyone who gets baptized. Here is Luke's verse and it fits him perfectly. 1 Timothy 4:12 Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

We have spent the past few summers traveling with Luke to swim meets. He is a great little swimmer. He really is a natural at it. He has taken some private stroke lessons and has a mean breaststroke. He will most likely qualify for conference which is an all day Saturday event. We are very proud of him. I hope he has a wonderful birthday and I want him to know just how much I love him. He's my little buddy...well, big buddy now...he is almost as tall as I am.... :) He is going to be a wonderful big brother to Ava and Liza. He totally understands why we are adopting and he is very excited about bringing the girls home. He has such a big heart and I can't wait for the girls to meet their big brother.



His favorite toy...tupperware.
The famous "passy"
Swim Team