complete!

sitting at breakfast at the transition home enjoying great fellowship with woudneh and bette. i am becoming a morning person, whether i want to or not :)

super quick update while i have a laptop. the kids are amazing! we are staying with them here and so we see them all the time. little abraham samuel is so excited to come home and yet so scared we are not taking him to america. he needs regular reassurance. when i told him that his birth mom was coming to see them on wednesday, he gave me a look of sheer terror. very sad face. in my best body language, i explained that she was only coming to say good-bye before we left for America. he then gave me the thumbs up. lydia mahilet, on the other hand, i think will have moments of great sadness upon leaving. the caretakers here think she is a rock star :) she will be missed. i wish she could understand that there is a very good chance that she is going to love home; but she will just have to wait and see for herself.

will get details hopefully tomorrow but woudneh told us that the kids' older brother was actually stolen at a very young age and worked for years as a shepherd. the birth mom found him only recently. the mom is also not working at the orphanage anymore, but woudneh is not sure why. praying tomorrow will bring some answers (and hopefully some great photos too :)

and the drama for yesterday was that greg either a) lost, or b) had his passport stolen. gotta love that big ol' disheveled guy :) that or hurt him. woudneh took him to about 12 offices yesterday and his new passport will be ready today. we are pretty sure it could be at the hilton where we stayed our first night here using greg's gazillion hotel points. so our free night's stay really ended up costing $135 :)

we had our embassy appointment monday morning and we are done! we just wait for their visas to be issued by tomorrow. yay! the foreign US embassies that i have been to are interesting places. think BMV and there you have it. all the anticipation of having your adoption complete and you sit with dozens of others waiting for your number to be called :) woudneh said he has never had a case clear as fast as ours did. not one single question was asked on any of the documentation and they did not request an interview with the birth mom. i told woudneh that i would be sure to ask the lady at the window if she was sure everything was good and they hadn't missed anything. i assured him i was kidding :)

yesterday, as we were driving the insane streets of addis, we saw a toyota land cruiser. woudneh did the conversion and said it cost about $261,000 US dollars. he said 'poor country, expensive cars, go figure." he said he paid $21,000 US for his 14 year old van.

thanks for the comments and emails. yes sandy, the kids are wonderful :) while we are anxiously counting down the days until home, i remind myself to enjoy not cooking, not doing laundry, and spending hours coloring, building legos, and playing balloons. laying in bed and reading at nighttime has been pretty awesome too.

talked with carrie and amy and the kids yesterday and everyone is doing good. did my heart good to hear it. if you have prayed for peace for me while i'm away, thank you because God has given me a peace that i know is of Him. i've had some nice time with Him too and know that He has given us more gifts in these children. and as i've pleaded before, if you have ever even sorta kinda thought of adopting an older child, do it. they want a family so badly. woudneh said they all think they are not worthy. nothing is further from the truth.