We got our travel date!

I received an email from our agency today that stated that we need to be in Ethiopia on July 24th by 8am!!! Oh my goodness, in one month I will be holding my babies! Matt and I will be searching for flights tonight and getting our guest house reservations made. I can't believe this is actually happening. The bad part, not really bad but anyways, is that my friend Debbie and I had a shopping date for the
23rd to buy all the necesseties we will need to take with us and to buy Avery more clothes. I guess that will need to be rescheduled or I will just have to brave it on my own.LOL. I tell you what this blogging stuff is like magic. I blogged saying it was 2 months of waiting for a referral and we get our referral, I blogged about wanting to get our court date and we got our court date, I blog about the twins 1st birthday and we get our travel date. So now off to find cheap flights. Cross your fingers for us.

Today our Ethiopian prince and princess turn 1 year old! Oh how I wish we could all be together for this momentous occassion. In Ethiopia they do not celebrate birthdays, in fact many do not even know when they were born. They do not have birth certificates as many are not even born in a hospital. We are lucky to know the date of our children's birth. Once they are home we will be having a birthday party for them (read: Matt and I), excluding gifts. I just want to be able to have pics of them with their first birthday cake. You know the ones; icing in the hair, face covered in cake and icing. Ah the joys of being a child!

Happy Birthday sweet ones, Mommy and Daddy will be there soon.

Awesome weekend

So our weekend started off great with new pictures of the twins on Friday afternoon. Friday night I took my mom to Tuscola to see her boyfriend's granddaughter in her first play. But before we went to the play we went to the outlet mall and went to Osh B'Gosh and Carter's and bought some clothes for the babies. Not that they really need anymore but oh well they got some anyways. Then we went and watched the play, which was really cute. It was "Alice in Wonderland" and Mary Rose played the Cheshire Cat, she did a really good job. After the play mom and I went to Villa Grove and met up with our cousin Carol and her husband Paul at the VFW and had a couple of drinks. Every once in awhile it is nice to hang out in my hometown and hear all of the gossip, but only every once in awhile. After we left the VFW we drove around and went by our old house. I do miss the big V.G. sometimes but mainly I miss all of my friends from my childhood and just my childhood in general really. It was a pretty good town to grow up in. Saturday was our 4-year wedding anniversary, we went low key this year. With all of the travel expenses coming up we are trying to save as much money as possible. So we have taken a vow not to eat out or buy anything unless we absolutely need it. ie: food and gas. So we just cleaned out the car we will be using as the "Family Car", then we went to the pool (we allowed ourselves a pool pass for the summer), we took the dogs for a walk, cooked out and after all that we just chilled and watched a movie. It was a Fantastic day! Sunday we went to church, then to Matt's parents house for a Father's Day cookout, after we left the in law's house went to Jupiter's II to meet up with two families that we have become good friends with through our adoption. One of the greatest things that has happened in this process, besides the twins of course, are all the great people we have met. Adoption doesn't just connect you to your children it also connects you to some great people who we are lucky enough to call our friends. We ended our weekend by just relaxing and watching some TV. It was such a great weekend! The weather was awesome and I got to spend time with loved ones. What more could a girl ask for? Well I'm sure I could think of something but I'm not going to push my luck. Next Father's Day will be extra special due to the fact that Matt won't just be legally a father he will have his children home with him. I can't wait to watch our children learn, laugh, cry and just be plain silly with their Daddy. I know he is going to be a great father and I am so happy that I get to share in the joys of parenthood with him. Hope all of you had a great Father's Day weekend.

An Update with pictures!

We got an update today!! The twins are still tiny but we plan on fixing that when they get home. Avery is only 14.7 lbs and Isabelle is 15.2 lbs. I guess this is to be expected when they are only able to feed them 3 bottles a day in the orphanage. It just breaks my heart to know that all these babies are not able to get the nourishment that they need and deserve. Atleast I know that these two babes will soon have everything they need and more. I'm so ready! Especially after seeing these new pictures. Every picture we get they just get more and more real to me and I get more and more anxious to go get them. Yesterday I sent a care package for each of them to a family that will be traveling on Tues. to pick up their twins. In the package I sent them a photo book with pics of Me, Matt and the dogs, plus blankets that Matt and I slept with for a couple of weeks. Hopefully this will help them recognize us when we go and pick them up. Needing lots of hopes and prayers that we get the Aug. 9th embassy date. We will even take the July 26th embassy date if need be. Even though the July date would mean spending about $1000.00 more on airfare we will do it for OUR two precious babies. Mommy and Daddy love you and can't wait to finally hold you in our arms.

So Angry!

In January my friend Debbie made me aware of the fact that our 171H (permission to bring an orphan into the U.S.A.) was wrong. The reason being is that on our home study it said that we were wanting to adopt children 0-6 months at referral, well then DCFS approved us for 0-6 months at referral, which in turn made USCIS approve us on our 171H to be able to bring children 0-6 months in to the U.S. Which means that our children could not be older than 6 months when we brought them home. Well anyone who has adopted, our social worker has, knows that in International Adoption most children come home older than 6 months. When this came to our attention our dossier was already in Ethiopia so I called our placement agency director and he told me to get it fixed ASAP but that it would not affect our paperwork in country, we just needed to have it fixed before we had our embassy appt. Easy peasy since our dossier had only been in country for a couple of weeks and we were expecting to wait 4-6 months just for our referral. So I called our social worker and asked him if he could get our home study changed to say we were approved for children up to 14 months old and he said he would do that no problem. Well a month goes by and I haven't heard anything from our S.W. and when I called to see how things were going with the change he had no idea what I was even talking about. Oh great! So I explained it again and he said he would take care of it. A month later we get our referral and I call him to let him know. I then find out that he still had not changed anything in our h.s. He said that it was no big deal and that with us now having a referral it would be a lot easier to get done. See in Illinois DCFS has to approve not only your h.s. but also your referral. So he was going to send our updated h.s. along with our referral to DCFS and we should be good to go. Matt called our S.W. in April asking if everything had been sent off to DCFS and he acted like he wasn't sure what he was talking about but he would look into it. When he got back to Matt he told him that DCFS had not seen our paperwork yet and that they were really backed up, but don't get worried we still had plenty of time to get it fixed. Then about a month ago our S.W. called saying that DCFS had lost our paperwork and that he, our S.W., could no longer bring up our referral information that I had sent him. SERIOUSLY!! Then on Tuesday I get an email from him that I wasn't sure about so I called him only to find out that DCFS needed an update of our CANTS report, basically saying we are not child abusers, and that they couldn't do anything until they got that. So that was two weeks right there that we thought DCFS was processing our paperwork and come to find out they weren't, but he never even told us. Did I mention that we HAVE to have this paperwork fixed before we go and pick our children up hopefully the second week of August. I know that every thing will work out it is just very frustrating to think that we paid good money to have this stuff done correctly and it wasn't. I guess if we decide to this again we will know better.

Our referral story

CONGRATULATIONS IT’S TWINS!!

March 23, 2010

At 2:37p yesterday I saw that I had missed a call from our agency and the message just said to call back. So I called expecting to learn that we needed some paperwork changed or something. Here is how that conversation went:

Me: (as the phone is ringing I’m checking my email. You know just in case. Nothing is there from AA.) Hi this is Jennifer Barbee and I had a message to call.
Radu: How are you today?
Me: Good. How are you?
Radu: Fine thank you. Can I ask you a question?
Me: Yes.
Radu: Can you keep a secret?
Me: Yes.
Radu: Seriously, do you promise you can keep a secret?
Me: Yes.
Radu: Okay then look at your email.
Me: I don’t see anything. What email address did you send it to?
Some searching on his part and me closing my email and then seeing I had one new message.
Me: Oh I see it. Oh my gosh your kidding right? (the reason for this reaction is because I was looking at an email with the subject line: referral. This is where the sobbing began.)
Radu: this is a special case in which there were twins a boy and a girl available and you and your husband were the only ones who requested this. This doesn’t usually happen so fast and there are other families who have and are waiting longer so you need to make sure not to announce this on the Internet as to not upset anyone.
Me: (a very shaky )Okay thank you.
Radu: You are welcome.

And then the phone conversation was over.

I was able to call Matt and tell him he needed to come to the office. At first he thought something was wrong with my boss because he could tell that I was upset but then I told him we got our referral and he understood my shaky voice. After hanging up with Matt I shakily called my mom to let her know that she was a grandma, unofficially of course. Then I called our home study agency to let our social worker know. Then Matt finally showed up and we sat down to see our baby’s faces for the first time together. Let me just tell you they are the most precious faces I have ever seen. I’m sure it has nothing to do with me being a bit biased or anything either. You’ll understand once I am able to post their pics. Last night was a whirlwind of tears, phone calls, oohs and aahs.

All I can say at this moment it that they are 8 months old and perfect.

Next we wait for our court date. We will not be allowed to travel in May or June due to the elections so we will hopefully travel some time after July but before December. If all goes well that is. As for Matt and I we are going to be kicking it up a notch and getting those honey-do-projects going.

Thank you to all of you that prayed for us. Now I am asking that you please pray for our babies and their family who I am sure misses them. It is really a double edged sword when you receive your referral because you are excited for the chance to be parents to these perfect little beings but at the same time you know that someone out there is missing there babes. Hopefully they will find peace in knowing that their babies are being taken care of and are loved.

Going to go back to Private

Okay so when we received our referral I put the blog on private so I could talk about it. Once we passed court I decided to go back to being public, but after much consideration I feel that the best thing for our family is to go back to private. I'm pretty sure that this blog is not that popular with people that I don't know so I don't think I am going to be cutting anyone out of reading it. I only started this blog to record the journey to our children and to let family and friends know what was going on in our adoption without having to call each and every one of them every time something substational happened. So starting Monday I am going to go back to being a private blog. If you would like an invite you can either leave a comment or if we are facebook friends leave me a message there. If you were on the private list before do not worry you will be on there again. Thanks for the understanding.

Just some words (long)

Eight years after endometriosis caused me to have to have a hysterectomy I have become a mother. I only mention the hysterectomy due to the fact that some women out there may be feeling that the only way to become a mother is to give birth to a child. Well I am here to say that that just isn't true. Just look at the pictures of these precious children, MY precious children. God has blessed us twice and I do believe that they are why I cannot conceive a child. Now I am not going to say that I didn’t have my doubts because believe me I had many, many doubts that I would ever become a mother, but I never gave up hope that someday I would be a mom.
When I first heard that I would have to have a hysterectomy I tried to stay positive, I mean what could I do? I was in so much pain that all I cared about was that after the surgery that pain would be gone. I was single and wasn’t even thinking about motherhood or what this surgery meant for my future. I had always wanted to adopt; the thought of pushing a watermelon through a hole the size of a pea did not appeal to me at all! LOL! So when the surgery was over and I found out that they were able to save my ovaries I only thought about the fact that I wouldn’t be going through early menopause. Later I thought about being able to use a surrogate. In fact when Matt and I discussed starting a family this is what he would think of while my thoughts turned to adoption. Matt and I started seriously talking about starting our family in April of 2008, just a few short months after buying our home. I started researching adoption and surrogacy. I only did the surrogate research to appease Matt, I knew with utmost certainty that I wanted to adopt, but since we both had a hand in the decision I looked at all of our options. After researching we realized that surrogacy is very expensive and you are not at all guaranteed to have a child at the end of the journey, whereas adoption there is a guarantee. So then my research turned to what type of adoption would best fit us; International or Domestic. I did a lot of research on all the countries we could adopt from and I also got a lot of information regarding domestic adoption. Then on November 16, 2008, on our way to a domestic adoption seminar in Glen Ellyn, IL Matt announced to me that he was ready to start the adoption process and he wanted to adopt from Ethiopia!! YAY! See after many months of researching domestic and international adoption I had my heart set on adopting from Ethiopia. I’ll admit it was the last country I had researched due to the fact that the children would be black and Matt and I are both blond with fair skin. I wondered; How would our family react? or How would the public react? Soon I realized that I didn’t care, this was where are children were, I could feel it my bones, but most importantly I felt it in my heart. I knew God had placed this feeling in me and soon he placed it in Matt’s heart too. So since we no longer needed to go to a domestic adoption seminar, we turned around and headed home to tell our parents and Matt’s sister that we were going to be parents to a child from Ethiopia!! (Not until we started the adoption process did we decide to adopt two at once.) By the way are families were and still are thrilled for us. They could really care less about the race of our children; their only concern is our happiness.
We officially started the process in March of 2009 and now 1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks and 6 days later we are officially parents to 11 month old twins.
So you see just because you can’t give birth to children doesn’t mean you can’t be a parent. Parenting is so much more than giving birth. No it’s not the “normal” way to have children but what is “normal” anyways. These babies are my babies whether I gave birth to them or not they are my children in every other way possible!!! Forever! I hope that this gives other women and men hope and understanding that their children are out there somewhere. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder.
We would like to thank all of you that have supported us thus far on our journey to our children. We know we couldn’t have done any of this without the support of our family and friends. We are forever grateful for each and every one of you. The best is still yet to come. We hope to be bringing our children home in August.
Love,
Matt, Jennifer, Avery and Isabelle Barbee

Introducing....

Avery David Hayder and Isabelle Jane Heyriya Barbee

While we were sleeping last night the courts in Ethiopia granted us the privelage to be the parents to these two precious souls. They were born on June 29, 2009 in Shewarobit. We have been doubly blessed and couldn't be any happier. We hope to be traveling to pick them up to bring them home forever in August. For now we wait, yet again. But soon so soon we will have them in our arms and all this waiting will be behind us and we can begin our life as a family of four (six if you count Capone and Rocco).