We're Going To Ethiopia!

Today we bought our tickets for Ethiopia!  We got the okay to travel from the agency director as she said none of the court dates are being moved or rescheduled.  She said that even if our MOWA letter is not there we will still make our appearance before the judge and fulfill that requirement.  The MOWA situation is not yet fully resolved but we do know that the head of the department lost her job and they are making other staffing changes as well.  They also said that any cases that were summoned to court before March 5 would be expedited by MOWA and not subject to the five a day rule.  That would include us!  Perhaps we finally got some good luck!

As far as our trip itinerary is concerned, I am extremely excited!  Troy's brother Adam is a priest at the Vatican in Rome so we have decided to go see him on our way to Ethiopia.  I have always wanted to go to Rome!  So, our itinerary is as follows:

     April 12th          Detroit to Toronto
     April 12-13th     Toronto to Rome
     April 17th          Rome to Addis Ababa  
     April 20th          Our Court Date
     April 21st          Addis Ababa to Rome
     April 21st          Rome to Chicago
     April 21st          Chicago to Detroit

We will be spending four days in Rome and four days in Ethiopia.  Four days does not seem nearly long enough with our little boy but we don't want too much bonding to occur as we don't know for sure when we will be back to get him.  This will only lead to more heartbreak---mostly on our part.  This will also be the longest we will have been away from the girls and don't think we can stay much longer.

We are so looking forward to this adventure as well as finally getting to meet our soon-to-be son!

We Got our Court Date . . . But . . .

April 20, 2011!!  That's the date that our little boy may officially be ours!  It has to be a good luck date as it is just two days before our 16th wedding anniversary.  I am so excited to say that in about six weeks I will get to finally hold my future son! We now have to start making travel plans . . . but . . .

Twenty-four hours after we learned of this date we also learned that MOWA, the agency in Ethiopia that writes the approval letters for the adoptions, has publically announced that they will reduce the number of letters they write to FIVE a day starting later this month.  They typically write between 40-50 per day and they aren't written until anywhere from one month to one day before your court date.  The estimates are that this is going to cause LONG delays; even up to a year in some cases.  Why now?    We are so close and have waited so long already.

We are not sure about booking our flights now as we are wondering if our court date may be changed.  I will be contacting our agency director this next week as developments unfold to find out what we should do.  We, along with thousands of others, are hoping this is just a cruel joke or will be at least put off for awhile.

We finally got to bask in the joy of good news---for all of twenty-four hours.