Celebrating, Paper Work, and What's Next

It has been a fun week of telling our friends and family about our little girl in Ethiopia. It is such a good feeling to be able to celebrate with people who have been praying for us and our Mia for so long.
Here is a picture of us accepting our referral. Our caseworker (K) has been incredible to work with. She has been so patient and supportive this past month. It was so nice to be able to rejoice with her that our sweet Mia Grace M now has a family.

We went to dinner with our sweet friends, the Strains, on Tuesday to celebrate. This picture isn't very good, but it's all I have from that fun night of celebrating our referral of our daughter. This family is so, so, very precious to us. They have been a huge support to us during every step of the adoption. Megan has been there to laugh with me, cry with me during the hard times, pray for us, and just listen to me. I am so glad we get to do life with this wonderful family.
It's so crazy that we are going to soon need a table for 10 when our 2 families meet for dinner. Their two girls have been praying for baby Mia from the very beginning. I'm so glad they will get to see their prayers answered as we bring our daughter home.
Sawyer and Jolie are fun friends and they just had to have their picture taken together.

In other news, Justin and I turned in all of our referral paperwork on Friday to officially accept our referral. Yay!!!

This week we will have our Next Steps phone call to discuss what to expect from now on. The big question I get from every one is "when will she be home?" At this time we really don't know. We have to do some more waiting, of course. We have to make 2 trips to Ethiopia. During the first trip we will meet our daughter, spend time with her, and go to court to hopefully have the judge say, "she is your daughter." So, for now we are waiting for a court date. I am thinking this could be sometime in January, but we really just have to wait and see.

So, what are we up to while we wait? We still have some money to raise in order to be able to get our sweetie home. So, we are in the process of applying for grants and continuing to fundraise. Justin is still taking pictures and has a lot scheduled in the coming weeks. If you are local and want to have Justin do a photography session for your family, please let us know. We are also hoping to have a garage sale.

We also need to get Mia Grace M's room ready. I'm so excited to have a girl this time. We are also currently working on updating our home study. It expires in November, so we were already in the process of updating and paper chasing once again. We are waiting for our fingerprint approval from the FBI. I have no doubt we will be busy while we wait.

We also appreciate your prayers as we wait and work to get our girl home!