What a Day! -- We Meet Our Son

Marjetta, the head of the Albanian Adoption Committee.

Ellie asked Sister Miriam above (as I was taking this photo), "Are you Jesus?"

What a Day!
After posting last night’s blog, we walked back down the street to retrieve Ellie from our friend, Vera. Ellie was helping Vera ‘inventory’ her shop and asked when we arrived if we could by her a blouse she lifted off the rack: a lady’s tiger-print tank top.

We hit the sack around 8:30PM and slept until the alarm woke us at 6:30. We hurriedly ate some breakfast (instant oatmeal packets we brought with us) and repacked two bags to bring with us to Elbasan, where we plan to stay until my Mom (Sarah) arrives on July 8.

Mandi picked us up at 8:30 and we met Alma (Bethany aide) at the offices of the Albanian Adoption Committee. Of all places for Ellie to forget her charm, it was here. We met with Marjetta, chairwoman of the committee. It was our first opportunity to meet a member of the committee so we expressed our appreciation to adopt from her country and the gift which we received in the opportunity to become Ellie and David Reni’s parents. She was familiar with us and with Reni and said how happy she was to know he was coming to our family. The meeting wasn’t terribly long, which was fine because Ellie was acting less and less friendly by the minute. She got a firm talking to from Dad outside. Once we were back in the car, a small snack seemed to make a world of difference in her attitude. Lesson learned: feed Ellie something before important meetings!

From the AAC offices we made a quick stop to exchange some money and hit the road for Elbasan. The trip is about 90 minutes of windy, windy roads, but the views are beautiful. At one point I looked ahead and saw traffic on a mountain ridge – sure enough, we were soon there and could look down both side of the mountain. Pretty cool!

We drove straight to the Sisters’ of Charity Orphanage and greeted very warmly in English by the chief (?) sister, Rosita. Her warmth was indicative of the treatment we received from everyone inside. The sincerity and friendliness was amazing. We are so, so grateful for their kindness and care for the children. Wow. She told us Reni was waiting for us, so we quickly got our cameras ready and followed her inside.

He was in a room of sleeping children, but he was obviously wide awake. He appeared a little out of sorts but settled down after a few minutes in my arms. Ellie could not stop looking at his leg stumps and wanted to touch them. I think the reality of his situation finally hit her. His feet were not ‘curled up’ like she had believed, and once she saw that, she wanted to get his legs fixed now!
Another couple of sisters walked in to introduce themselves. A few are African and from their accents, at least one of them must be from East Africa. She sounded just like our Kenyan friends we just visited last weekend! Dressed in the white wraps with blue stripes, Ellie looked up at one and asked, “Are you Jesus?” She really did not know how close to the truth she was – these ladies are truly the hands and feet of Jesus loving and serving these kids.

David Reni was as sweet and content a child he appeared to be in the photos and video. He must be teething because he rarely stopped chomping on his finger. If we tried to put him on the floor he would fuss, so back in arms he would go where he gripped tightly. We were able to get several smiles out of him which made our day. The first meeting experience was night and day different from our first meeting with Ellie. He longed to be held, checked us out curiously and never stopped looking around. Ellie gave him a few kisses. A few of them were her ‘puffy air’ kisses and after one he gave her this sideways look of annoyance that about cracked me up. I can’t wait to see that relationship develop.

Ellie was THRILLED when the rest of the kids came down to greet us. She ran to them and was immediately surrounded like a rock star. She kept asking them (in English, of course), “What’s your name?” “What’s Your name?” She is of course older than most of them so she towers above all but two of them. I really hope she remembers these days with these kids and as she grows up develops a heart to pray for them to find permanent families to return to or join.

We stayed about an hour (it passed quickly) and left to go hunt for a hotel. We visited two. One was very close (and the price was great), but it lacked a pool which we felt would help us pass the hours with Ellie when we’re not visiting David. The one we settled on is nice with a big bathroom. We will have to arrange taxi service though to take us about two miles to the orphanage. The price is really great though at about $31/night (Dad, we got 111 Lek/dollar!)

After getting settled in we took Ellie to the pool as promised, only to have it start sprinkling literally seconds after arriving. We walked back upstairs and filled the bathtub for her to get some water time in. Now, while I write this post, Ellie is laying on her bed watching Garfield in Italian. She doesn’t seem to mind, which is good considering we forgot our case of DVDs back in Tirana! Oops!

Thank you for your continued prayers on our behalf. We don’t think it was a coincidence that after posting last night that our Article 5 letter had not yet reached the Embassy, Alma got a phone call this morning from the Embassy that our Article 5 letter had arrived. She will pick that up tomorrow along with our dossier from the Committee and return to Elbasan on Friday to submit our papers to the court.

Our next prayer request: that everything will be in order and that she can schedule a court date for us July 14 (or sooner). If that happens, then we might have a chance of getting the adoption decree by July 30 (also David Reni’s 1st birthday!) before the courts shut down for the month of August. With God, all things are possible!

We arrived!

We Arrived! God is Good!
Our trip pretty much went without incident. We took every spare hour and minute after our trip to Indiana for WGM’s 100th Anniversary Celebration in Marion. Sunday night we dropped off some students, unloaded our luggage, and drove to Wal Mart to purchase last minute supplies and gifts for the trip to Albania. We packed until a little after 3AM and got a cat nap before leaving for the airport at 5AM.

Ellie truly was an amazing little traveler. It turns out that airports are chock full of fascinating things to observe and experience, in addition to the trams, escalators, elevators, revolving signs, and general airplane maintenance machines. If we had an issue, it was her fear of the automatically flushing toilets in the American airport restrooms. It really proved difficult, but was Then, the cramped airplane bathroom proved too claustrophobic. So much so that she managed to ‘hold it’ the entire 8 or 9 hour flight across the Atlantic. Probably wasn’t a bad thing since they forgot to resupply our plane with water so there was no running water in any of the lavatories to wash your hands. YUCK! Did I mention that the front page story of the complimentary issue of USA Today the airline staff distributed boldly warned of the hidden dangers of airplane food and the shockingly unsanitary conditions in which most food is prepared. Lovely.

We also learned some of her ‘mis’conceptions about what we already knew was an abstract place to her: Albania. She raised more than a few chuckles on the first flight from Lexington when she walked down the aisle and announced loudly to our fellow passengers that we were going to ‘blast off’. She then kept an unwavering eye on the planes wings for ‘flames’. Apparently the differences between planes and rocket ships are pretty slim in her mind. Once we finally took off she declared, “We’re leaving Earth to meet my brother!” (Further confirming our belief that our repeated explanation of taking a plane to Albania caused her to put Albania in a similar plane as heaven. Some may not disagree)! Last Ellie story/quote: I didn’t consider that she just might be enamored with the animated safety video produced by Austrian Airlines. When they showed the face masks dropping from the ceiling she said, “I want to play with that but I don’t want to put it on my face!” Then, when they explained that in the event of a water landing, the emergency evacuation slides would convert to water rafts, Ellie again loudly declared (enough for at least three rows of folks to hear), “But I don’t want to land on the water!!

We landed in Albania around 1PM and (as is typical for us), hit the ground running. Mandi picked us up and took us straight to the Bethany Offices where we made arrangements for our trip to meet David Reni TOMORROW! We learned that the Article 5 letter has not yet made it to our Embassy in Tirana. If we have that letter, Alma could be requesting a court date for us tomorrow. We’ll start the day bright and early with a 9AM meeting with the head of the Albanian Adoption Committee. After that meeting and before the trip to Elbasan we’re going to check with the Embassy again to see if they have received the cable from the States.
The trip to Elbasan takes about 90 minutes (so they say) so the commute to and from Tirana on the weekends won’t be quite as great as it was to Vlora with Ellie. We plan to repack our bags and stay in Elbasan for 8-9 days until my Mom is due to arrive. We’ll come back to see her and do laundry before returning to spend more time with David Reni and appear in court.

Here’s the Timeline/Checklist/Process for the adoption:
1.) 14-day visit period prior to court for bonding
2.) 1st court appearance
3.) 2nd court appearance (usually about a week after the first hearing, but possibly sooner)
4.) 15-day appeal period
5.) Issuance of the adoption decree (pray that this happens before August 1st when the courts close for the month of August).
6.) Procure birth certificate, medical evaluation, Albanian passport, and US Visa
7.) Go home!

Thank you for upholding us in your prayers. We are truly sensing God's hand in everything, especially after our conversation with Agim about the timeline. It may yet be possible to bring Reni home with us in August which is more than we dared to hope and imagine, but could be possible -- please pray!!! Sending this from an internet cafe` so I apologize we don't have photos. Hopefully our next post will include photos of our son!
Gonna go back and crash in bed! Big day ahead of us tomorrow!

we are on our way!

After a marathon packing session and less than one hour's sleep, Mark took us to the airport at 5am. We flew to Reagan National & transferred to Dulles. It's been a looong 9 hours but we are about to board and can finally get some shut eye. We are flying into Tirana via Vienna.

Els has been filled with wonder at the novelty of flying. It is her 3rd trip across the Atlantic but first she remembers.

I'm typing on my phone so the going is slow. We want to thank all of you who became followers or sent a word of encouragement. You are so appreciated!

The next post should be from Albania! Anticipation is growing!

Special Request to All Blog Readers...

As we embark on what many would consider the "exciting and adventurous" part of the international adoption experience, I find my heart feeling some trepidation. All of the stressful memories of our adoption trip for Ellie are flooding back. I suppose it's probably not all that different from the feelings many women have as they approach the arrival of baby #2 or #3 or so on and recall the pain of childbirth. Nonetheless, while stressful moments are an inevitable part of the journey, I don't want Satan to steal my joy from what should be a wonderful time of anticipation and making lifelong memories as a family!



I am not making a shameless plea for blog comments. I know some of you who are faithful readers, yet rarely (if ever) post comments because you'll let us know in other ways that you're keeping up with our lives. I know from our blog stats however that there are dozens of others out there who follow us on this blog on a pretty regular basis. We just don't know who you are!



If you "have our back" and are following us on this adoption journey, would you do us the favor becoming a "Follower" (see box at bottom). There will be times that we will solicit specific prayer requests and it would serve as an enormous encouragement to know who out there in the blogosphere is "joining" us on this journey. And if you want to leave a comment to let us know that you are praying, that would be awesome, especially when we are over in Albania!

That's all!

One more thing: this is a double-poster day. Scroll down to read another post about our preparations!

29 pieces of clothing...

... for $106. We hit the sales rack at Kohls after church today and picked up some clothing items to donate to David Reni's orphanage. Another task checked off the list!

The days are dwindling quickly, especially as we look at what we have yet to finish up before we leave! Here's our schedule and a little bit of what's on it:

Sunday: Church, Father's Day lunch at Qdoba (yay coupons and reward card points for a CHEAP but yummy lunch!), quick nap, clean and prepare for painting 'team's' arrival (thank you Nathan C, Rachel, Meredith, Mark & Leah!), move basement furniture, spackle walls, cover windows and doors for paint sprayer. Yes, we're calling it an "ox in the ditch" Sunday.

Monday - Wednesday: Paint the primary meeting rooms, hallways, foyer and stairwell of the center (and if time, the bathrooms & 1 guestroom). Pack for Indiana, mow and trim yard and clean interiors of center (after painting) for Asbury's alumni reunion weekend (activities to take place at the center), deliver Reagan to Siobhan & Jessica's (dogsitters), last-minute shopping for Albania, make instruction list for housesitter, etc., etc..

Thursday - Sunday noon: attend WGM's 100th Anniversary, Celebration of Missions in Marion, IN.

Sunday evening: return home, pack for Albania, call travel agent to secure seat assignments for int'l flights

Monday morning: leave for the airport @ 5AM

David's Room To Date

When I started planning David's room, I really didn't have a specific direction. Just a color scheme that would work within the colors already in our home, more or less. Since my last post about his room, we've filled in a lot of gaps, but have a ways more to go. I figured it would be November before you saw any pics if I waited until it was relatively 'finished' and the carpet was cleaned!

Nathan and I are kinda proud of our curtains. It was my idea, Nathan's execution. We bought some simple white panels from JCPenneys and picked up some grosgrain ribbon at Michaels. We found iron on tape (since it was faster than reorganizing our storage room to get to the sewing machine) and Nathan scientifically calculated the distance between the stripes by using the spacing of the stripes on our ironing board cover. Pretty smart, eh?

Adopting a child that's near toddlerhood (or in it, as was the case with Ellie), we've not invested in the whole crib bedding collection thing since we wouldn't use it very long. However, I have discovered that it's incredibly difficult to buy pieces of crib bedding individually. My mother-in-law made a beautiful crib skirt for Ellie's crib that matched her window treatment and lasted through the entire conversion to a toddler bed. She offered to do the same for David, but I just couldn't find fabric that I loved. I would have gone 'skirtless' except for the need to hide a set of kids tables and chairs underneath the bed. One day while finally visiting Babies R Us, I found a bedding collection that I liked that had a matching window valance (sold separately! yay!) that would work in David's room.... but what if we didn't use it as a window valance but a crib skirt instead? Voila! Problem solved!

Okay, now for the 'theme'. That's the number one question when folks ask about his room. I really didn't know what direction I wanted to go here either. I was open to a lot of ideas, but this one has sort of emerged, though not perhaps so obviously, which is what makes it fun.

In my previous post I shared about the word art over David's bed. I've always wanted scripture verses painted on the walls of my home, but never had the skill to do it myself. I was super excited to find the phrase from Psalm 23 from Uppercase Living with the whole David-connection thing going on.

Then we rediscovered the puzzle (scroll a few pics down) of Jesus as the Shepherd with the children of the world stored under our bed when we were rearranging our bedroom (one of three that were thus rearranged last month). It was too perfect not to hang in the new nursery.

Shortly after that I rediscovered another piece of art in storage. I thought it would also be nice if we could incorporate the Kenyan print below brought back by Nathan's parents nearly 30 years ago. Then Nathan pointed out the artist's name signed in the corner: David Shepherd.

The 'mobile' was a gift from my Aunt Marcia. It features dozens of strung stars and moons which she thought was appropriate for a "shepherd's" night sky. It's perfect!

Finally, not theme-related, but the rocking chair is from my great-grandma vanOrman (whom I never knew) purchased with her 'egg money.'

The dresser above and bookcase below we purchased on our shopping trip to IKEA. I need to go back to buy more storage bins! I also want to fill in some of the empty gaps with framed photos and whatnot. Since Ellie's room is so small, I want to start migrating the bulk of the toys into this storage piece.

The carving on the wall between the closet and the door is from the Albanian city of Berat, a city with some pretty neat architecture built into the side of a small mountain. The west-ward facing homes sparkle at sunset giving the city the nickname, "the city of windows."

Gettin' closer!

This photo was taken in late April, so no doubt he's changed, but here's another pic of our cutie!
We bought our tickets!

Ellie is FIVE

After a quick trip to Illinois Saturday to pick up Els, returning Sunday, life is ramping up another notch.

During the car ride home Nathan and I planned out the next 8 days or so in great detail. We're working towards the goal of leaving for Albania on June 28 or 29 so the remaining days of June seem to be rapidly vanishing. If Monday is any indication of the days' velocity, then we're in trouble!

Yesterday was Ellie's fifth birthday. She's got the 'birthday' thing figured out. We didn't tell her, but decided to sprinkle her gifts out during the day. She got a wonderful cash register with mic, cash drawer, credit card scanner, and bar code reader from Nonna and PaPa. She's also received a wonderful collection of puzzle books, small games, and other activities to take overseas. At one point in the day after hearing the 'birthday song' sung for her again, she repeated something she said in Illinois, "I LOVE birthdays!"

We're so proud of our growing girl and marvel at her expanding mind. Her verbal abilities continue to grow more sophisticated. She never forgets a thing. She's showing an interest in learning geography (which thrills us), and for the hundredth time, I remind myself that we need to get her a globe. (Do they make them in girly colors that would match her bedroom?). In the past month she's begun going to sleep by herself in her room (without us lying on the floor until she fell asleep, though she still asks us to on occasion). She's also begun expanding her pallate too, which is a great relief to us. I keep telling her they do not have peanut butter and granola bars in Albania!

Last night she told me she wanted her brother to stay in Albania and not come home with us. I think this whole idea of a fantasy brother who lives in Albania has become a permanent part of her reality (for now). Or maybe she just senses that we're getting close to leaving?

Before going to sleep she stood up on her bed and said, "I'm growing taller, Mommy! I'm going to be as big as you!" Thankfully not for a while yet, but our leggy girl is growing and we couldn't be more grateful to be her parents. Her birthdays have a way of bringing that home.

At the end of the day we finally discovered our mail had arrived (it wasn't delivered as of 4:45 so we gave up checking for several hours). It was worth the wait as the day's mail included our I-800A approval. Thank you, Jesus! You continue to watch over us! A concern of mine was that getting our fingerprints taken ahead of schedule would make it difficult for them to connect the background check with our renewal request (which might have a unique application number from our original). Anyway, it came and now we await our I-800 to be approved which will allow Bethany to schedule our court date.

I-800s take about 2-3 weeks to be approved, and ours was received on June 7, so we hope to hear something around the end of next week. In the mean time, we would like to proceed with purchasing tickets in the next 24-48 hours. Unfortunately ticket prices are insanely expensive this summer. It's not just us, but everyone is telling us they're seeing the same thing. My family buys tickets to travel to Albania at all times of the year and we've never seen prices this high before (typically around the $1200 range, they're now $1800-$2200 with horribly long layovers). It makes buying tickets an even heavier task as we try to select dates and routes and itineraries that won't waste any time and will be good stewards of the adoption funds with which we've been entrusted.

Thank you for your continued prayers and interest in our journey! We see them being answered and hope that you can sense our appreciation for them and share in our joy as we see answers like today's I-800A approval. How grateful we are for the body of Christ!

Blog Addition

I've added a box at the top of the blog to let you know what we're waiting on next before we travel to Albania to meet David Reni. If you read our blog via a "feed", this is something you will only be able to access through visiting our site.
Thanks for your continued prayers for the process!

Ellie's First 5th Birthday Party

Gjyshe, Gigi, and Aunt Hannah came to Kentucky on Sunday and we had a little party...

Yay! A pool for the apartment in Tirana!

Ellie was enraptured with her very own bird's nest. She was waiting for the eggs to hatch. Great gift, Gjyshe!

Gigi brought sparklers. I think the photo below says it all.

Cake time! (We think this is the first year she's actually eaten her own birthday cake!)

We think David Reni is going to have a hard time keeping his sister out of his toys...

Els had such a hard time saying goodbye, that she ended up jumping in the car with them! She's been in Illinois since Tuesday and we drive up there tomorrow to pick her up! (Hence all the blog posts this week ;-) )

Ellie also got a very cool John Deere wagon which we got on video, but not on the still camera. We'll have to post a photo of that later...

A bit of immigration news

Go ahead and yawn and skip to the bold print to get the gist of this post. However I know that some of you wonderful readers have walked this path before and are familiar with this jargon and know the state of bated breath anytime you open the mailbox to find that white envelope with a blue eagle seal in the return address.

We got our fingerprint appointment today. It was set for July 6. Thankfully, we had a conversation last month with our friend Amy Kinnell (also an adoption social worker) who told us that we could request an appointment online with the Louisville USCIS office. So we did. For May 24. We showed up and begrudgingly (after a couple of phone calls by both them and us with the National Benefits Center in MO), with five minutes to spare, they fingerprinted us in spite of not having an 'official appointment'. It really came down to the fact that they didn't know what to do with us since a lot of rules changed in April removing responsibility and authority from the local state offices and centralizing it somewhere else.

We saved 5 weeks.

Now, you can join us in praying that our May 24 fingerprints (aka FBI background check) get connected with our I-800 that should hopefully be processed sometime soon! This waiting and state of 'unknown' is getting painful!

Summer Saturday Picnic

The park was very busy, but I thought we snagged the best picnic spot on site.

I love this image of Els, taking a rare moment to be still and enjoy her surroundings

Ellie has an expressive face, but I must say this look of concentration is not an expression with which I am very familiar. She was really interested in mastering these levers and I was very proud of her effort.

Many have asked for an adoption update. To put it briefly, we are still waiting upon the return of our I-800A (a request for an immigration extension and approval of our home study update to adopt "special needs"). The average turn around time has been about 4 weeks. If that holds true, we should hear something at the end of this week, or sometime early next week. We will then need to hear a reply from our I-800 before a court date can be set. We're hoping to travel at the end of this month to begin the requisite 2 week bonding time before two appearances in court (which closes down for the month of August) so we really need to hear something soon! Thank you for your prayers!