All of the Paperwork is In!!!

The court finally got the birth certificate and we should have our Court Date soon! We have been told to expect a Court Date sometime during the last week of July or the first week of August. Based on families who have recently received their Court Dates, we expect to be notified only a week ahead of time. Everything in country is arranged by our adoption agency; we just need to get ourselves there! Because of the short notice and this is a peak travel time for Europe and Ethiopia, the plane tickets aren't exactly cheap.

We will land in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia's capital) and remain there for our entire stay - about 6-7 days. Our adoption agency has a contract with a small hotel (www.yebsabi.com) and we'll have a driver to take us anywhere we need - for both he Court Date and to see some tourist sites. We have followed numerous families who have traveled, some as recently as a couple of weeks ago, and our adoption agency has everything required in-country down to a science. We have no doubt we'll be well taken care of.

We have managed to send our son three care packages with families who have traveled in the past month either for their Court Date or to bring their child home. The pictures (to include two short videos!) we've gotten from them are priceless, and we are super-anxious to share some of them with everyone. Evidently, he's quite the ham!