WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!

Today was great. LiLi was in summer camp all day and Anna was working...so George and I took out the boat. It was so much fun and the weather was fabulous. We are now home packing. We leave tomorrow to go to Orlando, Florida until next Wednesday. It should be a lot of fun.

Vietnam update: Our agency did receive 4 referrals this week and a couple of travel approvals..which is great news. We still do not have any idea whether our case will be "grandfathered in" if we don't receive a referral by Sept. 1st.

Ethiopia Update: We had our phone interview with our agency on Wednesday night. We talked about referral and travel information. It was very informative. There is a good chance that we could have Bella home before Christmas. We are trying not to get our hopes up...of course, LiLi thinks that Santa will bring her 2 sisters for Christmas!

OUR DOSSIER MADE IT!!

We are in DC and I just tracked our dossier. It made it to Addis Ababa this morning! :) Great news! We are leaving tonight on the train back to Charleston. My wonderful Dad will be picking us up from the train station at 5 am. We will keep you posted.

GREAT NEWS!

We are in Chicago today having a great time. I just checked my email and we had a message from our adoption agency stating that our dossier was on the way to Ethiopia. They also sent us the tracking number so we can track the dossier all the way there..not sure if that is a good thing. :) This means that today is the official day that we start our wait for Bella. We should have her picture in the next three months. We are so excited and wanted to share the news!

DTV 7 months

Today it has been 7 months since our dossier was sent to Vietnam. We still don't know anything for sure. Just praying and waiting...hoping that we will bring Maura home from Vietnam.

We have had a great trip so far. One day we ate at Harar Mesob, an authentic Ethiopian restaurant, in Crystal City. It was fantastic and the decor was great. We talked to the waitress, who was from Ethiopia, about our adoption from Ethiopia. She thought it was great and kept talking about how lucky she would be..we kept saying that we were the lucky ones. As far as we know, our documents are still at the Embassy in DC. Hopefully, we will get news soon that they are on the way to Ethiopia.

We also went to the Smithsonian Zoo in DC. It was so hot..heat factor of 104 degrees. Several of the exhibits were closed due to the extreme heat. We left there after two hours and went to Nam-Viet. It is a great Vietnamese Restaurant walking distance from the zoo. We had a GREAT lunch. LiLi likes Vietnamese food much better than Ethiopian. :) We left DC and took the Amtrak train to Chicago to visit some friends. After 21 hours on the train, we arrived in Chicago today at 1 pm. We will be here until Sunday night. We will post pictures soon. 

Diana and George 

Getting ready for vacation and updates

Vietnam update: nothing new..we are still waiting to see if we will be able to complete our adoption from this beautiful country.

Ethiopia: Our documents are currently in DC getting authenticated..then..they will be on the way to Ethiopia.

Today I had an appointment with an Infectious Disease doctor. She went over all the vaccines that we will need depending on whether we go to Vietnam/Ethiopia or both. We had Hep A and B in 2006 when we adopted LiLi from China..so we don't need those again.

George, LiLi, and I are getting ready for a vacation. We leave Saturday for Washington, DC and Chicago. We are taking the Amtrak train and will be gone almost 2 weeks. George has a couple of meetings in DC but other than that..its a 100% pleasure trip. We are going to take LiLi to the zoo in DC on Sunday. We will post from DC with pictures!