Thanksgiving/Christmas with the Albrights

Babies have been coming home and new referrals have been given in the past week and I have been absent from blogland. With good reason of course. I was celebrating thanksgiving and christmas in florida with my husbands family. It was decided this year that only the children in the family would receive gifts and since sean is the only sibling with no children yet our little man in Ethiopia received his first christmas presents. There are alot of pictures but first lets tell ya who is in the Albright Clan.

Seans parents aka mimi and pap-pap

seans grandfather aka Grampy

seans sister & family aka Aunt Kera, Uncle Ryan and the cousins Christian and Camden

seans brother & family aka Aunt Tammy, Uncle Terry and the cousins Stephanie and Angel

We want to thank all of them for the great gifts and we can't wait to see who the little guy is that is blessed with all this great stuff.

The pile of Gifts in the red paper is for Baby Albright.

Warm snowsuit and new blankies. The blanket on the left is the same blanket that his cousin baby Camden has.

lots of new pajamas.

ready for bath time. Lots of new toys. Anyone wanna come over and play?This is a special gift from my mother in law. I'm not sure how long ago she bought them but she got 3. One for each of the first grandchildren from each of her children. So Christian and Angel have them and now Baby Noah has his waiting for him.

I can't wait to be able to show pictures of the completed nursery with all these great things waiting for baby. Someday the nursery will get finished I promise.

The monthly update.

Ok so I thought this week was going to be forever and that our call would never come. Our case manager Christy is pretty much running the Ethiopia program by herself for a couple weeks while the other case manager Julie is in Ethiopia so she has had her hands full with all the call and emails. After 3 months, 3 weeks and 1 day we are officially #8. We have kind of known for a couple weeks that this is where we might be but its nice to know for sure. I also asked the hard question of when can we realistically expect a referral and she actually answered (I was surprised) of course its only a guess and we can't hold her to this but she said possible end of december early january. I'm still holding out a glimmer of hope for a referral by christmas. Right now we really need to pray for families to make it through courts and be able to travel so that more children can be brought into Hannah's Hope.

We also received our first offical baby gift. Thank you Monica,John, Cathy and Cayla for the baby book.

What to do while we wait?

So we get a new # at the beginning of each month and for a week or so (ok sometimes a couple days) we are very content and happy being our new #. And then something goes crazy and we can't wait for the next month to be here so we can get another new # and we are stalking blogs and the list serve to see who got referrals and we are guessing at new unoffical #'s ,we move forward we move backwards until something just snaps in our head and we can't take anymore and we must step away from the computer. Yes this is where I was at yesterday I stepped away I read the bible verse at the top of autumns blog and wrote it down in my journal..I listened to some christian music and just gave myself a time out. And I told myself to read this verse every day but not just read it to belive it and live it.


"But these things I plan won't happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow be patient. For it will surely take place. It will not be late by a single day." Habakkuk 2:3

And with that lets get to some fun stuff...more goodies for babies room.

A hand carved mask from Kenya..found at the goodwill store. Hope this isnt scary for the little man.
I found these giraffes at the goodwill store and had to bring them home. Autumn I realized they look just like the ones in your little mans nursery I'm not trying to copy you I promise.
Photo Album and baby bath stuff from Big Lots..oh the funny conversation that took place with one clueless cashier over this album..Can't wait to change the name on the bottom (to either our last name,babies ethiopian name or babies name from us Noah) and see his adorable face smiling out at me. I'm sure it wont take long to fill this with pictures.

Tagged

Ok so I got tagged by Autumn(sorry don't know how to link to your blog) and I was considering not doing this...but then I got tagged again by Dawn or Jody I dont remember which so i'm thinkin a tag is kinda like a dare right ...a second tag is like a double dare and we all know ya can't ignore the double dare so I shall post 7 weird/random things about me. Although i don't think i'm wierd or random at all (yeah right). Unfortunetly I don't have anyone else to tag because I think all you bloggers have done this but if you read this and you haven't been tagged then consider yourself tagged and get to it.

1. I have to have a pepsi every day..its my source of caffine since I don't drink coffee and if I don't have at least one a day migraine will come

2.I'm obsessed with greeting cards..seriously they are more important to me then the gift usually...not that i don't love getting gifts but cards are important. And I don't just love getting them I love giving them...I"ll spend hours in the card store to pick out one card because I have to read them all until i find the perfect message that my heart is trying to send

3.mascots-I have a fear of them. Now I work at a baseball stadium so I have had to get over some of that because our mascot will high five me and hug me several times a game and i'm cool with that now..(just don't wanna see who is in the suit)..but some still freak me out and i can't get near them...Like a certain beaver that if you have been to a baysox game you'll know what i'm talking about...for the rest of you maybe i'll post a pic of it sometime...seriously hes freakish

4. I'm always cold...if it's below 75 i'm probable freezing and bundled up and everyone else my husband included is probable still running around in shorts..

5. sometimes i like to just make noise...just random singing or yelling of nonsense...don't be scared i only do this in my house or in the car

6.I sleep with a stuffed animal...I really do along with my husband and my dog you will also find a large stuff winnie the pooh next to me in bed...yup it gets crowded at times haha..

7. Perhaps the weirdest and most Random thing about me ......My husband haha...he told me to post that. But he is pretty weird and random...to bad he doesnt have a blog we can tag he would have way more then 7.

So there ya have it. Perhaps now I have scared everyone and noone will ever visit my blog again. Wait does anyone really come here anyway??

New #'s for October.

What an exciting month it has been..for a few weeks now we have thought that we were around #14 but of course I was to afraid to post anything until I knew something official. So here it is we just got the email probable 15 minutes ago and i'm so excited I can hardly type. After two month and 3 weeks we have moved from 21 to 13...what an amazing ride. Congrats to all the families that have received referrals in the past month. Courts are officially reopened in Ethiopia as of Sept 29th so lets hope all those families(our agency alone has about 30) get thru court quickly and get their babies home.

In other news we registered at babies r us this past weekend. We had originally planned to wait until after we got a referral but we have decided that instead of gifts for our selves for christmas this year we would like gifts for our child. Besides we are flying up the list and we still have alot of do before baby comes.

A great sale and new goodies.

Ok so the hunt for the perfect affordable lamps for the babies room is finally over. We found these today and purchased the football and the soccer one. How perfect that the soccer one has red,yellow and green on it (colors of the ethiopian flag).

And a special gift for mommy. Who can resist a diamond elephant necklace at a great price.

Sept update New #'s

Ok so its time for another blog update and new #'s. Last month our update came in form of an email this month it was a phone call so this is how it went down. Normally this time of year I would already be done with work (I work at a minor league baseball stadium) however this year the boys have made the playoffs for the first time since 1997 so we had the first two games of the playoffs at our field this week. So last night I'm at work and I knew the call could be coming so I had my phone set to vibrate. I'm taking care of customers and sure enough the phone goes off so I take a peek and see AGCI across the screen. Well of course I'm not allowed to answer my phone when I'm at work so I just have to hope they leave a voicemail. A couple minutes later I look and sure enough there is a voicemail so I told my coworker as soon as the game started I had to run into the clock in room to listen to my voicemail. And then I start thinking what if she didnt leave our new # in the voicemail??? Well Christy didn't let me down she left the new # and we are

Of course I spent the next 15 minutes running around telling all my coworkers and half my customers and had a huge grin pasted on my face the rest of the night. It also helps that the guys had an awesome game last night and won so they gave us plenty to cheer for. We have also received our FDL(favorable determination letter) so we are now officially paper ready to receive a referral when our time comes.