Big news!

Hey everyone! We got some fantastic news last week -- we've been really nervous about it, and we've been talking a whole lot about how it's going to change our lives. We weren't sure that it would actually happen, though. It was supposed to take a lot longer, but we finally found out that we're due for a tax refund this year! Yea!


Oh, and we also learned that we're going to be parents to twins. You know, just the regular...or at least the regular for the Simpson family! TWINS! We can't believe it. The quick details: fraternal twins, boy and girl, born June 30, 2007. We were kind of hoping for a birthday closer to Christmas so we could cop out and only get one set of gifts a year, but I guess that's not happening. We haven't received any pictures yet, and we won't until all of our paperwork is official. Their given names are Marta (her) and Abebe (him -- pronounced a-BAY-bay). However, in all likelihood, we will probably be giving them new first names. Particularly for him, we're thinking that it could be a long childhood of explaining, "No, not A-bee-bee, but Abebe."

This development caught us totally off guard because we didn't even have our paperwork finalized. We weren't aware that it was possible to get a placement without having all the documentation submitted. It all started when Radu, our agency director in Oregon, sent Leah an email with an attachment and a quick tagline, "We need to discuss this." The attachment was a collection of court and orphanage documents that had information on the children. He had meant for it to be an understated message in order to enhance the surprise and joy. It was so understated, in fact, that Leah totally ignored the message in her inbox. In her defense she was teaching a workshop in Denver that day, and so she only glanced through her messages briefly when she had a few minutes between sessions.

I had to call Radu for something that day, and he asked me if Leah and I had talked about the email. When I asked him what he was talking about, he gave some cryptic answer about needing to talk after we read the email. At that point I was pretty sure I knew what was going on, but I didn't have the email myself. I was flustered enough that I didn't even think to ask Radu to forward the email to me at work. I was almost done at the office, so I made a beeline home where I had access to check Leah's email. Sure enough, there was the information on the two future Simpsons. I was laughing and crying at the same time, and I was DYING that Leah was 2000 miles away. I'm a big fan of our cat and dog, but celebrating with them was a poor substitute. Plus, Atticus is a mean drunk.

The first pages were medical reports detailing the children's satisfactory physical, mental, and health conditions. The following pages were court records detailing how the children came to be placed in an orphanage. Their parents are married and working as house servants in Addis Ababa. They had to give up Marta and Abebe because they have no extended family, and they could not care for them alone.

Up until this point, I had been overjoyed at our good fortune of getting placed with twins (our highest preference) so quickly. But as I continued reading through the court records, I had a vivid image of an Ethiopian couple about the same age as Leah and me handing their children over into strange hands. I know how much Leah and I have desired a family, and the thought of being forced to give away something so true and dear after wanting it so much is unimaginable to me. I prayed to God in thanks for allowing us to be parents for these children, and at the same time asked Him for a world in which parents are not forced to give their children away because they can't afford them. I didn't fully realize until that minute that raising adopted children is not just a huge responsibility, but also an unbelievable honor. It's our job to raise Marta and Abebe into a woman and man that will make their parents proud.

I finally got in touch with Leah about 10:00 at night and told her she needed to check her email. She called me back in less than a minute. I'm pretty sure I've never heard anyone sound so happy in my life. I could hear her smile through the phone. She told me she fell onto the floor when she opened the attachment. Again, getting news like this is a bad time to be 2000 miles apart. We talked and laughed for a long time about how unbelievable this was. We didn't officially start our paperwork until December, and less than 3 months later we have a referral for twins.

At the time, we were waiting for our approval from Citizenship and Immigration Services, which we weren't supposed to get for another two months. I talked to Helene Nathanson, who is the president of an adoption agency in Charlotte, and she was an absolute angel. She took up our cause to some of her contacts in the government, and we received our papers this week. We'll send them to our international agency next week, and we've been told to expect that we'll travel to pick up the children in about three months. That means we could be parents by early summer. We'll keep you updated and post pics when we have them.