Tomorrow...

Tomorrow we will know if our girls are officially our daughters! Wow!
I so hope that we will be able to post pictures of the new members of the Simmons household!

I have appreciated all of the encouragement and prayers from the few who read this blog! (o: It has helped me immensely through this process! God bless you all!

2 days....

TWO more days until our court date!! Wow! I've thought about this alot over this holiday weekend. Of course, it would have been wonderful to have our daughters home for Thanksgiving, but that was not to be...and, so, we look forward to hearing good news on Monday!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We celebrated with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law/best friend (Suzy), and 6 college students who could not go home for the holidays! Instead of the traditional turkey dinner (we had this at Suzy's the previous weekend!), we had yummy italian....traditional lasagna, veggie lasagna, and seafood fettucine alfredo...yum!

We got up early on Friday to go shopping for all of the deals WalMart has to offer! This was the first time I participated in this insanity and have to admit I rather enjoyed it! My husband and I, Suzy, and my 3 older children arrived around 4:30 and stationed ourselves at the special deals we decided we wanted the night before--the advantage of having teenagers! I was a bit nervous...I refuse to fight for any material item and had heard that people can get vicious. I did not find this to be the case at our particular WalMart....it was crowded, but everyone was as friendly as could be expected at 5 in the morning (with a few exceptions). The kids had a good time doing this (it's all about creating memories, you know!) and we were able to save some money on Christmas presents!

A Special Surprise

Oh my goodness...I just got to see the most precious thing! I wish I could share it with you, because I'm sure you would agree. It is a video clip of my two sweet girls each saying 'I love you!' I'm sure you can just imagine how many times I've watched it!

The second most precious thing was watching Emma play the video clip over and over again with a big smile on her face! She is excited about meeting her sisters and talks about them all of the time! What a treat to be able to see them and hear their sweet voices!

5 days until our court date!

I hope everyone has a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!!

Coming soon--court date #3

ONE WEEK until our next court date! I was convinced in October that I would never get excited about another court date. Guess what--I was wrong! How can I not be excited about the possibility of these 2 girls officially becoming my daughters?! How can I not be excited about the possibility of being able to travel to Ethiopia and hold these two girls in my arms after looking at their pictures for 6 months?! I AM excited!

A Time to Celebrate

It all began last April after we received the referral of our two beautiful girls and began following the Ethiopian adoption blogs. We saw over and over again on the blogs the many children in the many orphanages in Addis. It tugged at our heart strings that there were so many children without families living in need. We knew that we had to do something to help. We gathered the humanitarian aid to take with us when we travel, but still felt like that wasn't enough. We really wanted to be able to do something more for the children in the orpanages. So, we got our community involved. My husband, John, designed tshirts. The tshirts say 'Barton' (which is the name of the community college where John teaches) in Amharic across the front. A donation of $30 would get the donor a tshirt, an Ethiopian child a tshirt, and the rest of the donation would go to provide for the needs of the children in the ophanages. As incentive, my crazy husband advertised that if we raised $10,000, he would shave his head at our community college's basketball game! With the help of so many people in our small community, we reached our goal!

We had to celebrate!!

We organized a Barton to Africa night at the college.....

Not one, but two men shaved their heads,

the Barton dance team performed an African dance,

the pep band played some African music,

and all in attendance were encouraged to wear their tshirts (which gained them free admission). We had four Ethiopian students from a nearby college attend the event. They sang the Ethiopian national anthem before the games began. We invited Mary T. to come and accept the check on behalf of Gladney, our adoption agency. Gladney will make sure that the money is used where the need is the greatest.

What an awesome town we live in...so many people were willing to support our efforts--we just had to ask.

We are excited to be able to donate this money, but realize that it is such a small amount in comparison to the overwhelming need of the children in Ethiopia. Our hearts break for the children in our daughters' birth country. I still wish we could do more.

Hopefully next month we will get to travel to Ethiopia to bring home our precious girls. We will get to distribute our tshirts to the children, give them hugs, pray for them and cry for them. Then, we will leave and come home to our comfortable home with our family. Then what? God help us to know!

Being selfless

I have to tell you a story about a sweet young lady in our church. She is in the 5th grade and just had a birthday recently. She had a birthday party and, instead of getting presents, she had her friends bring money to give to my husband and I to share with the children in the orphanages. What a special little girl! Not only did she make a sacrifice for other children more needy than herself, but raised awareness of the needs with her friends! I am still in awe that she did this and am sooo proud of her! It is my desire to be this selfless!

1 John 3:16-19
We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion--how can God's love be in that person?
Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.