March 29

One year ago today we received the phone call about a little 4 month old squirt who is now our daughter! That day we got the call we also got to see her face in this picture:

You can imagine how much we stared at this picture over the last year! Now I can't believe how much she's changed!

 

Today we are also marking 4 weeks since Troy and I took custody of Samira. Below is a picture of that day-March 1st- her "gotcha day"! You can see they decked her out in a new fancy little outfit for the occasion.



 Having that chunk of time to mark and look back on has been good to see where we've come from. When the first days felt long and like we'd never be at this point now suddenly we look up and here we are! We can't talk about where we've come or this adoption without giving credit where credit is due. God has been our constant and our help through this and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for His grace. God and God alone is to receive the praise for anything we've been able to accomplish so far. We aren't just saying it---we've experienced such moments of human weakness where we know God's strength is the only thing that propelled us through those times.

I will soon write a one month post adoption report for our records covering many areas of Samira's development.

In the meantime, we are doing well and settling in and just marveling at where we've come in the last month of experiences.

Home Sweet Home

Announcing the newest member of the family:

Samira Amina Avery

 

 

We think that’s the official name and spelling we’ve decided on—sorry for the confusion with what it was—it’s not officially changed yet so she actually has Troy as her middle name currently (just the way Ethiopia does it on the paperwork)

 

It is our privilege to raise her and we wanted to keep that part of her given by her birth mother (Semira) while also honoring her birth mother (MI name)

All along this process we believed her name to mean “fulfilled” which was our hope to cling to the God would carry us through completion in this process-in Ethiopia, however, there were varying versions of her name meaning including blessing and God’s gift- all wonderful meanings

 

This week Friday we will be home 2 weeks. It took us a week to recover from jet lag and time zone changes but we are hopefully past the worst of sleepless nights. (there is one other curly headed factor affecting that too!) We have done a very select few outings and will continue to lay low for a while until we start to gradually introduce Samira to new experiences and people. Now we are doing the recommended time with our little family working on bonding among us 6. We continue to be humbled by the expressions of congratulations and people who are continuing to pray for us. Our homecoming was the start of us getting down to work really (Samira found out she has siblings—three of them!!)-we only had one week of custody of her before coming home. Although we started the foundation of our relationship with her there, in her culture, we are relieved to be reunited with all our kids and are tackling things on our own turf which has us more comfortable. We cannot wait to show her off, meet all our wonderful supportive circle and start attending our regular activities but that will all have to come in time. It is hard to answer in 1-2 sentences how our trip was because it was so emotional and we are still quite close to it so we are still processing things ourselves. I hope some time away from the events will give us a better perspective on all we experienced. Please be patient with us as we are working on this transition and know we are so appreciative to each person who has been interested in this journey.