OFFICIAL TRAVEL DATES!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We are officially travelling on January 15th 2009 to pick up the cutest little boy in the world! Jacob, my mom and I fly through Amsterdam and we will be spending about a week in Ethiopia to transition from his life at the care center to his life with us as his new family! It is very exciting. I will do my best to keep updates on the blog while we are away, but there is not telling what kind of internet service we will have. The pictures might have to wait until we get back home. . .

It is exciting that we ended up booking our tickets on New Year's Eve!

I hope everyone is celebrating and having a wonderful new year.

Lots of love!
~nehama

A little history for your Christmas pleasure :)

The countdown is beginning to the trip to Ethiopia. We have been ordering baby and toddler things, started visiting day care centers and we should know in the next couple of days that we are actually travelling in mid-January!

I thought it would be fun to start off telling a little history of my process. Some of you already know this but i thought it was fun to figure out the dates.



April 2006--My first trip to Ethiopia.
My friend Andy and I travelled around and just fell in love with the country, the people, everything in it.

May 2006--I decide to have a baby, as a single mom.
After 2 relationships ending, I realized I was going to have to wait a long time if I was going to have a kid with a partner. I started talking to some friends about being donors and thought about getting pregnant. I saw some doctors, realized that I was going to have a harder time getting pregnant, but it wasn't impossible.

June 2006--Still didn't find a friend who wanted to help me get pregnant and I started researching sperm banks in Israel (learning all kinds of new vocabulary!) but not really feeling like it was right for me.

July 2006--I came home from Israel, I felt totally ungrounded and realized I was in no shape to have a kid. Also, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted children--not a pregnancy.

April 2007--One year after my trip to Ethiopia, I started talking about adoption. I wondered if Ethiopia was an option for me and started researching.

Summer 2007--I spent all summer talking to an adoption counselor and reading every book I could get my hands on about international adoption. I picked and agency for my home study and narrowed down and chose and agency for the adoption in Ethiopia.

September 25, 2007--I applied to the Children's Home Society and Family Services in St. Paul, MN and I was approved to apply for an adoption.
I wrote this poem that day: Application Day

October 30, 2007--My 30th birthday! I had a birthday party the day after I ran a marathon in Dublin, Ireland. I conducted a ritual called b'sha'ah tovah, meaning in a good hour. This was a symbol of moving from the active and busy phase of filing all the paperwork and beginning to just wait for news.

December 1, 2007--I was officially placed on the waiting list after all of my documents and fingerprints and background checks were filed at the agency.

and then i waited.

and i waited.

and the estimate of 5-7 months became 6-8 months

and then the 6-8 months became probably closer to 1 year

and then

October 7, 2008--I went with my mom and my grandmother (Oma) to visit my grandfather's grave. Afterwards, as we walked around Stew Leonard's (a very cool supermarket) I got a phone call from my social worker in Minnesota and an email with pictures of my future son.

October 21, 2008--On his first birthday, I travelled to Ethiopia to meet him. My favorite comment made by one friend was: Every mother meets her child on his birthday.

October 23, 2008--As I get out of the taxi at Jacob's apartment, he is waiting for me across the street. I don't see him, and he doesn't see me, so I end up at his door while he waited outside. He runs up 6 flights of stairs and hands me a card and a gift bag. As I start to read the card, he gets down on one knee and inside the card he asks me to join him in a life of love, family, torah, justice--and marriage. I said yes! And, now we're a family. . .

December 16, 2008--My social worker calls and lets me know that we have been approved in court and I am legally the mother of the child whose birth certificate will now read Ashenafi Nehama Benmosche (we're going to have that changed once we bring him home too) and they are waiting for his birth certificate to be reissued so they can apply for a visa.

This is such an exciting and amazing time. A seed planted on one of Nehama's wild adventures has changed the course of my life--and I couldn't be happier.