Laughner's Journey to Ethiopia

Wow! Today we learned that Kidd Family passed court! They are headed to Ethiopia on June 7th to pick up their baby girl. Check out their blog, by going to the link on the left side. Congratulations Kidd Family, we will be praying for safe travel. Two other families from our adoption agency recieved referrals today. The Redferns have a baby boy and the Wempe Family have a baby girl. Congratulations to these families. This should place the Laughners and the Forrest Family in the top 10! The Forrest Family Dossier traveled to Ethiopia with ours. We would love to get referrals at the same time and travel with them. Keep the prayers coming. We love seeing progress come from this program. Ethiopia has also recieved rain this week! This is also a praise. Thank you Lord!!!!!!!!

We spent Memorial Day at the beach in NH. with the Steiger Family! We are having a great time getting to know this wonderful family. This was our second time in one week of getting together with them. We can't wait to have our little one home to play with Jordan. Enjoy the pictures. Here is a group picture of both families. Our Family! All eight kids form 10 months to 15 years (soon to be 9)! The Steiger Family from NH. The kids were not happy posing for me, you should see the looks on their faces! The 4 boys in their army bunker, dug out by Fil. Sara and Allison ...

Today we got together with the Steiger Family from New Hampshire. They adopted from Ethiopia. They have a little girl (Jordan) who is 10 months old. What a nice family. We started out at the Magic Wings butterfly conseratory in Deerfield MA. and then came back to our house for a cookout. Between us we had 8 kids from 10 months to 15 years. We had a great time and look forward to getting together with them again. Thank you Steiger Family for a nice day.

We made it back from Montana at 11:30 last night it was so beautiful there. We accomplished the things that we needed to and the kids had great times at their sleepovers. Thank you for the help from our neighbors, (four kids are a lot to divide out). We just learned today that two families had successful court dates. The West family and the Cordell Family. Check out their blogs, there is a link to them on the left side of our blog. It is nice to see pictures of their new little ones. They should be traveling on June 7 to pick up their little ones. Please pray for them and all the other families in the process of adoption. Please also pray for Africa as they are in a drought. The families there are really struggling and people are starving.

Today we are sending the kids off to different neighbors houses for the weekend. Tom and I are headed to Montana for the weekend. Tom' dad passed away the end of March and has requested Montana as his final resting place. We went back to IN. over spring break to take care of his apartment and belongings there. Now we are going to Montana for a private Memorial Service. The kids are looking forward to the two nights of sleep overs. We will all get back together late Sunday night. We added in youth sizes on the sizing info on the left for our t-shirt fundraiser. Somehow they got missed when we set this all up. We have 2T, 4T, youth small, medium, large, ladies cuts, and unisex adult t-shirts. Thank you for your support and prayers.

We are excited to say that the West Family had a successful court day yesterday. Check out their blog to see the latest info and pictures of their son. Congratulations West Family. Scroll down and on the left you will see a list of names of other families adopting from AWAA and click on the West Family. We are sorry to say that all the paperwork needed for the Kidd Family was not present for their court date. They are rescheduled for the fourth time next week. We continue to pray for their family. There have been a lot of power outages in Ethiopia, which is making it hard for the paperwork to be faxed, emailed,etc. This is causing a slowdown with referrals, court dates, and communication in general. Please pray for these families and those waiting for referrals. Please pray for the people of Ethiopia and the struggles that they face daily. Thank you for following our journey and for your prayers. When you stop in to read the latest, please make sure click on the comments and leave us ...

We want to say a great big thank you to the family and friends that have placed orders. The bags seem to be a big hit. A special thank you to grandma who could win salesperson of the year for us. She is definitely showing off the goods and bringing orders. Keep up the good work Grandma. Thank you for your support and prayers. Have a great weekend.

Well today is officially 5 months of waiting since our dossier went to Ethiopia. The time line that we are told is 5-7 months for a boy and 7-9 months for a girl. There are still more families in front of us waiting for referrals. We pray that lots of referrals will come in this month and next and that we will be one of them. We would love to travel this summer before the ET court closures. The Ethiopia court closes from August to October for the rainy season. Addis Abbaba has been experiencing power outages which has created problems with faxing and receiving the paperwork needed to finalize referrals. We pray that these problems can be taken care of. There are several families that have court dates on May 12th. Please pray for these families. Thank you for stopping in and following our journey. Please leave us a comment.

The small video below, is made of pictures we took yesterday during and after Allison's piano recital.

Look, we have our crib up. Now we just need to empty out our fundraiser and bring home a baby. This week on Wednesday will be 5 months waiting since our dossier went to Ethiopia. The current wait time for a boy is 5-7 months. We are excited and anxious for the referral call. We are not the top of the list waiting but we are getting close to the top. Please pray for our referral and our fundraiser.

Our T-shirt and Canvas Bags arrived here today. They look pretty cool! We are so excited. There is one more box to arrive the end of next week! Depending on T-shirt sizes ordered we may not be able to ship until the end of next week. Thank you for your support and prayers during our adoption process.