Wordless Wednesday

Burundi Baby Blog

Most of you know that we are waiting for our little Burundi Baby, probably toddler by now. I have a beautiful Blog that Diana kindly made for us to chronicle our journey to BB. It has been private and I had hoped to make it public when we got final approval for adoption, however that has taken a lot longer than I thought. A lot of the posts will be cross posts and I will still post what ever I can to to this blog as well. However, I have decided to open the blog to friends and family. I can only invite 100 people but I think that should cover most people that I know want to follow the blog. I will still make it public when we get approval (or travel) because I know a lot more of you will want to follow our travels. If you wish to be included in the email list please Email Me and I will try and add you. Family comes first so if I reach 100 and can't add you please do not be upset, I will open the blog to the public when we get that final approval.

Halloween Fun

Jim and I had a good day carving pumpkins playing games (which I won the majority of the time :0) and watching Dead Like Me on Hulu. Jim also made some awesome fajitas with out using a packet from the store! I was impressed I don't think we will buy those anymore this recipe was great. We ended up with a few trick-or-treaters, my favorite being the Who's and the Present from across the street and the Ninja following them ( I sure hope they noticed him:)

I also roasted pumpkin seeds for the first time boy they were yummy! better than the ones you buy by far.

Forget French

I posted a few days ago that I was looking for toddler appropriate DVD's that had a French language track. I assumed that since that was one of the official languages of Burundi that would be the language that BB was used to hearing. Well, you know what happens when you assume. After speaking with the Bishop we learned that he is hearing Kirundi. Now try and find a Kirundi language DVD for toddlers I dare you :0)

There is not much out there on Kirundi, there is a book or 2 but they are more than I can afford to spend right now and I have no way of know if they will do me any good. The Bishop is working on a phrase book for adopting parents so that we can at least communicate the basics. He also taught us a few words while we were there. It will be interesting to see what we are able to pick up once we are in Burundi for a week or two.

In the mean time I have located an online translator for Kirundi. Check it out if you are interested. It is Amajambo. I am in love with it, I hope to be able to butcher a couple phrases so I can at least say good morning, thank you, and where is the bathroom (avoiding doing the potty dance in a foreign country is a noble goal).

Oh and if anyone knows someone that is teaching their baby French, I have this that I will sell cheap, :o) It is opened but never used.

PS Thanks Debz for your offer to get me some DVDs in French, I am now thinking it was a sign that I could not find much in French around here.

Lunch with a Friend

Jody from Our Forever Journey of Adoption had an appointment in Yakima today and we were able to meet for lunch for the first time. At first it was a comedy of errors as the place we were supposed to meet had moved to Selah and she had one address and I was at the other. That will teach me to try to take some one to a fun place in Yakima they have all gone moved away. But it all turned out great because we were able to meet in the middle at a Sub Shop. As it turns out it did not matter what we ate because the company was amazing. It is so neat to be able to meet people that you feel like you already know. We read each others blogs and have exchanged emails for a couple years now (both LID in China 4/07). Now she is going to be heading to China in a few months to bring home her son!!! who is about the the same age as our BB. So we had tons to talk about, we could have stayed there all afternoon but I had to go back to work and she needed to get back on the road, :0(. I have a feeling this was just the first meeting of our "in real life" friendship.

Thanks Jody for a great lunch. I did take a picture of the 2 of us but blogger will not let me load it so I will try again later.

Whats the Scoop

So as most of you know we made the trek to Seattle to see the Bishop on Saturday. I was a great trip. We got there about an 1.5 hours early and so we did a little shopping at Penny's, Love that place wish we had one local. Jim got a new winter coat which by the crisp feel of the 27 degree weather this morning it will be well used this season.

When we got to the agency we were still early so we waited on a bench outside, playing on FB with our phones :0). The Directors and the Bishop arrived and we sat down to talk. There was only one other lady there so we were able to spend a lot of time getting information about BB and the other little girl that is going to be adopted. We hope to travel at the same time. They just submitted their paperwork this week so I hope that it goes through quickly. We don't want to wait to travel but to be able to travel with another family would be a wonderful experience.
So what did we learn, OH soooo much more than we knew before, which was essentially nothing. We are so grateful to the Bishop for taking the time to meet with us and share what he has been doing. First off the process we learned on the Burundi side of things we are only a couple steps from being approved and the Bishop will work on those in the next few weeks. We learned that he has been working very hard to push for this adoption to happen and we learned that he is very dedicated to helping all children of Burundi.

About BB, We learned that he maybe much younger than we though but we are not sure if that is accurate. We learned who is taking care of him right now and that he is living with the other baby in the same house and right now they are the only 2 very young children there. The Bishop promised more pictures and we were able to tell him how important those pictures are to us. It was not easy to get these answers, not because the Bishop did not want to answer but because of the language and culture barriers. Many times we had to rephrase things so that the Bishop could understand them and many times it was hard to understand because his thinking was not the same as ours. It took several minutes to get the name of BB's nanny because he does not see the importance of us knowing this information but for us it is very important as we know BB will be very attached to this person. We talk to the Bishop about getting a medical form filled out by a physician in Burundi so we have some medical information and we are really hoping that he is able to do that soon.

One of the issues that we face in the future is dealing with US immigration. We are hoping that they will accept all of the documentation on the children that they Bishop has gathered and process our case quickly.

So there is the run down of our meeting, we are incredible blessed to be able to meet with the Bishop in person. It truly makes all the difference in the world because you actually see his enthusiasm for this process and how much he wants all the orphans in Burundi to find loving homes.

I can not wait finally hod that little baby in my arms.

Bow Swap

I know it has been all about BB lately but we are still also waiting for our little girl from China even though it might be years away. So when Kim hosted a bow swap I happily joined in on the fun. And look at the beautiful bows I got to add to LM's collection. Thanks Cindy!

These swaps are so fun, now, I just need to find a hat swap for my bald man. Thanks Kim for hosting a fun swap.