Some news...

Well, it has been about 2 weeks since our last post and for once we really have some news. For starters I finally had my physical done and as luck would have it, I'm still alive. We also received our appointment for our fingerprints to be done. Dottie and I will be heading to Charlotte January 3rd. In the meantime Dottie is panicked about anything happening to her hands that will mess up the fingerprinting.

We have also been busy celebrating Christmas. It's a tradition in our family to give everyone a new Christmas tree ornament each year. This year Dottie's ornament was a "passport" featuring an Ethiopian visa. We are praying that this coming year will have the real thing stamped and ready to go.

It's nice to have my physical done and our fingerprint appointment just around the corner. It seemed that for awhile there had been a slow down in progress on our adoption. With these two things getting done it is a nice way to end one year and begin a new one.

Happy new year!

Appointments!

Well, today I (John) was supposed to finally have my appointment to get my physical. As fate would have it I received a phone call early in the morning telling me that it would have to be rescheduled. So now I am going Friday.

All wasn't bad news though. When I went to get the mail I was thrilled to see a letter from the Department of Homeland Security. It's been such a long wait I had nearly forgotten about it. The letter informed us of our appointment to go to Charlotte and get our fingerprints done. The appointment is for Jan. 3.

These are small steps in the ongoing and very long process of adoption but at least they are steps forward.

The newest adopted family member...

Today Dottie and I went Christmas shopping. We decided to go to a pet store because the kids had been requesting fish. It was a rather busy day in the pet store and one particularly busy area was in the back of the store. It was in the back that the SPCA had set up with several dogs for adoption. My wife just couldn't resist going to look. It didn't take long before she found a dog that was just "so cute." With her own puppy dog eyes she looked at me and said, "You know Hannah really wants another dog for Christmas." Long story short, meet Hannah's new dog Cinnamon:

By the way, Cinnamon is a nearly 10 year old long-haired Dachshund. She sleeps a lot and as you can see from the picture below she is a tad overweight.