One More for Today

This was at the top of Entoto Mountain. There were 5 kids that
showed up. One of them had a stick, string, and a plastic grocery
bag... a homemade kite!!

Eyasu, our driver, is the man in the photos holding Nevaeh

The woman, is a lady that works at the top of the mountain to collect the fee (10 birr, $1 for both of us), she is 18.  

Day 3

Nevaeh slept mostly through the night.  She woke up at 4am and didn't want to go back to sleep right away so we took the time to call a few family members stateside since it was 7pm at night in Texas.  After the phone calls we luckily went back to sleep until 9am.  So all in all a great first night sleep for our new family.  

We woke up and headed to one of the nearby mountain peaks for some sightseeing, Entoto Mountain.  It was absolutely beautiful up there, from there we went to have lunch and then we went to the National Museum.  All three of us woke up happily from a nice afternoon nap and tonight is the big cultural dinner with all the staff and families.  Yum more injera!!!  Neveah loves injera and we have ordered it for her the last 2 lunches.  We packed some leftover injera from yesterday's lunch and dipped it in some mashed peas that we had brought, she loved it.  It might well become a staple at our home. 

pics to follow hopefully

She's not a bud, she's a buddette.

More Pics

A quick slide show of today.

 

Gotcha

Internet is REALLY slow right now. Have to try a bit later for more
pics. But today was wonderful. Cliff Notes: We had a nice
breakfast, then headed to the Gladney house. Amanda and Jason already
had their special time meeting their son and so it was our turn.
Everyone left the room and Emily and I waited until they brought
Nevaeh into the room. Fantastic. She had little reaction during the
first 2 min, then the staff left the room to the three of us, and
Nevaeh quickly fell fast asleep. She slept for the next 30 min on my
arm and we had a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Afterwards we
headed to lunch at the Top View and then headed to the Embassy to get
all the other paperwork done, all three families were done in 25 min
(supposedly a record) and we headed to the Trinity Orthodox Church.
Took a ton of pictures today but will have to share them later when
internet improves or when we get home. In for a rest at the hotel
now, out to Ethiopian dinner tonight. Excellent day.

pics from our travel

I think I figured out how to post pics from here. Hopefully this works. The traveling went fine, but as I said in the prior post the carry-on restrictions at Ethiopian air are very strict. 15lbs is not a lot of stuff. Emily was wearing a fashionable dob kit as a purse and we were able to sneak some weight to the Frey's after they got checked in.

We got so see the Nile from the air which was cool. Also flying over egypt was pretty amazing, desert as far as you could see. And kind of a no brainer, but flying into Addis was dark. Even-though they have 3 million people here there was not much ambient light coming off the city from the air. And of course the areas surrounding Addis were very dark.

The Gladney Staff have been wonderful even in our first 3 hours. They had 4 cars to pick us and the Frey's up, and our driver picked us up some bottled water on the way to the hotel.

Lots of guys at the hotel grounds with machine guns. There is a huge African conference going on this week an the Hilton is a popular place, so security is tight. I guess Emily and I fit in well as we were checking in with all of our bags. "And here comes the foreign dignitaries from Texas"

We Made It!!

We arrived about 2 hours ago and all is well.  All the bags made it.  We had a lot of help from the Frey's (our traveling buddies).   Both of our families head to the gladney house in about 11 hours to finally meet our children!!  So very exciting.

 

Bags

21" x 16" x 8" -- 15lbs. Carryon limit

Plus a laptop or purse

Restrictions for ethiopian air.

Oops........
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And we are off

Thanks again for all the prayers and humanitarian aid. We checked 11 bags in. Luckily the united check area was relativly empty. Apparently they only give a discount for camera crews, and our point & shoot didn't quite make the bar.

The Frey's checked in right after us and will be our traveling buddies for the next 24 hours.

- the lydicks

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MORE PACKING!!!!

OK. I might have lost count, but I think we have seven 69 pounders
and three 49 pounders. Two of the duffles are slightly over 62" but
hopefully we will get an agent with a big heart.

Still haven't packed us yet. Guess we'll start tomorrow.

More Packing

The ones standing up are done. 69lbs each.

The ones laying down are 49lbs and we need to put 20lbs more books in
them.

Still haven't packed our clothes yet.

For those planning to take United Airlines to Ethiopian Air to Addis
the restrictions are as follows:
2 checked in luggage for free (62 linear inches & 50lb limit)
Additional bags are $160-180 (I have called 4 times and gotten a
different answer every time)
You can upgrade any bag to 70lbs for $50.
The limit on extra bags is 4, so 6 checked bags total per person.

I haven't found anyway to get United to give a discount for
Humanitarian Aid.

Packing

62 linear inches, 50lbs, ohhh my!!!  That's the limit for United International flights per checked-in bag.  

We basically started packing things today.  Not our things, but aid for the foster homes and orphanages.   We have had an outpouring of support from our friends, sunday school class and Greenwood Office Outfitters.  We have over 300 lbs of notebooks, diapers, school workbooks, children's clothing.  So... um ... yeah, we will be buying extra bags.  

Did you really just wake me up?

Here I lay, fast asleep dreaming of dolls, teddy bears, brothers....


Did you really just wake me up to take a PICTURE!!!




Ok, photo shoot over, can I go back to sleep now?





Thanks to the Runnions for sending us new footage of our little one. They just returned after picking up their daughter. Here is what they said: "She was just waking up when we saw her...hence her not so happy face in one of the photos. The caregivers LOVE her!! She is the Princess of her room! "

Whoa squared

Court done, our beautiful Nevaeh is offcially ours!!! We travel Jan 29th.
Thank you for all your prayers.

We are currently missing connecting flights and traveling in rainy California (the sunshine state?!). Always an adventure with the lydick clan....

Our hearts and prayers go out to those that got delayed today in court, we know this must be extremely tough.  

Whoa?!?!

Court date scheduled for this Friday, January 4th.

Which means we could travel as soon as late Jan - early Feb!!!!


Court processes can get delayed and moved so we are trying to keep a flexible mindset, but WHOA!!!!

so many things to do, so little time.....

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

A few bits of irony about our referral for your New Years enjoyment:

- Bryce has been crazy about pirates for the last two years  --->  Our darling little girl has one hooped earring and is nicknamed "cutest pirate" by her caregivers

- Emily and I had talked about trying to stop in Dubai on our way over there to see the amazing city.  We probably won't go now because of logisitics.  --->  Nevaeh was conceived and born in Dubai, so we're getting the best part of Dubai, even if we don't go there.  

Oscar drew this picture at the beginning of last week before the referral, he had decided to call his new baby sister Bessy for the longest time until last week.  This is a picture of him, Emily, and "Lucy".  He changed what he wanted  to call her out of the blue last week to Lucy, obviously quite close to LuLu.   

Happy New Year to all!  I know that 2008 will be wonderful and different for our family, I hope it is good for all of you.