Day 5: The Last Day

Oh, boy was this an emotional day!  We woke up excited to see our sweet girl on Tuesday.  We had been told that we would have a couple of hours with her, but thanks to Z, our driver, we ended up with about five and a half sweet hours with Mikayla Tamir.  We were so thankful that he took his time and did everything else on his schedule before coming back to pick us up!  She was sick and on medicine this day, so for a good bit of the time that we were there, we watched her sleep and cuddled her while she slept.  Poor thing!

When she was awake, we loved playing with her, talking to her, and reading to her.  It was a beautiful day, so we spent a little bit of time with her outside as well. We even got to hear her giggle a couple of times.  What music to our ears.

This was a strange day because while we were trying to be "in the moment" with our daughter, we also knew that our time with her was short and at some point we would have to hand her back to the nannies and say goodbye.  It even brings tears to my eyes as I think about it today.  Towards the end of the day, I knew I would have to let Brian hold her because I wouldn't be able to put her down when it was time to leave.  When it was time to go, we prayed over Mikayla and Brian handed her to one of the nannies.  This nanny was so sweet as we walked out of the door (me sobbing, of course) she called mama and had Mikayla Tamir "wave."  The nanny also worked her magic to get one last smile from our little one.  Priceless!  We said our goodbyes to the staff and started a very tearful journey home.  Leaving Mikayla at Acacia Village and boarding a plane for the US was the hardest thing we have ever had to do.  It is amazing how she is totally knit into our hearts, and it hurts to not have her with us.  We are so thankful that it is a matter of days until we will be back with her.  Please pray with us that we would get confirmation this week that December 28th is our official embassy date.  Part of our hearts is in Ethiopia, and we NEED her!

Day 3...Entoto Mountain

So I admit it; I am the queen of bad bloggers.  We've been home a month AND we are almost ready to go back to Ethiopia, but I am just now finishing up posting about our FIRST trip.  Oh, well!  Better late than never.  You can catch up on Day 1 and Day 2 if you missed them the first time or can't remember because it has been so long :)

Sunday morning we woke up ready to see some more of the country.  We had an excursion planned with friends, but I wasn't feeling great, so Brian and I spent the morning hanging out together watching movies, chatting, and processing.  By lunch time, I was feeling better so we called Ayele and headed up for a half day trip to Entoto Mountain.  This provides an amazing view of the sprawling capital city.  In fact, before Addis Ababa was the capital, Entoto Mountain was the home to the emperor.  There is a neat museum, a beautiful church, and the home of the former rulers.  Brian and I were amazed by how intricate so many of the materials were- from the cloth in the robes of the priests to the thatching on the roof of the emperor's quarters.  Ayele told us so much about the history of the country and what we were seeing.



 A view of the church

 A View of Addis from Above

 Some of the Emperor's Quarters

After leaving Entoto, Ayele took us on a drive through the country.  The countryside of Ethiopia is beautiful.  The mountains surrounded us and looked like patchwork.  The whole time, we continued to learn more about Ethiopia, including the area where Mikayla was born.  Ayele also shared so much of his story with us that a friendship was born in his car!  Below are some of the views we saw as we drove through the small towns of Suluta and Chancho.

Other than the days that we spent with Mikayla, this was by far my favorite experience of our trip.  While we only got to see a glimpse of Ethiopia, I treasured to opportunity to hear more about this beautiful country and her people.  Ahhh...only a couple of weeks and we will be back!

Days 2...All Around Addis

Because of staffing, we were not able to see Mikayla Tamir over the weekend.  We took the opportunity to see and learn as much about Ethiopia as possible.  On Saturday we went with some new friends and their children to the Ethiopian Zoo.  The grounds were pretty, and while the zoo wasn't huge, the main attraction was impressive.  This zoo is known for its Ethiopian Lions.  There were LOTS of lions, and they reminded us of Scar from the Lion King, with dark manes.

After a morning at the zoo, we went to the market in the Postal District for a little bit of shopping.  We don't have any pictures from the market because it was so busy, and we were honestly just trying to figure out what was going on!  After the market, we had a yummy lunch with out friend, Trent and his son and our driver Ayele.  We went to Makush Gallery for lunch.  It is a delicious Italian restaurant and art gallery.  We all ended up with pizza, which was great.  We also really enjoyed checking out the wonderful artwork.  After lunch we managed to find some great coffee at Tocoa.  Brian has been enjoying it every weekend since we got home! When we arrived back at the guest house, we spent a couple of hours talking with our friends The Mummerts.  One of my favorite things about Ethiopia was having the time to get to know people.  It was so great to linger with new friends.

Day 1: The Journey Begins

Finally...the series of posts you've been waiting for!

Our journey began eventfully as there were serious storms in Atlanta (our international gateway) during the entire day on Wednesday.  Thanks be to God, the Atlanta airport opened for just long enough for our flight from home to arrive and our flight to Amsterdam to take off on time.  Brian and I are pretty easy-going, and we travel well together, so we passed the LONG flights with sleeping, watching movies, and chatting with each other.  After 24 hours of travel time, we arrived in Addis Ababa around 9pm on Thursday.  We navigated through the airport, got our visas, exchanged money, and collected our luggage with ease.  We managed to find our driver in a sea of people.  Tamu was the face with a huge smile holding a sign with Brian's name on it.  Finally, we had arrived!

We arrived at our guest house, Yebsabi, which means welcome in Amharic.  It was a lovely place with friendly and helpful staff.  We settled in our room quickly and tried to go to sleep because we knew Friday morning would be the time when we met our sweet daughter for the first time.  After a noisy night (other bloggers weren't exagerating about the dogs and roosters), I woke up nervous...in an excited kind of way.  We ate a quick breakfast and waited for our agency representatives to come and get us and take us to meet Mikayla.  A couple of weeks before our arrival, our daughter was moved to Acacia Village, which is our agency's transition home about 30 minutes outside of the city.  All of the children at Acacia Village have been matched to their families.  On the way, we picked up another CWA parent, Trent who was in country for his son's embassy date.  We connected right away and he offered to video and photograph the first moments when we met Mikayla.  What a precious gift!  In the video, you can hear Trent's sweet voice ooohing and ahhing over our new family-priceless!  We waited downstairs for Mikayla to be brought to us, and after what seemed like forever, we learned that she was taking her morning nap and that we didn't want to wake her up because she would be grumpy!  Brian and I were perfectly OK with going and staring at her sleep for a bit.  We were all for meeting a happy baby for the first time!  Here is the first time we saw Mikayla Tamir:

While she finished her nap, we enjoyed a coffee ceremony, we got a tour of Acacia Village and got to spend time talking with the director of Acacia Village, Haddush, a delightful man with an enormous heart for these children and their families.  Then, it was time to meet our daughter for the first time.  She was so alert and happy.  Shortly after waking up, I got to feed her.  Awesome!  Then we loved on her and played with her for most of the rest of the day.  We took a short break to have lunch with the staff.  Then it was back to spend time with Mikayla for most of the rest of the day.  We anticipated spending only about an hour with her during our first visit, but we were together for several hours.  It was wonderful!

Our first family photo. 

What a precious moment!

Asleep in Daddy's arms.  Can you tell she was playing too hard with the rattle and keys?

She was really taken with Brian immediately

More to come!