Post Christmas wrap up

Hello everyone!

I'll have to wait awhile to get the 2nd round of Christmas pictures posted, but I promise I will once I get back to my computer in Missouri.

Lucas and I are currently up in Minnesota with the in-laws visiting friends and family. Ted flew back to Missouri on Thursday to return to his rotation after his much needed week of vacation.

We got a call from Holt International yesterday letting us know that the Homestudy is now underway! Unfortunately, it will have to be slowed a little bit since I'm up in Minnesota and can't run around for the fingerprinting etc. We won't be able to get some of the pieces that require physical presence to get done until February. At this time, we're hoping to have the homestudy done by the end of March and be working on immigration.

Both Ted and I have already had our internal freak out about baby #2 being on its way and things are getting very "real" here. Like I told a girlfriend, we spent 5 years (or in my case my entire life that I can remember) thinking about a baby.. but we haven't given as much time thinking about our 2nd baby??!! Time to get in gear! Time to get excited!! But not too excited.. because its international adoption.. so we can only get SO excited as to be able to survive a loss. But, we CAN be excited about the day that our son/daughter is placed in our arms in Addis Abba, Ethiopia.

Until then, we will continue to ask for constant prayer for our child's birth parent(s), our little baby, and safety of our papers. We don't know what could be happening in these people's lives at this very moment on the other side of the world. They may be making choices or grieving and going through pain that I can't even imagine.

Please keep them in your prayers everyone :-)

Application approved!

Okay, so within a few hours of me putting up the blog for the world, I received an e-mail from Holt International letting us know everything had been processed and approved!

That being said, we can safely announce that we are pursuing our next adoption with Holt International from Ethiopia. There are lots of reasons for this, and in the months to come I will have all sorts of time to tell you more about those reasons :-)

We began talking at length about our next adoption last summer and spent a lot of time praying and listening in hopes that God would speak to us and let us know the path He wants for our family in the world of adoption and financing it.

We will start our Homestudy in the next few weeks and we anticipate this to take about 2 months due to my long term trip in Minnesota and the amount of time we know it takes to get stuff back from all the different places.

We are hoping to be Dossier/Immigration ready in the late spring/early summer.

We were told that things are moving quickly as of right now with Holt and Ethiopia, but we also know as adoption veterans that anything can change at any moment! Either way, it is in God's hands and we just want to do His will.

Please pray for the finances it will take to bring our next son/daughter home and also for the lives of their birth parent(s) during this time. Our child could be conceived or already born at this time!

Isn't that crazy?

If there is one thing we continue to learn is that God is good. His will is perfect... and He blesses in ways that amaze us. We spent a lot of time worrying and grieving while waiting for Lucas.. and all the while God was carrying us.

We hope to share this second adoption journey with you!

<3 Erin

Sibley Three to become Sibley Four?

So when the discussions began for our next adoption, it occurred to us that someday in the near future our blog "The Sibley Three" would no longer be appropriate!

We ARE starting the process for our next adoption. We are going to wait a little longer to really get into the details of that until a few more papers go through to really get us into it. For now, we just wanted to reserve our domain name and get this next chapter of our life officially underway.

We are looking forward to another adoption journey!

Below is a photo of Erin the night before our first packet of documents left us bound for Holt International :-)