Hale Family Tales

This is such a busy time of the school year with activities wrapping up, spring programs, field days, and recitals. With the added transition of a new baby and an increasingly large belly to lug around, it is no surprise that I have been in bed right after the kids have been tucked in [...]

My friend – who is an adoptive Mom twice-over – posted this on Facebook today. These thoughts have been swirling around in my head over the last few weeks and she perfectly put them into words.

“So many people say that my girls are blessed to have me… and while yes I think it’s true, [...]

Ellie has been coming up with some pretty fun ones lately and I don’t want to forget them:

-While we were gone, she was sitting on the couch next to Grandpa and kept having gas. He commented on it briefly and awhile later, she looked back up at him and said, “I just had smoke.”

-Hannah [...]

Things are going very well in the Hale household as we are adjusting to life with our newest member. Julia continues to be a wonderful, peaceful baby. She has an emerging sense of humor either always smiling or trying to catch someone’s attention to blow raspberries at them (she especially likes to do [...]

Cross-posted from Ryan’s blog.

We made it home last night and were able to spend a few hours with my parents and the girls before we crashed. We had a little picture-sharing and story-telling time this morning and are trying to rest up. Just before coming home, I started putting together a quick slide [...]

Cross-posted from Ryan’s blog.

The last few days have been interesting, like a civics lesson in Ethiopian government and adoption process. As mentioned in my last post, we met the birth parents and then they went back to Awasa. On Tuesday night, we decided that we really needed to try to head home and [...]

This is the e-mail that we sent our parents to let them know how our day went. I am just going to paste it here, because, frankly, I am too tired to rehash the story again:

Well today’s news came out of left field… When Ryan et al. went to
court today the boyfriend of [...]

The birthmother, the attorney, Ryan, and various Bethany staff headed to court today. The only problem was that there was no judge or staff present in the court that has jurisdiction over our case. Ryan said every other court was open today, except the one dealing with our issue.

Evidently, today wasn’t [...]

We are very hopeful this morning. Ryan got a call first thing this morning that the birthmother had left Awassa and would arrive midmorning in Addis Ababa. Right now Ryan, Mikkonen (Bethany’s Ethiopian Director), and the attorney, Rahel, are making their way to the court where they will meet with the birthmother and [...]

Cross-posted from Ryan’s blog.

We’ve been having all sorts of new experiences and fun here in Addis. Yesterday afternoon, Nesibu and Birtukan took us over to the golf club but I was then able to take Nesibu out for a round of golf. We played nine holes and had a caddy. Nesibu had [...]