Eyelashes!

We have some beautiful new photos of Lydia and Samuel compliments of a family who traveled last week to pick up their daughter. Samuel has curly hair and beautiful long eyelashes. His hair reminds me of our friend's here in town also from Ethiopia & the same age as Samuel. The first photo of Samuel at about 9 months of age shows him with a shaved head. Anyway the curls are beautiful. Can't wait until these two boys can meet. He's smirking at the camera - and standing. Wish I could hold back time so he'd be 9 months again. He'll probably be 2 by the time he comes home. Not to be pessimistic, but just realistic. He's 14 months now.

Lydia still looks beautiful as well - just like the other photos only older :) So cool to know these photos were taken only last week.

We understand our gift packages will be going to Ethiopia next week and then Lydia will know she has a family waiting for her. Good news - I think she needs to hear that.

So strange that we thought she knew she had a family for over a month until we learned about two weeks ago that the packages missed the last staff member to go to Ethiopia by a few days. So they'll go next week.

Oh, and the courts will close from about August 21st through early October. But I guess a shorter time closed than is normal. Still hoping we'll get a court date sooner than later.

In other news, we spent a very nice week in Texas last week visiting family and my sister's condo at Rockport - it was so relaxing and beautiful to have time together as a family.

The kids start school in a few days - I'm excited to get some things done since I won't be homeschooling this year - we'll see how that goes :)

Thanks for reading. Check back with you in a little while.