OH MY GOODNESS!!!

OH my, here she is! Sydney Eyasu Cook. Her middle name is after her father's first name and means Jesus or Joshua. We are overwhelmed with joy that she is legally ours. These pictures were taken when she was about 6 weeks old and she is now 3 months old. We should get an embassy date in the next two weeks and should go get her in 4-5 weeks. That is the magic number, 4-5 weeks. Here is a little video of her from 2 weeks ago...

And now that you are still reading, we have more news as of 11:30 this morning. Andy got a call while I was taking our car to get cleaned from our case worker who told us of Sydney's brother who came up for adoption TODAY! We had asked that the agency would let us know if her brother ever came up for adoption; she said that it was unlikely but that she would write it in our file. This little one is between 2 and 3 years old, and we have accepted the referral for him today. Yes, you just read that right. We will be going to get two children, probably two separate trips. We cannot express our emotions right now. We are so blessed. We prayed for a long time that the children we adopted would have a biological sibling, and thinking that was out of the question, we were just granted this gift. Talk about lives being full...God is so faithful. What a gift they will have in each other.

On Sunday, Andy and I let the kids ride their bikes around the track near by and we sat and talked for 45 minutes uninterupted (anyone with children knows this is a dream), and the conversation centered around having 3 or 4 children. I have always wanted 4 and so has Andy until the past year, Andy has thought 3. He was starting to get very serious about 3 recently since Thomas is getting older and the diapers, baby, food, and all the rest were disappearing. I asked him, if he would just consider and pray about being willing to adopt one more so that Sydney would have someone so much like her. He said he would definitely consider it, but he just wished we had gotten two at the same time. So here we go...

When he told me when he picked me up from the car wash, I thought he was kidding me since we always do that to each other. I knew by the look on his face, this child was already ours in his heart, there was zero discussion. We both just said, yes, of course we will go get him. (then we said a few extras, like, what in the world are we doing. As most of you know through this process Bobby has asked for a brother too and we have said for a year now, we would think about it. I finally told him it wasn't going to happen a few months ago. He asked my "Why?" and I didn't have a response. I didn't know why; I just said because that would be a little much. We told him today it was going to happen, and he said, "What?" "How?".... We told Thomas he was 2, and he said with the utmost joy, "I'm three!"...

Just in case anyone is doing the math, that would be a Senior, Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman in high school and then college... Wow. I might as well cancel my cell phone because everyone will know where I am, at home with 4 children under the age of 5 for the next 5 years! You can all get on your knees and pray right now...

We will hopefully get pictures of her brother today and of course will be waiting by the phone.