Ponsler Update...

It amazes me that so much time has gone by since I last had the opportunity to blog. Work has been keeping me super busy recently. I have been working with the student interns and co-ops a lot lately. We recently went to the Catapillar plant in Peoria, IL and Chicago to the Science and Industry Museum for the student trip. I have an extremely rewarding job because I get to interact with the students and they have such an impact on me. Even though I only get to spend a little bit of time with them throughout their time at work, I feel like I know them and have the opportunity to impact them in some way. Today, they SURPRISED me with a baby shower! It totally caught me off guard. I have to say, I have never been so surprised. I had no clue! I was actually speechless. There were probably 50 students at the shower. I cannot thank them enough. It was truely amazing. They brought tears to my eyes.

The students were so generous. They bought us several bath items for our little angel along with cups, spoons, lotions, soaps, and a baby kit. I can't begin to tell you how much love they have for our little boy already. I have students telling me how to take care of his skin, how to parent him, and how to take care of his hair. I love it! We are so blessed!

We have had a lot of fun telling our friends and family about our boy. It has been fun seeing the expressions and reactions to the pictures. We were able to spend some time with my side of the family recently. It was fun to hang out with the extended family. We had a great time catching up with our aunts, uncles and cousins.

This weekend we are going to Chicago on Saturday to go to a Cirque show.  We purchased the tickets a year ago and we are looking forward to some time together.  

I am trying to finish my current class and my new one already started.  This is my last one for this year.  I will only have one left after October!!!

On the adoption front, our boy currently has viral bronchitis.  Please pray for him as he recovers.  We trust that the doctor in Ethiopia will treat him and make him feel better.  We are still waiting on the local paperwork before we can get a court date.  The case manager told us that we should know in mid-August when our scheduled court date is.  We will travel 5 weeks after a successful court date.  So right now we are looking at traveling in November.

It's A BOY!

We would like to announce that we have received our referral!!!  We are going to be the proud parents of a baby boy.  He was born on December 17, 2007 in Ethiopia.  He is so precious.  We love him so much already. 

This is a picture of us right after I looked at the pictures for the first time.  Chris received an email at work and he thought it was not meant for us because our documents were still in Washington D.C.  He called our case manager and he found out he was for us!  He tried calling me 20 times in a span of 15 minutes.  I picked up the phone at work and bursted into tears!  I left work immediately and we set up the camera to record this moment of our lives.  Talk about feeling all the emotions at once!  We have been so blessed and are so lucky that we were chosen to be the parents of this baby.  

We would love to share pictures of our baby boy here, but we signed a contract with our agency stating that we would not share them electronically in any way.  We have actually had this news for some time, but we wanted to make sure that everything was in order before we shared the wonderful news with our family and friends.  Since we never had to wait for a referral, we have had to wait on other items that usually people don't have to worry about.  It took a week for the dossier to reach Ethiopia, one week to translate it, one week for the agency to move our baby from the orphanage to the CWA foster care center and one week to receive the second medical report.  

We are currently waiting for a court date.  Since the courts actually close in August and September, we have a slim chance of getting one in July.  If we do (please pray for this) then we will travel toward the end of August.  If we don't, we will travel in November.  God has been so good to us and we know he has a plan!  We have left this in God's hands.  He has opened so many doors for us and we totally trust in Him.

We will keep you posted on news as we get it.  We have also chosen not to share his name on here until after we pick him up.  We decided to be super cautious because we don't want to risk anything.  If you are interested in knowing the baby's name, please feel free to email or call us.  

I will post about our weekend another night.  We traveled to Michigan to visit with my brother and his family.  We had a great time.  I will leave you with this story... Our oldest nephew read a book about bunnies.  There was one bunny that looked different than the others, but it was still a bunny.  He then took that and described his cousin (our son).  He said that he will have different color skin, but he will be a boy just like him.  He will also have a nose, two hands, two feet, two arms, two eyes...  It was so cute to see into the world of a 3.5 year old.