TRIP UPDATE

We have bought plane tickets and even started packing... here is what we'll be doing.

We'll depart Tulsa on Friday, Jan 23 and fly to Houston then on to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. We'll actually spend Saturday night in a hotel in Dubai (on the Persian Gulf!).
Sunday morning we'll get up and take a four hour flight from Dubai to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (pictured).

WHILE WE ARE THERE (Sunday through Saturday)...
- SUNDAY: some sightseeing.
- MONDAY morning we'll meet the 6 year old girl we sponsor through Compassion International.
- MONDAY afternoon we'll meet Tarik and actually take her with us to our guest house.
- TUESDAY: mostly paperwork and playing with Tarik.
- WEDNESDAY: an important day at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa.
- THURSDAY: don't really know.
- FRIDAY: finalizing documents we think.
- SATURDAY: fly out for Dubai.

We will try to spend time at the orphanage and other things like that -- the above is just stuff we know about.

Our return flight will look about the same. One night in Dubai and the next morning (Sunday) a direct flight to Houston. Lord willing, we'll get back to Tulsa late Sunday evening (Feb 1).

We are excited about an exotic trip and even more so about meeting a daughter we love but don't know. We have a lot to get done in the coming couple of weeks to say the least. Thanks for your interest and especially your prayers.

SHE'S ALL OURS!!!!!!!!

We are so happy to announce our favorite Christmas present this year. The little girl we are adopting had her court date on Christmas Eve and (praise God) she passed. That means she is officially and legally ours! That also means we can share more about her with you...

HER NAME:

Tarikwa Teka Dunn
We will call her "Tarik" (pronounced tar-ick)
It means "she has a story that He has replaced"
The meaning of her amazing name kind of strikes at the heart of why we decided to adopt in the first place -- we wouldn't dare change that!

OUR PLANS:

Everything will start to happen pretty fast from here. We will be traveling four weeks from this Saturday (12/27) -- that means we will be over there the last week in January. Pretty soon! We'll be in Ethiopia for about a week.

Her birthday is in early March which means she'll be 11 months when we get her and was 8-9 months old in these pictures. Thank you all for your prayers, support, etc as we have been going through this life changing process. Please continue to pray that all will go smoothly. We will keep you posted as things come up. Finally, we thank God who has graced our family with this little girl.

SNOWMAN! ...KIND OF

The year's first snow! We did what we could.

OUR LITTLE ODD-BALL

There are often no words for Adeline. She is our little clown that keeps us laughing. On this night we went to check on her before we went to bed and this is how she was sleeping. We're not sure where she found the gloves and why she thought she needed them. But that's Adeline...

JENNALEE

When we get a great picture we just feel like we should post it. Here is a great one of Jennalee.

OCTOBER IN MOUNTAIN VIEW

Well, we went on this vacation in October... We had a great time but for some reason forgot to share pictures of it. Here is a sampling of what all went on.

Here Jennalee and Adeline are drinking tea and actually involved in a gripping conversation. They sat like this for a long time. Adeline did most of the talking... as is typical, she was spinning some tall tail. In the picture it looks like Jennalee is making an objection to the believability of Adeline's story (another typical occurrence).
It got down in the thirties at night on this trip! But we were toasty in our sleeping bags.
Here Jennalee is playing with a local. She played her violin (fiddle when we're in Mtn View) several times and ended up making TEN DOLLARS!
We went for the Beanfest and Outhouse Race. The Parade of Outhouses was hard to get a handle on...

We really enjoyed the camping, but the town was not the sleepy little music/mountain town that means so much to us. This festival brought people from all over the nation and it was pretty crowded -- tough to corral two preschoolers and a dog. When we go back, we will probably not go for a festival. We like the peace and quiet.

GIVE AWAY

We're not giving anything away here, of course, but you should check out www.bloggygiveaways.com. My good friend, Heather, who started making nursing pillows is featured on Bloggy Giveaways until Dec. 6. Her "nesting pillows" are useful in more ways than you'd think. We have one--the girls sleep with it nestled in between them and we have actually been up less in the night since they started using it. You can also check out her websight at www.blessednest.com.