Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Today we found out that we have been approved to adopt 3 children under the age of 6. We sent our request to Colombia in early October and were not certain when we would hear if we were apporved or not. If you all remember, we had tried to pursue 3 siblings over the summer, and that was what led us to request this change. We are still on the wait list, but the most exciting part of this news is that we are at the TOP of the "3 under 7" list. There are no other families looking for a sibling group of this age and size. The next referral of this sort that comes through ICBF will be offered to us!!!! We don't know when this will happen. It is our understanding that the courts in Colombia shut down in December, so even if we were to receive a referral now, we would not travel until next year.

This news could not have come at a better time. I have been feeling really anxious and frustrated about waiting. We have been waiting for a very long time to become parents, and this was just a beautiful reminder that God has not forgotten us. On the contrary, he has heard our prayers! Thank you to all of you who have been praying for us!

We will keep you posted as things unfold. In the meantime, I think we will try to get our house in order to make room for 3 more Eisenbergers.

Have you met Baxter?

The little guy on the right is our latest addition to the Eisenberger clan. He is cute and getting bigger every day. He is sweet and always has this air of wonder and curiosity. He loves his "big sister" and she loves him--they play, fight, sleep and repeat all day long. It is neat to see how well Sylvia takes care of him and the amount of patience she has for him, even when he is yanking on her ears. They make our house feel fuller.

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We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment. ~George Eliot

I have been realizing as I get older I become more forgetful, not just names/dates/etc..., but I quickly forget God's goodness. For those of you who are familiar with Troy and I's struggle to expand our family, you may not be surprised that we have been on quite the roller coaster where faith is concerned. We have seen pregnancy and children come so easily into the lives of many of our friends. The wait has been excrutiating. It is almost second nature now to believe that God has forsaken us. We both have had to really fight against feeling abandonned, and we have had to cling to what little hope we have left that God is good.

And He really is good. He is better than good, He is almighty and He has a plan. That plan may not be what we envisioned when we first set out on this journey toward parenthood. The plan may be the hardest thing we have ever gone through (and hopefully ever will go through). Some days I think it has been a blessing because it has refined our marriage in ways that nothing else could. And it has led to a place of great expectation.

We continue to wait, but this is the fun part. There is no paperwork to be done (at least temporarily). Instead we get to brush up on our Spanish, figure out how to raise the remaining funds we need, watch as much TV as our DVR can hold, and (as a friend recently pointed out) go out to dinner.

Stay tuned!
Andrea

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"In this [God's great mercy] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
I Peter 1:6-7

OK, so we have been a little slow getting the word out, but we received our approval letter last Monday. Hooray! We are now waiting on our children. That has been so mind blowing for us because we have been waiting for so many other things for so long (i.e., waiting to start the next fertility treatment, waiting for our passports, waiting for various pieces of paper).

So, what happens next?

We wait for our official "referral" (or match). We are not really sure of the timeline. Our letter states that we are approved for a sibling group of two children under the age of four. This could take up to 30 months (the same as one infant). Due to recent events in our lives, we have decided to ask to be approved to adopt up to three children under the age of 6.

In July, our agency informed us of a group of 3 siblings (ages 1, 3, and 5). We did all that we could to pursue them, but a few weeks ago, Colombia assigned them to a family whose paperwork was already approved. We were devastated because we did not know that they had been offered to other families. On the bright side, we realized that we definitely want to pursue a sibling group. For one, we will not have the luxury of having one biological child at a time, and we definitely want more than one child. We are also uncertain of how many times we can afford to adopt. More importantly though, there are many orphans across the globe who are overlooked simply because they come as a group.

As always, we will keep you posted as things progress. So check back often.

Ahhh...Fall!

The air is cooler (except in Charlotte), the leaves are changing (especially since everything has died because of the drought), and someday (probably in February) I will be able to get out my sweaters. But the thing that makes Fall the Esienbergers' favorite season is the return of television!

Survivor: China started last week and we actually had our first Survivor party in Charlotte. We went out for pizza instead of making chili, but it definitely brought back the excitement of "Survivor Night". I was sad to see Chicken go first because the boring people always seem to obtain the upper hand early on and vote out the more interesting folks. It is going to take a couple more episodes before I decide who I would want in the final four. I can tell you though, that the sooner they send Courtney packing the better. Hopefully, I will be able to get Troy to give weekly commentary because his view of the world is really hilarious.

The one show we have been holding our breath for is Heroes. How did Sylar sneak down that manhole without anyone else seeing him? Hopefully they will tell us tonight on the season premeire!

It is a sad, but true statement, that our blog will be far more interesting now that TV has returned. So, if you love TV even half as much as we do, stay tuned! Oh, and when we get adoption info, we will throw that in too!

Andrea

We found out today that what we were hoping for has fallen through. Sorry to be so vague. Please continue to pray for us. From here on out, we will not be posting anything until something develops. We are in for a long wait.

Andrea and Troy