Gotcha Day

Upon our arrival Monday night, we were informed that we would be picking up our son in the morning and taking him with us to see his birth family in a town about 3 hours away.  We had expected the birth family interview to take place on Saturday, which meant we had to stay up late Monday night to get everything ready.  Amy and I both had less than 4 hours of sleep following our approximate 26 hours of travel since leaving our home Sunday.

We arose early, got everyone ready, and went to breakfast.  The agency social worker arrived as scheduled and took us to the orphanage to pick up our son.  He greeted us with hugs and was excited to meet his siblings for the first time.  When we went back to the vehicle, he immediately jumped into the backseat with his new siblings.

How did we know he was the one?  The ray of sunlight that followed him around helped.

 We journeyed about 3 hours up into the mountains, much of the journey on an unpaved (but gravel) road.  We eventually came to the town of Ankober and found his grandmother, aunt, cousin, and uncle walking along the side of the road.  We went with them to a small cafe and made our introductions.  His family greeted him with hugs and kisses and then greeted us by thanking us profusely and kissing our hands.  We felt so unworthy of this gesture and were greatly humbled.  This family, who had risen at 3 a.m. and WALKED for 6 hours to reach this town, had experienced much greater hardship and loss in their lives than I ever have.  We, on the other hand, have been blessed tremendously in our lives and it was only the blessing of being born and raised in the U.S. that made it possible for us to be there to adopt our son.  We definitely did not deserve such profuse gratitude from this wonderful family.

Reunited with his grandmother

His family's love for him was unquestionable

 We spent about an hour or so with his family, learning as much as we could about our son's past.  His family clearly loved him very much and expressed joy that he was healthy and that he was going to become part of our family.   We then said our "ciao's" and headed up the mountain to the Ankober Palace Lodge for lunch.  The beautiful but weathered faces of his sweet family will be forever etched in our memory, the sculpted ridges and valleys of their faces reflecting the terraced mountainside from which they had emerged.

We then hiked to the Palace Lodge (elevation about 9600 feet) and had an excellent meal of traditional Ethiopian fare for the adults, and spaghetti for the kids.  It's always kind of nice to burn off your meal before you even eat it, and we did so on that hike.  The kids enjoyed playing on the traditional drums in the dining room while waiting for our food.

It was a tiring hike

Always reassuring!

All four of our kids with A's cousin and aunt

The drums were a hit (pun intended)

After finishing our lunch (at about 4 pm), we began the journey back to Addis Abeba, our heads nodding along the way as we struggled to stay semi-awake.  Our new son must have thought we were a bunch of narcoleptics since his siblings were falling asleep on his shoulders as his parents were nodding in the other seats.  We made it back to the guest house, arriving about 9:00 p.m., eating dinner, and then unpacking before finally getting to bed about 2 a.m. (the kids were asleep by midnight, though).  Our embassy appointment would be the next morning at 9, which meant breakfast would be at about 7:30 and that we would have another short night of sleep.  We were exhausted, but thankful to finally be together as a family.