Exciting Stuff

I am sitting in my sister Emily's family room in Tennessee. We have had a fantastic time!
The kids and I flew to Huntsville Alabama on Wednesday. We stayed the night there. The next morning we drove to Atlanta and met up with Emily and her kids. The drive was gorgeous. I loved Alabama. I kept saying over and over again how pretty it was.
The day before our trip, I called up our adoption agency in Atlanta and asked to visit with them since Emily and I would be there. They were cool with that. So when we arrived Emily took the kids to a park while I went to the agency across the street. When I walked in, I was immediately greeted by the Ethiopia Program Director and handed a referral! The "referral" is the child they recommend to you based on what you have asked for. I was so excited! We've waited so long for this and I had kind of resigned myself to thinking it would be another very long wait till we got that referral. The information on that referral included several photos, all of his medical information and what history they had on him. It even included all of his lab results. All of this information was then emailed to us. So Steve has been able to see him and review the information too. We are feeling pretty good about accepting the referral.
His name is Andualem.
Keeping careful track of birthdays for records is not common practice in Ethiopia. This boy was put down as 6 years old, but after an examination from the doctor, testing his bone age and teeth and so forth, she said he's between 7-8 years old. His mother died and he was taken to the orphanage in April by his father who said he cannot care for him. We have the choice to put his birthday and age at whatever we want; as well as his name once this adoption is finalized. We will probably put him at 7. Since his name is different and anyone in the states would not know how to pronounce it, we will probably give him the name of Andrew since it is kind of close and it's also a good name, (my brothers.) We'll probably have Andualem as his middle name.
We sent all of his medical information to our pediatrician who was pleased to tell us he was a pretty healthy child with just some cavities and some kind of cousin to a mole on his head. Otherwise, all his labs and exams came back good. That was great!
As far as when we go to Ethiopia to meet him and go adopt him through the courts there, it could be as early as October or November. Of course it could be later too. We will then have to go home and wait another 3-6 weeks for the Embassy date in Ethiopia when he will be allowed to come home with us.
All pretty exciting! I'm anxious to see how the rest of this all plays out.
That's on top of the excellent time we've had here with Emily and her family. What a week!