More adoption stuff, sorry. (But tomorrow is Deirdre's birthday, so you'll get a change of subject then!)

We got news that we should have an adoption decree in about three weeks! It doesn't mean she'll come home then, unfortunately. We still need the American visa. And that could take months :(

But it does mean that Tim and I need to travel to Ghana before the adoption is final. Why?  American law says that if both adoptive parents see the child in person before the adoption is final, then the child will get automatic citzenship when entering the U.S.. If we don't both see her, she'll only get a green card until she is re-adopted. Most people simply re-adopt the child. However, because we live overseas, we will not be able to re-adopt her in an American court. And if she stays out of the the U.S. for too long, she will lose her green card. So adding all those factors together (including that even if we could re-adopt her, it would cost something), it is much simpler and cheaper in the long run for Tim and I to make a quick trip to Ghana to just meet her.  One of the families from church will watch our children. We're hoping to only be in Ghana for about 24-36 hours...we'll make more firm plans tomorrow.

A couple of weeks ago we got about an hour's worth of video footage of our new daughter's orphanage and the children there. Some volunteers  went over at Christmas to help build the new orphanage building and took lots of videos. They weren't particularly trying to get clips of any individual children, but we got lots of glimpses of our little girl sprinkled throughout the videos. We got a friend to edit one of the clips and put it on our computer, so you can see it. Our little girl is easy to see--she's the only one in pink! I didn't realize until I put up the video how blurry it looks on here. Oh well.