We have reached the end of January! One more month down, yay! Nothing to report as of now about the adoption. Hopefully Febuary will bring more referrals (and one for us)!
Our polls are almost finished. I am putting up the last poll. They are the results of the previous polls winners. It would be great to get some votes! On this poll you can pick more than one if you wish.

One Step Closer...?

Here is the latest news...

• There was one referral for a girl through St. Lucy this month. Unfortunately, it wasn't for us, but it does mean that we move up on the list and, by our own calculations, should be second in line for a girl and first in line for a boy. This was also the first referral in about 3 months, so maybe this is a sign of things to come....? Its getting down to the wire for us to be able to complete the adoption prior to our move back to the states. Knowing our luck, it will happen right when we are set to transition......
• Looks like we will doing a little bit of travelling in March/April. I'm currently scheduled to attend training in Hawaii for 6 weeks, and Bethann will probably come out with me for a mini-vacation. There's also a slight chance that we will be in Norfolk, Virginia in March. I was selected as the Sea Sailor of the Year for my command and I might get selected to go to Norfolk to compete at the next higher command. The Navy will also pay for Bethann to accompany me, which will give us a free trip back to the states during which we can do some house hunting, etc in the Maryland area. I should know sometime next month if I get selected for this, otherwise we will be in Hawaii.
• We updated our name polls! This is the last poll of new names. After this we will take the first place and second place names from previous polls and combine them into a final poll. Thanks everyone for voting!!

Hope everyone is good!!!

Erich

No News Yet

Well, we are 1/3 of the way through January. The snow has started to come down pretty hard outside after raining all night and half the morning. Our last snow storm left quite a lot of snow and we hope it doesn't repeat again (although Erich is home now to shovel). It was really hard to shovel all that snow, and I had to shovel while it was snowing because I didn't know when it was going to stop. There were a lot of broken tree branches all over the base due to the weight of the snow. The picture on the top is of the tree in front of our house. The picture on the bottom shows our cars and culdesac we live on.
We will be so glad to get back home! We should be getting orders soon and are very excited to be able to count the days. We can't wait to go shopping in our favorite stores and eat at our favorite restaraunts!!
We have not heard anything yet on a referral. Keep us in your prayers that we will hear something before the month is out. The names poll will be extended for another few days if anyone else wants to vote. Thanks to those of you who did!

Happy New Year--Welcome 2009!

Wow! It's 2009. It's hard to believe we have been in Japan since 2005. We wish everyone the best for this coming new year. Hopefully things will look up this year for all of us. We are really looking forward to being home and seeing everyone this coming summer.
Please check out our poll for baby names. We will be putting out new names from our list every few weeks and then putting the top choices together in a final poll. So far Sydney and Owen have been the top choices.