Cullen - Officially a Meiser

Read previous post from today first.  Cullen is the fourth human member of the Meiser household (6th with Kelly math)!!!

We wrote a list of questions that we asked Tsegaye's Mom.  For anyone adopting, we highly recommend  you prepare these before traveling, even if you think that you will not meet her.  We had no idea that we would ever get to see her, and our first meeting was very nerve wrecking and we were in complete shell shock.  I know that the phrase, "chance of a lifetime" is used a lot, but has never been more true in both of our lives.

We asked:
Q - We know that Tsegaye is going to ask why his mother gave him up for adoption.  Can you tell us why?
A - I cannot afford him.

Q - If Tsegaye ever wants to meet you in the future, would you be willing?
A - Yes! (this absolutely made our day)

Through this process, we learned that she is from a family of farmers from 230 km south of Addis Ababa.  She was 19 years old when she had Tsegaye.  We also learned more about the culture in the area.

Court was a little nerve wrecking.  We were very prepared for court, but it was still very crazy thinking that the one minute that we had could change our lives forever.  The questions that the judge asked were things like:
Q - Why have you two decided to adopt?
Q - Are you prepared to handle the biracial aspects of raising this child?
Q - Have you learned about Ethiopia?
Q - Does your biological son know about this adoption?  What does he think?
A - Yes, but he is only one.  He does kiss his picture every night before he goes to bed.
Q - Have you fulfilled your education requirements?

When we heard the words, "Then he is yours" I saw the room light up....it's unbelievable that this little, awesome guy is now a part of our family.

We also decided to write a letter to his birth mom, and we made a hand written copy that we kept for Cullen.  In the letter we made a lot of promises to the birth mom to raise Cullen right - finish high school, attend college, and that we would encourage him to go for his Master's degree and PhD.  Writing this letter and the questions was one of the most difficult things we have ever done.  We don't know why we were privileged enough to be born in the United States, and into two great families - but it has definitely created a whole new perspective for us.  We both kept thinking that what if the situation was reversed, and that Kelly was giving Kaden up for adoption because we were born in the United States and some rich person from Ethiopia was coming to adopt him.  It's a tough thing to think about....

We head back to the orphanage tomorrow, and our mind is going to be on all these awesome kids over here that need families. We will post pictures on Wednesday (we are checking to make sure we are allowed to post them, we may only be allowed to post pictures of only Cullen) when we are back in the states.  If you know of anyone looking to expand their families - tell them to take a look and let us know if we can help.

Most of the kids were singing to us in English as we walked into Cullen's orphanage. The kids at another orphanage opened the gates for us, walked us around the orphanage and gave us a tour, and were so helpful.  These kids all just seem awesome over here.

Kaden - we are coming home dude.  Get ready for a big kiss from your mom and she says that you better stop using Bruno as a bench.