We haven’t posted much in the last several weeks, so I thought I would post a Picker Family Update. October was a very busy month for us, and now that it is finally over, we are spending the next few days lying on the couch, trying to recuperate.

In mid-October, Casey tore his Achilles’ tendon while playing basketball with some buddies. The next weekend we were supposed to go to Chicago with Allan and Lindsay to visit Billy. After several doctors appointments, the doctor determined that Casey’s tendon was completely torn and gave him permission to go on the trip, provided he wear his walking boot and schedule surgery for a few days after we came home.

So we were able to go on our trip as planned. We were so glad to see Billy since it had been almost three months since we had seen his face. We all had a great time seeing all the sights in Chicago, and Casey was able to hobble around with his walking boot. While we were in Chicago we took the opportunity to try our first Ethiopian food. I’m not really much for any kind of ethnic food, unless you consider Tex-mex ethnic, so I was a little skeptical about whether I would like it or not. I have to admit that it was better than I thought it would be. All the food is served on Injera, which is a pancake-like sourdough bread. We tried several different entrees which included chicken, beef, and lamb dishes. Overall, it was a good experience, and I’m so glad that we got to try Ethiopian food before we go to Ethiopia. Allan, Lindsay, and Billy were great sports to go with us and even pretended to enjoy it a little bit.

Casey had his surgery after we got home and is now hobbling around the house with crutches. We hope that in two to three weeks he will get another walking boot and be done with the crutches.

Last weekend we had a HUGE garage sale to raise money for our adoption. My mom and I have worked for several weeks cleaning out her attic, so we had lots of stuff to sell. I also cleaned out SIX boxes of Casey’s old toys and sold the ones that he didn’t want to keep. Since Casey has been incapacitated, I needed a lot of help pulling the sale together. I had many precious friends volunteer their time and energy to make sure our sale was worthwhile. We had friends bring tables, transport stuff, donate stuff to sell, and help us run the garage sale. My sweet friend Kasie helped my mom and I sort and price a mountain of garage sale items. Isn’t the body of Christ wonderful? I really don’t know what we would do without our friends. The sale was very successful, and we were able to raise a chunk of money for our adoption. We are considering having another sale this spring.

We took a break from all of the garage sale festivities to let Caleb celebrate Halloween. He was the cutest cowboy I have ever seen. He let me paint a mustache on his face, and every time he looked in the mirror he would say, “I like your mustache.” Even though he didn’t quite understand the trick-or-treating part of the evening, he had a great time dressing up and playing with his buddies.

We polished off our very busy weekend by having our Home Study on Sunday afternoon. We have been waiting for over a month for our social worker to have time to do our Home Study, so we jumped at the opportunity to do it Sunday even though our weekend was already so busy. The study went really well and wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful social worker; she was very easy to talk with. She will hopefully have our Home Study report written in the next couple weeks, and then we will submit our Dossier to Holt and begin filing paperwork with Immigration. I’m not quite sure how long all of this will take, but I’m hoping we can get on the waiting list by the first of the year. After that we will just be waiting to be matched with a child.

We are praising God that the adoption process is moving again after what felt like a very long wait and will keep you updated as we make more progress.