Gladney Dinner

On Friday night I had the opportunity to attend a dinner with Gladney staff and families!! Natalie, Scott and Mary were in town to attend the Joint Council on International Children's Services Conference and invited families in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area to come and join them for dinner. I was so excited to finally meet them and some of the families whose blogs I stalk obsessively read frequently since I feel like I know them already. We met for dinner at Abol, a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant only 10 minutes from my house. It was such a great choice because it was a lovely, intimate place and the food was wonderful. I haven't always been a fan of Ethiopian food but now I love it! And the Ethiopian beer, Meta. Have you ever had it? It has such a low alcohol content it's really like drinking a grown up soda. But I digress...

Meeting Mary, Scott, and Natalie was so wonderful. It is so great to put faces with names, you know? And they were all so nice. I also got the opportunity to ask them some more questions about my adoption specifically and I really get the feeling that they are working hard to make my adoption overseas through Gladney possible. I really hope and pray that is the case because not only have I built a relationship with them but I really do feel completely confident that they will do their best to do whatever is necessary to make my adoption happen. I want them to be my agency!!

It was great to see my two friends, Tami and Kristine, and to meet other prospective adoptive parents. But the highlight, of course, was meeting the kids! There were two Ethiopian kids there, one who I must not have a blog cause I didn't know her - lol - but who is an absolute doll and the other was Lilly! I was so happy to meet her, her nice parents and her cute big sister, Reece. The adoption video that her family created was the first one I saw that made me cry and cry and know for sure that I, too, wanted to experience the miracle of adoption. I used to force anyone that questioned my desire to adopt to watch it when they were at my house because there was no way they could question it after that. (Since then I have cried over tons of adoption videos. LOL) So, I was already seated when Lilly and her mom walked in and I said to myself, 'That's Elizabeth Alem!' Funny how you really get to know families through the blogosphere and are able to recognize them and call them by name. I also was introduced to someone named 'Tina' and I kept looking at her throughout the night wondering if she was 'Bettina'. Turns out I was introduced to her as Bettina, I just hadn't heard correctly, so that was amazing too. I love her story as well as she is a young woman adopting a six year old girl she met while she was doing some volunteering in an orphanage. It really was a great evening and I was so happy to be included. It made everything seem so real, so tangible, so possible and I am now SO EXCITED to be a mom to an Ethiopian child!