We are back from Washington D.C. and N.Y.C.

We had so much fun on our mini vacation! We took in some sights in D.C. and visited American University for "freshman day". Also went to a fabulous little Ethiopian restaurant called Dukem- pictures to the right. Washington D.C. has the largest Ethiopian Community in the U.S. and as a result there are numerous Ethiopian restaurants there. They are all concentrated around 18th St., U Street and 9th street, unofficially referred to as "Little Ethiopia". This restaurant was reccommended to us by the concierge who told us he was half Ethiopian himself. Anyway, the food was amazing and we all loved it. They also have live Ethiopian music there but unfortunately not when we were there. After 2 nights in D.C. we went on to N.Y.C and stayed in Times Square which was so much fun and went to see Hairspray which was a treat. Also went to the Statue of Liberty, St. Paul's Cathedral (shortly after the Pope was there), Nintendo world for Nick, and did some shopping. We were only able to stay one night. Anyway...our sincere thanks to our good friend who took care of the dogs for us so we would be able to have our mini vacation.

ACONE Conference

Last weekend Tom and I attended the annual ACONE (Adoption Community of New England) Conference. We attended lectures on a variety of topics including: Adjustment during the first few weeks home, grief and loss issues in adopted children, language acquisition in internationally adopted children, how children learn about race, medical issues in internationally adopted children, and advice for traveling to pick up your children. All lectures were very informative, lots of great info and resources for future reference. We saw some friends there too as well as people from Wide Horizons and coincidentally the conference was in Westborough so that was convenient, we were able to come home for lunch.
As far as an update on the wait, there were a number of referrals last week but no referrals of sibling pairs. I guess that's why I haven't posted b/c there was really nothing new to report in terms of the wait. Every Monday we receive an update on referrals for the week and I hope that I will have some news to report but there haven't been any sibling referrals in a while. I will keep everyone posted...