Just Because We Like Adventure…

We got confirmation today that our embassy date will be July 15th … sort of.

All of our paperwork is in line. We have their birth certificates and passports. The only pending piece is Eden’s TB test. They are giving her this test tomorrow and the results will be read on Monday morning (Sunday night, EST).

So…we booked the flights we had on hold — leaving from Washington DC on Monday afternoon. With this itinerary we’ll spend a few days in Italy en route to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and be united with our children next Saturday.

Assuming there are no power outages or delays in communication we’ll get the call from our agency while we’re on the road to the DC airport, confirming the results of Eden’s TB test. We of course can re-schedule our flights should the test results come out positive, however we are plowing ahead in faith that our little girl is just fine. (Our coordinator in Ethiopia said he is confident she will pass. We like that ). But even so–would you pray with us that Eden passes this TB test with flying colors?

Nothing like finding out at 11:00am if you can go ahead and check-in for that flight leaving at 2pm.

While my tone in this post may sound a little flat, to the contrary I have been overcome with joy. It’s just … at the moment my kitchen has been taken over by sippy cups and my husband has become an assembly slave. We’re both up an hour and a half past our bed time and slowly realizing this exhaustion may become the new normal.

I can’t end this post, though, without the story that has made my week.

Last night I was up at 3:30am. I’ve been praying that God would begin to transition our children’s bodies to our time zone, but I think He may have heard me wrong as I’ve seen 3:30am more times than I’d like in the past few weeks.

Just after I woke up, I got a text from my friend Kerry, who is actually IN Ethiopia now picking up her daughter Grace. It was providential. Eventually we connected on the phone and she told me about her experience with our children.

According to Kerry, Eden didn’t stop smiling the whole time she was at the orphanage. This is consistent with what we continue to hear from moms who have met her–that Eden is quite the little fireball.

And Caleb … well, when she got there, he was carrying around the picture book we sent him. Holding it close. Kerry said he was quite reserved and, unlike his big sis, didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t show his own pearly whites. The only time she saw him crack a smile was when she took the picture book from his hand and opened it to my picture. She said “that’s your mommy” and my little guy … well … he smiled.