Travel-Day Two Part One

We all got up early Monday morning after a somewhat restful night, repacked our carry-ons and went down to breakfast. Bryan has been taking seminary classes for the last few years during the summer breaks. This has worked very well every other year, but this year our trip to Ethiopia has made it a little harder to get his work done. While S and I got eat breakfast in peace, Bryan had works on school things. Thank goodness for wifi at hotels or none of his school work would've been done. After breakfast we got on our shuttle with all 14 bags again and head back to the airport.

Now, what I didn't mention before is that we had been told that Ethiopian Airlines might not take our rocking chair box if United didn't check it through. This was the cause for most of my freaking out on Sunday and we were definetely concerned that we might have to leave the rocker in D.C. ,hoping we could get ahold of friends in D.C. to pick it up for us. I prayed heading up to the ticket counter that we wouldn't have a problem and this time our ticket lady was MUCH nicer and actually helpful. We can't say enough kuddos about Ethiopian Airlines. They even gave us tape and scissors to try and reinforce the now falling apart box as best as possible. The attendant even offered to switch our seats around so we could all sit together (didn't even know we would be sitting apart). Finally all of the bags were out of our hands and we wouldn't have to worry about them again until Ethiopia. GREAT feeling.

We had some more time to kill at the airport so we went to our terminal, found a bagel shop (GOOD bagels) and took a load off. Our plane boarded perfectly on time with us on it and off we went to Ethiopia to become parents.

Nearly 13 hours later we arrived in Addis Ababa. Flying into the country was beautiful. The farmland outside of Addis reminded me of a beautiful patchwork quilt, very unlike our perfect squares and circles in the U.S. We flew past cloud covered mountains as we approached the airport and I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the countryside.

We were very happy that we had S with us on this trip as she navigated the Bolle Airport like a pro. In no time we were waiting in the visa line to enter the country. S already had her visa, so she went ahead of us to get all of the luggage. Good luck S! She amazingly wrangled all of the luggage onto 2 luggage carts by the time we made it out of the visa office and so we headed to the front to try and find our ride.

Yet again, we missed our ride to the hotel and ended up having to call the hotel to come and get us, but it was all ok, we were finally in Ethiopia, with ALL of our luggage. Yes, even the poor rocker made it. We were too tired at this point to be much good and were thankful when we arrived at the hotel and find out that we had a couple hours to take showers and nap before heading to Hannah's Hope. In just a couple hours we would meet our daugher...or so we thought.

Travel-Day One

The morning started early and in my usual rushed fashion. As noted in the last post, the boys quickly had everything loaded in the car and off we went to the airport. That was the only quick and easy part of the day. To say it was a long day would be an understatement.


We flew a flight plan that nearly EVERY other adopting family flies to Ethiopia. Fly to D.C., stay overnight, fly out the next morning to Ethiopia. I also happen to know that EVERY other adopting family that has flown this has had no problems with the connecting airline not checking their baggage through to the next day flight on Ethiopian. Every other family, but us. I won 't say the name of the airline..but it starts with a U and rhymes with delighted, which it was NOT! The check-in lady was not rude, but never attempted to be even slightly helpful. She refused to check our baggage through, which meant we had to pick up ALL 8 pieces of luggage in D.C., take them to the hotel and then back to the airport the next morning. Counting our carry-ons that meant we three were wrestling with 14 bags in D.C., on of which was a wet cardboard box, but you'll hear more on that in a bit.

So we get all of our baggage finally checked with U***** and still have some leisure time before we had to board, which meant we HAD to find a Starbucks. Now I was a "bit" frazzled at this point and definitely needed some calm down time before getting on a plane.


We flew to Chicago, made it to our gate, only for a hail storm to hit minutes before we were supposed to board. Needless to say, that didn't happen on time. I think we were VERY lucky that we were already in Chicago when the storm hit, because one of our other adopting families was now and they missed their flights on Ethiopian because of it. As we sit and wait to board, we see our luggage being loaded. I say a quick prayer as I see our cardboard box containing a rocking chair get close to the airplane door as it looked like it wasn't going to fit. Did I mention that it was still raining and all of our luggage was getting wet? Hence the wet cardboard in D.C.



An hour and a half later (most of that sitting on the runway) we finally take off to D.C. Then the fun started! We walk up to the baggage claim and the first thing we see is one of the donation duffles in a very large plastic bag with it's contents spewn everywhere. Luckily, the zipper wasn't broken, it must have just popped open, but that was a SCARY sight. Thoughts of duct tape were definitely involved. After we finally get the baggage together and delicately place our wet, falling apart box (the feet of the rocker were pointing out of the corners) on top of it all we went outside to find our hotel shuttle that was supposed to be waiting.

I immediately see the shuttle start to run up to the driver to tell him we need on, but he turns away, says something about another one coming soon, and drives off. 45 minutes later we decided to call the hotel. Once we got to the hotel they were AWESOME!! They let us keep our cart of luggage downstairs in the lobby so we didn't have to drag it up and then back downstairs. The little restaurant stayed open later so we could eat dinner and we all felt a little better after getting some rest.

Thus ends day one. Travel day two to come!


-amory

A Note on Adoption Etiquette

Now that our daughter is nearly home, we feel it is important to remind our family and friends of a few important adoption etiquette guidelines.
1) Our daughter's story of her life before she came to us is just that, HER story. When SHE is ready to share that story, she is free to share it with whomever she wishes, but please remember that it is not our story to tell, it's hers. This means we will respect that and not be sharing those details with anyone.
2)You are free to ask us questions about our adoption and our daughter, however we might have to respectfully say that the answer is none of your business. Our role now is to protect our daughter both physically and emotionally and therefore we may not be able to answer your specific question. Please, don't be offended, it's hard for us too to keep our mouths shut sometimes (if you know me, you know I love to talk about everything), but it is the right thing to do for our daughter.
3)Our intent is for NO family or friends to know more about our daughter and her background than she does. Please keep this in mind when you want to know something about her background.
4) The fifth commandment in scripture is to honor your father and mother. Now, it doesn't specify birth or adoptive here, but considering that God was the birth father of Jesus and gave up his Son in adoption, but still had to be honored, we're going to assume God means both birth and adoptive. It is our responsibility as parents to raise our daughter using scripture as our guide, so we will be raising her to honor her birth family as well. That's about all you'll get to know about them for a long time, and we ask that you remember this if you feel the need to make a comment about birth families.
5) Yes, we will teach our daughter about her birth culture and yes, this is the right thing to do. It is human nature to question your identity and where you came from. It is our job as parents to fill in those questions just like any other parent would do with their bio kids. Ethiopia will always be a part of that answer.
6) You are free to love on little A all you want!! But, one important thing to remember is that she will be searching for someone that will take care of her basic needs. She needs to learn to trust Bryan and I to do that so we will be the ONLY people taking care of her basic life needs. i.e. feeding, changing, sleeping.

WHEW! I'm glad that's done with! Now let's get this baby home so we can ALL do some lovin' on her!

Prep Day

Saturday, May 21st was our do or die day for packing. Bryan had gone out of town on Wednesday, so it was up to me. Thankfully he had already set aside the clothes he wanted to take with us, so I just had to do *sigh* the rest of the packing and house preparations. This doesn't really sound like that big of a deal, until you see what my living room looked like. It was FILLED with donations.

When we first started collecting donations to take with us, I was scared that we wouldn't have anything. Boy was I wrong!! We are still in awe of how much God moved in people's hearts to provide. My work friends donated and got their friends to donate; our church accepted donations for us two Sundays in a row; my home church collected donations; my family collected donations and got their friends to donate, and my Aunt's church in Mississippi collected donations for us. They even managed to get a state department head to drive them to us (well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, it was a stop on her way, but that's what it felt like). I hope I didn't leave anyone out in my list there. Needless to say, it was really cool! A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who contributed something. If you had any doubts about whether God cares about the "little things" in people's lives, let me assure you that we have seen proof that God provides for even the seemingly smallest needs.

The only problem with ALL of the donations is....they had to be packed up and I am only one person, so reinforcements were called in. Cousin J came with her babies (love those kids) to help pack and cousin B answered the call too along with cousin S who went to Ethiopia with us. The packing was nothing short of a miracle. We all thought that we would be up ALL night trying to get everything packed, weighed and repacked (everything had to be under 50 pounds). S and B went to town on the those donations and within 2 hours everything that would fit was packed away. I think they had some Alice in Wonderland cakes involved because magically nearly everything fit into 4 duffles and 2 suitcases. So nearly all of that pictured above, turned into this below. By the end of the night we had also enlisted K and J, our friends from Oklahoma, and M, one of Bryan's friends who also had to get up early the next morning to drive us to the airport (THANKS M!!).

Somehow S and I still managed to stay up until 3 am. I am still not quite sure how that happened. It's all a blur. Oh, and I forgot to mention that S had flown in that afternoon from Arizona to help pack and fly out with us Sunday, and Bryan didn't get home until Saturday afternoon too. It was a crazy week for everyone.

A few short hours later we were up and ready to load M's car with all of our luggage. Again, miraculously, it all fit. And off we went to the airport to start our journey to meet A!!

I Hear You

I have gotten MANY calls...texts...emails..FB messages...that I need to update the blog. I HEAR YOU!! Now, being mentally capable of comprehending what I'm hearing..well that's been a more difficult task this last week. We arrived back home this last Monday at 4:30 am from Ethiopia. It was a VERY LONG trip home from Africa that left us beyond exhausted. Bryan and I both had a day this week in which we slept 14 hours or more. A big contributing factor was us catching something nasty at the end of our time in Ethiopia. BUT, we had a WONDERFUL time in Ethiopia and greatly miss eating shiro and injera (my new favorite food).

But, you all don't really care about that....you want to know what happened while we were there. WE PASSED COURT!! We are officially parents of a beautiful 5 month old daughter. We traveled with 5 other families who had court appointments with us and we ALL passed court. Now, you might not understand just how big a deal this is. Let me explain. If you read a few posts back you'll see that right before we received our referral for our daughter, MOWA , an Ethiopian governmental dept that has to approve the match in order to pass court, made an announcement that they were going to reduce the # of cases they review by up to 90%. This is supposed to be in effect for all adoptions submitted for court after March 9th. If you remember, we received our referral on March 10th. Our group of adopting families was the first group for our adoption agency to be governed by this new rule. NOBODY new what to expect, but we had all decided that we would be ok if our letter of approval from MOWA wasn't present at court, but everything else was approved. It was a HUGE shock to all six families to hear the judge say "the children are yours". We are incredibly blessed and so thankful that God allowed us to pass court right away.

So what does this mean now? We are now waiting on the U.S. Embassy to approve everything and set a visa appointment before we can bring our daughter home. Our timing on that is hopefully within 6-8 weeks of our court date. Please pray that everything goes smoothly in the Embassy review process and that they don't request any additional information.

Oh, by the way, we are IN LOVE! Our A is amazing. She's a sweet, happy baby with lots of crazy faces and sweet smiles to give. She giggles when you kiss her neck and is ticklish. We can't wait to have her home. In the meantime, we need to store up some much needed sleep, which I need to do right now.

I know you're probably feeling like there's so much more that you want to know. Don't worry...I won't let you down. The day by day of our journey is coming soon...I just have to get my thinker fully processing again before writing those posts (they might be long).

Until then I'll leave you with a picture of our sweet girl. We can't post her face until she's home with us...so this is just a teaser.

-amory