Court date!!

I was only three days into my long term sub position on a Friday afternoon. I had just given my students a reading assignment. Luckily the classroom was quiet which made it perfect timing for the school secretary to call my room and say, "Camille, I have your husband on the phone." My heart jumped as I knew at that moment why he was calling me. To tell me that we had a court date and would be going to Ethiopia! I listened as he explained that we received a court date of April 16th! I was trying hard to absorb all the details while managing to stay calm and poker faced in front of my students. They don't know that we are adopting and I wasn't ready to tell them. It was very hard for me, someone who isn't very good at hiding my emotions, to respond with a flat, "Wow. Is that so. I can't believe it." When all I wanted to do was jump up and down screaming!! I hung up the phone and tried to keep my head on and resume teaching. After letting out several screams inside my head, the next thing I wanted to do was put my head down on my desk and cry. I was overcome with so many emotions and the reality that after two years of waiting we were finally going to meet our little girl. My next thought was, "Wait, I am a sub. Now I will have to find a sub for a sub." God had already worked out that detail by placing a fellow substitute teacher in our church small group. My friend, Sharon, had already been praying over our adoption and we had previously joked that we would surely get our travel notice as soon as I started teaching. Of course, that is what happened. She was actually teaching in the building that day and unbeknown to me our secretary had already checked with her to see if she was available for the dates I would be gone. I hadn't even gotten home for the day before Sharon had sent me an email telling me she was available. What blessing!! I love how God placed us together in a small group and took care of this detail which is very important to me. Another very important detail was that of who is going to stay with our children while we are gone. I immediately call my parents to share the good news. After celebrating with them, I casually ask them what they have going on in April. They respond with, "A trip to Ohio, of course!" My parents are awesome!!!! Hooray!! We are going to Ethiopia!!!!!! This will be our first of two trips. On this trip we will meet K and spend time with her daily. Then, we will testify before court that we want to adopt her. After 5 days there, we will return home and wait for word of our second trip. I can't wait to get packing!!!!!! Here we come sweet K!

Mailing off our referral acceptance paperwork!

Andrew and me mailing off our referral acceptance paperwork. In the background is our friendly UPS worker, Andy, flexing for us!

We returned from Disney World to a frenzy of activity at home. After Luke and Brooke barfed their way through the Orlando airport due to them getting motion sickness on the "not so magical express" (By the way, if you ever want to get something past security just have your child start vomiting violently right before they go through the body scanner. They will let you through with anything!) we finally arrived home to begin the next stage of the acceptance process.

Tuesday:

We arrived home on a Tuesday morning and immediately set to work plowing through mountains of paperwork, hours of calls with our case worker and social worker, and sitting down spending several hours filling out our transition plan for when we arrive home. I had prayed that God would maximize our time somehow and He did! Somehow we managed to get through everything that day and still get the kids off to their activities that evening and care for a still sick Luke. I also was able to plan Luke's birthday party that night. Nothing like throwing together a birthday party at 11:00pm on a Tuesday night for a party that Saturday.

Wednesday:

I went into work to have my training day with the teacher I would be taking over for when she went on maternity leave. As we went through pages and pages of lesson plans I tried not to be overwhelmed, but deep down I was. I kept thinking about how I was ever going to get everything done. In the back of my mind I knew that we had to complete an updated home study, visit the international pediatrician, have more phone calls, get papers notarized, the list goes on and on. I just prayed that the teacher didn't have the baby until I was able to get through the next few days.

Thursday:

Morning visit with the international pediatrician. This was a wonderful visit and we loved the doctor we met with. She was so patient, kind, and answered all of our questions. Plus, she gave K a great report of health. Of course it is hard to determine that on paper, but as of now everything looks good. When she comes home for good we will bring her back in right away for a big check up. We left the doctor's office and I went home and filled out more paperwork, met Matt to get more papers notarized, then returned home to put everything together to be mailed off that afternoon! Whew! I picked Andrew up at the bus stop and we headed to the UPS store to mail off our acceptance paperwork. Since we were already delayed a few days by being gone and I wanted it in our agency's hands before the weekend, I decided to pay the ridiculous overnight fee like I always do. The people who work at our UPS store are so incredibly friendly and I asked them to take a picture of us with the packet before we mailed it off. When the woman asked what was so special about its contents and I told her they both went nuts and were so happy for us. Even one of the customers in the store became all excited and began telling us all about her adopted granddaughter. It was very special for Andrew and me to share this happy moment with strangers who were so happy for us. What a gift! So as Amanda, the UPS worker, went to take our picture she yelled for her brother, Andy, to flex in the background. We all laughed at the picture and I told them I would be posting it on my blog. Next, we rushed home to pick up Luke and Brooke and headed back to Matt's office to have an hour long call with the attachment specialist that evening. What a day!

Friday:

Finally, I could take a breath and spend a little bit of time processing the last 9 days. I did this as I walked the dog that morning. Then, it was back to a mad scramble to plan the rest of Luke's birthday party the following day. I also received confirmation that our packet arrived safely in Oregon! Hooray!! That night we were able to take the time as a family and go see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at a church up the road from us. This was so fun for us as our family loves musicals and this is one of my favorites! The best part for me was hearing the song "Go, Go, Go Joseph." For whatever strange reason I have used this song to push myself through the hard times. Like when I am running a race and get to the end and am feeling tired. Or, when I am just busy and need to keep going. I sing the words to this song - "Go, go, go, Joseph you know what they say... Hang on now Joseph you'll make it someday.... Don't give up Joseph fight til you drop... we've read the book and you come up on top." So yes, I admit I am weird, but I thought it was perfect timing that I hear this song that has always helped me push through!! Thank you God for even that small detail!!

OUR REFERRAL CALL!!!!!!!

Little did we know that what this day would hold before we walked into Epcot!
Where we were standing when we got the call.

Listening intently to every word about our sweet little girl!

I can't believe that I am even writing these words!! It is official! We finally received our referral for a sweet little 4 year old girl. The best part about it is that it happened at one of favorite places, Disney World!! So here is our story. It was the morning of February 23rd and was our first full day after arriving at Disney. We were going to be at the parks for five full days and I had decided in advance that I was not going to take my phone in with me during any of those days. I didn't want any distractions and I just wanted to focus on our time together and not be burdened with carrying around my phone. I sent my parents and sister an email telling them that if they needed to get a hold of me to call Matt's phone because he would have his. That taken care of we set off for Epcot. We were standing in line for a new attraction called "Habit Heroes." We were told it was about health and fitness, and since I am a health fanatic I said lets do it. So there we were standing in line and Matt had his phone out to call his dad when he gets a call. We look at the number and when I realize who it is I could hardly speak. "Answer it! Answer it! That is our case worker!!" I KNEW at that moment that we were getting our referral!! Matt starts talking to her and because it was so noisy we said we would go find a quieter place to talk. Since we were at the front of the line about to go in we decided to go in anyway which was pure torture! It was the longest 15 minutes of my life! And it was a horrible attraction! After we finished we sprinted to the quietest place we could find and called her back. The five of us gathered around the phone to listen to her share about a little girl who had just come into Hannah's Hope. It was quite an experience trying to process everything she was saying and telling us. We knew at once that we wanted to move forward and learn more about her so after our phone call which lasted about 45 minutes we were able to look through some files and and see some pictures of this precious child. This was a little difficult as we were trying to download all of this from Matt's phone. Thank heavens for smart phones! I don't know what we would have done had we not been able to get to a computer and see her sweet face. Our caseworker then went through the next steps with us which gave me a slight cause for panic as we weren't going to be home for almost a week. And of course, my phone is the one that had the important numbers such as the international pediatrician, our social worker, etc on it. I mean really! The ONE day I don't have my phone on me! We agreed to do the best we could given our circumstances. After spending some time rejoicing and praying together we set off to bask in the excitement of the day. The other special part to the day is that it was Matt's mom's birthday and we were able to share our amazing news with his parents as they were there with us.

Now here is the best part! Well, two things really. The first is that I had JUST finished the night before a book titled, Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis which is a story about a young woman who moved to Uganda and began a school for children and adopted 14 little girls. It was truly an amazing story and my heart was on fire for the orphans in our world. The second thing is that the very MOMENT before we recieved the call I was staring at the space between where Matt and Brooke were standing in line (there was about a body space between them) and I thought to myself that I can't wait to have that space filled with another member of our family someday. I prayed that it would happen soon and that is when the phone rang!! GOD IS SO GOOD!

Disney World really is the place where dreams come true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!