SHOCKING COURT DATES

God is ridiculously good! We received a court date - NOVEMBER 7th!!! The judge approved our 2 Ethiopian court dates to be combined into 1 date!!! We are leaving to see our babies next week!!!!! Unreal. We are in shock.

Here's my best attempt at coherently communicating our news today...

• TODAY :: Received a phone call at 8:00 this morning from our case manager letting me know of our court dates. They normally just email this information, but because it's so last minute she needed to call me to see if it's even an option to go this soon. I screamed on the phone and then started crying! Of course, we said "if it's at all possible, we'll go!"
• November 4th :: We plan to leave next Thursday for Ethiopia. CRAZY! A very generous person has gifted us with miles to pay for our tickets. Overwhelmed by radical generosity.
  
• November 8-9th :: We will visit our kiddos for sure, but we'll spend as much time with them as we are allowed.
• November 10th :: COURT! In the morning, the judge will see the police or any bio family to confirm these children are eligible for adoption. We go to court in the afternoon to testify before the judge. We hope to become their legal parents on this day!
• November 11th :: We will fly out of Ethiopia.
• November 11-13th :: We will take a 48 hour layover (or so) somewhere in Europe together. We want to use this moment in time to wrap our heads and hearts around our new family as a couple. We feel like taking a couple days before we step back onto U.S soil, to baby preparation craziness will be good for our souls and family.
• Court to Embassy Timeline :: Our case manager told us this morning that it's "very realistic to believe that we'll have them home by the end of the year". It's been taking between 4-6 weeks between successful court dates and Embassy to bring them home. This reality is beyond me. Mountains being moved. Systems being changed. Policies revisited. Amazing act of God. Having our adoption finalized in 2010 has been our prayer for MONTHS, but I really stopped believing it could happen! We were told in August not to expect court dates until 2011. So all this is a huge mental shift...exciting and overwhelming and sooooo good!
  During this 4-6 weeks, our kiddos will receive their U.S passports, visas, birth certificates, immunizations, and prepared to come home.
  

Pray for the seemingly hundreds of things that we need to do between now and next Thursday. My mind is swimming. My face is glowing. My heart is racing. Amazing. THANK YOU for your prayers and support.

I can't believe I get to hold and kiss Baby T and Lil' A in less than 2 weeks. Shaking with amazement...

365

One year ago today we got on the wait list for our adoption!!!!!!

Unreal what's happened in the past 365 days! We are so grateful.

Today we are praying for the best anniversary present - court dates! Our agency only hears about court dates on Wednesdays, so it's today or at least another week. It's been 3+ weeks since the courts re-opened. I'm getting antsy. I'm just sayin'...

Baby Bucket List

As we are in our last phase of waiting to bring home Lil' A and Baby T, Brian and I have been thinking and talking a lot about how we want to make the most of these remaining months of just the 2 of us. For lack of a better catch phrase, we've loosely constructed a bit of a baby bucket list. Clarification: we do not think there's a death in parenting, just a massive change in our 9+ years of married life!

What's on the list? I thought you might ask. I don't know if we'll be able to accomplish all of what we've dreamed about for time and money reasons, but here's an unofficial list in no particular order:

• See as many movies in the theater as possible, even a few crappy ones!
• Go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach and have dinner at Sevilla's, where we celebrated an anniversary a few years ago that launched us into a new way of partnership.
• Drive to NorCal to visit our friends who recently moved to San Fransisco.
• Overnight trip to Santa Barbara. [Brian's never been, and I only went for a day with my parents years ago. How that's possible, I have no idea!]
• Visit a couple art museums in L.A.
• Watch football all day on as many Saturdays as possible.
• Sleep as much as possible, especially on the weekends.
• Spontaneously go out with friends when the opportunity presents itself. [Brian's done that 3 times in the past couple weeks with buddies - including tonight. Love it!]
• Go out for breakfast on a Friday morning a couple times.

Any suggestions? Do you have any plans like this for your life transition?

**BTW: we got 6 more pics of Lil' A this week for no particular reason.!!! He's just really, really cute! I can't get over how in love I am with this little guy and his little sister.