4 Days....

Well folks, we are down to the wire here. We leave in 4 days.

We recently went for round 2 of our Hep A & B shots, and like last time, I felt like I had a terrible flu the next day (it’s never bothered Boz – lucky). I swear, my joints have never hurt so much in my life!!

Over the weekend we picked up our Typhoid vaccinations (oral) and began taking them. I’ve heard from a few people they had some nasty side effects…. but nothing here. Whew. We decided against the Malaria as we won’t be going out of the city much. For a while we thought we might, but it looks like that’s not going to pan out. And that’s alright, apparently our insurance doesn’t cover the Malaria vaccinations and we already dropped $161 for 5 little Typhoid pills…. So I was okay saving the money. Save where you can, right?

Saturday we had a little photo shoot. My sister called Thursday afternoon asking if we wanted her to take some pictures of us. Being as we haven’t had any pictures taken of us (professionally) since our wedding (and even there we don’t have a nice picture of the two of us together – don’t even get me started!), we jumped at the chance! It was such a thoughtful gesture! Though it would have been better had Boz not been feeling under the weather – spending an hour outdoors in the wind and chill didn’t help much. But the results are quite nice, if I do say so myself! We also brought a few pictures of A&Z with us, to have in our photos. Turned out pretty cool!

Sunday we had church and our small group... which we skipped. Didn’t mean to, but all of a sudden I think we were both feeling a bit overwhelmed with things. I am happy to say that we now have just about everything packed. Just about.

Enough about that boring stuff. WE LEAVE IN 4 days!!! In 5 days we’ll be with our kids!!!

We haven’t gotten our itinerary yet, and probably won’t until we get in country. But here’s what we know so far.

We arrive in Addis Ababa on Saturday morning. The game plan is our driver is going to pick us up from the airport, drop us off at the Yebsabi Guest House (where we’ll be staying for the week http://www.yebsabi.com/ ) and we’ll freshen up, grab our camera and video camera, as well as the little backpacks we have for the kids (with fun surprises in there for each day!), and we’ll be on our way to FINALLY MEET THEM!!!!

Sunday we have the option of attending church. I’m sure we’ll be wiped out, but it’s something we’d very much like to do.

Monday or Tuesday. This is where we ask for you to cover us in prayer! We have the amazing opportunity to meet with A&Z’s birth father!! You can imagine the emotions we’re feeling right now. I have no doubt this will be one of the hardest things we’ll have to do. Yet, it’s something we really want to do. We weren’t even sure if it was possible until we got the email last week. I think it’ll help a lot in answering some questions they might have in the future… or at least help to fill in the gaps a bit. I just hope he doesn’t have any problem knowing the white girl bawling in the corner is going to mother his kids! LOL!! I laugh, but I have no doubt there’ll be many, many tears. Many tears.

Obviously Thursday is another day we’re asking you to pray over. This is when we’ll be going to COURT. We know we’ll pass eventually… but we’d really love to pass the first time around!!

And why not toss Friday onto the prayer list as well, it’ll be our last day with the kids, and I already don’t want to leave them. Can only imagine how much harder it’ll be once we’ve actually met them.

We'll also be meeting with the AWAA doctor and the child psychologist, doing more paperwork and having all sorts of fun. ;-)

So that’s pretty much the rundown on our week coming up. We’re going to try and blog/facebook as much as possible, but word is the internet can be a bit sketchy. I’m just hoping it’s working so when we do pass court, we can show you our BEAUTIFUL children!!

Aside from the above mentioned we’ll also be checking out one of the orphanages our agency runs, as well as a government run orphanage. There will of course be shopping(!!) and a variety of optional activities to choose from – the following are the ones we hope to check out:

Visit Historic Churches in Addis Ababa
Ethiopian National Museum
Lion Zoo
Go to the Entoto Mountains

Mostly we just want to hang out and get to know our kids. Oh, and let's not forget... we'll also be celebrating their birthday when we're down there!! Just think, we'll never miss a birthday again!