Travel Approved

This week has been interesting. I'm not so sure that I would have asked for things to have gone the way they did, but here we are. I love a good surprise, and that's what we received.

This week we have been anticipating the arrival of our approval to travel to China. Once received, we can book our plane tickets and get ready to go. With Caleb's adoption, we received our travel approval (TA) and left for China 10 days later. This time around, it's been different.

If anything, I find that I am constantly adjusting to new levels of disappointment when it comes to traveling. Last summer, we thought we would be going in November-Decemberish. By November, we assumed we would travel in January. By January, well, you get the idea. 

We have missed the deadline to travel before the Chinese New Year: one of China's biggest holidays. Government offices close, flights are booked solid, and there is no vacancy at most hotels. Consequently, our agency does not send families during this time, because we wouldn't get very far. The delay is approximately a month. 

Anyway, we had been waiting for our travel approval. Rumors were flying around that our agency was getting some approvals from China and we hoped ours would be in the mix. We waited. I wasn't checking my email obsessively at all. :)

We eventually learned that several families from our agency received theirs. Great! Except we didn't receive ours. Not great. It was unknown when it would come. 

At this point, I started to give up dealing with my disappointment in any kind of a nice matter. I think I'm a relatively laid back person, but everyone reaches their point when that ends. I had reached mine. I found myself awake at 2 am that night, unable to sleep. I was terribly distracted about all of it, not to mention disappointed. I'm so unbelievably grateful for our son and the opportunity to adopt another, but this was hard.

The next day, with renewed attitudes, Russ and I faced the day determined to go on. Our travel approval would come, too. We may not go in February, but maybe March or April? We would keep waiting, because that's all we could do.

That afternoon, Caleb was napping and the phone rang: our agency. Didn't we get our email? No. Did we know that our travel approval had come? No.....

Apparently, we did receive it, but didn't get the email. It's here! We can go!

We are leaving in a month to go to China to pick up our Asher! I know, a month still is a long time, but I can now know when I'm leaving. I can plan! We know what we are doing now. The horrible wait has been replaced with excited anticipation. 

I've got some good friends. I also think that God is pretty great, although I know with recent events such as Haiti, many people may wonder otherwise. We had a lot of people praying for us through this process, for which I am so thankful. And even if we didn't receive our travel approval this week, even if we were still overlooked, I still call God good. He's got it together. He must know how much I love a good surprise, too, because that's what I got. When we thought we were passed by, we were wrong: our turn is here.

Here There Be Boys

We have sons. I love this. I may say differently in about 10-12 years when they are teenagers, but for now, I'm liking it. 

This week has been interesting. Actually, I could say that for the entire month. As it probably is in other parts of the country, we have had tons of snow. It just seems to continue to fall. Every time I think we could not have room for more, there it is. I do like snow, but we are starting to run out of places to put it. Christmas was a blizzard. We cancelled attending Christmas Eve services with Russ' family because they live 100 miles away. The next day, we did make it to my parents house (only 20 miles away) and ended up being snowed in overnight. Wind, cold temperatures, blowing snow, yes, this is a Nebraska winter as we haven't seen since my childhood.

This week, despite the weather, we welcomed my new nephew into the world. My sister, Marna had a little boy on Tuesday, January 5. His name is Axton Grey, and he was 7# 6 oz, despite the fears of the physicians that he would be closer to 9 1/2 lbs. If you've met my sister, you know she doesn't really have room for  9 1/2 lbs of baby. She is quite petite. I was honored to be in the delivery room as her labor coach and she did great! Little Axton is such a good baby already, one more sweet little boy in our family.

In other news of boys, Russ and I have received updates about Asher! We had sent him a Christmas package and apparently the company that translated everything and got it all there was able to get some updated information and photos of him! We have seven new photos! He looks very happy. He is almost 21 lbs--bigger than Caleb was at that age, he is just under 29 inches tall, and he has 5 teeth. What a sweetie! I just want to get him and give him a big squeeze!

 

       our latest photo of Asher in China -- January 2010