A Big Day

This has been one of the best weeks I can recall in a long while.

The kids returned to school after an amazing Christmas break, I returned to a morning routine which generally scares me thanks to Owen, but found myself pleasantly surprised, Bob and I returned to trying to get kids to bed on time (yeah right) and both Bob and I decided to dive back into the adoption paperwork for a final push to get it completed. Do not misunderstand, we have no hesitation about adopting but two things have been going on for me. I have been on the list serv for AGCI receiving all the various emails from the many families enrolled in the Ethiopia program. Many of you may know that Ethiopia pulls hard at my heart strings and the choice between Ethiopia and Nepal was very difficult for us. In any event the Ethiopia program is thriving and moving along rapidly. Many families will leave this month to pick up their children. So I was bummed a bit. I felt a little lost and certainly frustrated that I still we still did not have what we needed to move forward in completing our Nepal paperwork. Secondly, I was overwhelmed every time I opened the giant binder of home study or dossier information. After all, we had decided to take a paperchase break in December, so trying to revisit the scene was challenging. So I explain all this only to get to the good part... My week changed as I continued to ask God for patience and guidance and of course peace about a process I certainly do not control. By Wednesday we had received the very important phone call from the agency outlining all the paperwork needed for Nepal's final dossier requirements. I spoke with the caseworker who manages Nepal and felt so much better about where we currently stand.  By yesterday I was finally able to spread everything back out on the floor and number it all so that I could make sense of the documents. I was even able to explain it all to Bob. Whew! Today Bob headed to downtown GR to obtain original birth certificates and I finally requested mine from the Toledo Hospital. Now we need a million passport photos, a few documents from our home study social worker and many items notarized and we are ready to roll. We can actually submit the paperwork to AGCI and they will submit it to the Ministry of Nepal. We are getting closer to knowing who will be joining our family.