Going!

On April 30th of last year we became the legal parents of Davis in the eyes of the Ethiopian courts. For some reason, David and I both were sure we were not going to "pass court" on this, our first attempt, so though we had been given "tentative travel dates" for the end of May we pretty much ignored them. So after the shock wore off that we had indeed passed court and he was indeed our son we began to be in shock about the fact that we had three weeks to get ready to go! Not only did we have to pack, we also had to ensure that one last document - our updated fingerprints - reached the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia before we did so that we would be able to bring Davis home. After a few weeks of phone call after phone call to various government officials, including all of our congressmen and senators, we did receive confirmation that the fingerprints were there and we were good to go.

So last May 23rd - on that Saturday morning - we checked the bags one last time, packed them in the car, and started the longest journey of our lives to get our boy.

We had arranged for my parents to come and get Faith, so she could leave us instead of us having to leave her. They arrived in the morning, and she was really ready to go be with them. We'd done a lot of talking about the trip and even made a paper chain to demonstrate how many days we would be gone, but I still wasn't sure how much she could understand. I was definitely worried about leaving her, though I knew she would be well cared for by Mema and Pop Pop.

It was very strange after all of the frantic preparations of the previous weeks and months to just sit. We flew from Columbia, SC to Washington D. C. and once we found our gate there we met up with the Mullins family who were adopting through the same agency and therefore would be with us for the week. David and I were trying to emphasize the mindset that we were having nice couple time together (as opposed to David's nervous-flying mindset and both of our so-ready-to-see-our-baby mindset) as we tried to fake a date in an airport restaurant. It sort of worked and soon we boarded the plane that would take us halfway around the world to our son's first home, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.