Getting Excited!

Well, just this week it hit me that I am starting to get really excited for our Africa trip coming up! I think I am so excited because I now know that we will be able to work on the adoption while we are there. Praise God! And, since we will get to meet Samuel I feel like I have a strong purpose to go on the trip now! I uncovered my Africa sack from the bottom of my closet….these were some items that I had picked up over the past year since I wasn’t sure when exactly we would be going to travel to work on the adoption. In my forgotten sack I found....

-BUG SPRAY!

-3 sundresses from Target that I got at a steal of a price on the clearance rack a few months ago

-A passport case that my friend Stacy got for me last January! She said the uglier the better so that way it is hard to lose in the airport and everywhere in between. Makes sense, but I love paisley so I don’t think it is ugly at all. In fact, I adore my pink paisley passport holder! Can you say that 3 times fast?

-And the last thing was Jake’s buy…adapter plugs that provide worldwide compatibility for U.S. electronics in over 150 countries! He didn’t have this on his first trip, and with the plug ins being different in Africa, he had quite a time trying to charge his cell phone and plug in his laptop. This was a smart buy.

A couple of other things come to mind that I need to work on before our trip. The first is that I am hoping to make Samuel a welcome book with pictures of our family, home, activities that we do, etc. I had made Solomon a welcome book, and he loved it! It’s pretty easy to create one on Shutterfly. If you are adopting an older child, I think making him/her a welcome book is such an easy way to introduce your family and allow them to be prepared for the sights they will see once they are home with you. Here is a link to a website with good welcome book tips: http://www.comeunity.com/adoption/how/adoption-adjustment.html

The other thing on my trip check-list is to make little videos of Jake and I that my mom can play for JJ and Jayla while we are gone. This was my mom’s fantastic idea, and she suggested having a video for each day with us reading them a bedtime story, singing songs, etc. I think they will really like this, and at least it’s a way that I feel like I can leave them something in which they can still ‘see’ us each day. :) You know, us mom’s get a little worried that our kids are going to forget us while we are away.

Let’s see, I also just sent in everything to get my visa, so that was pretty exciting. Jake’s visa is still valid for another year. All week I’ve also been working on updating our dossier which is the legal documents that we need to begin processing our adoption in court. This will get sent over to Kofi next week so he can begin working on things on our behalf. Our homestudy expires in December, so eventually we will need to update that as well. It’s actually been pretty exciting for me to start working on updating all of these documents. For so long our adoption has just been stagnant, so now that things are moving along, I am feeling a renewed energy for it all!

Jake and I have also begun talking to JJ about Samuel….just starting out slowly for now and trying to be mindful of the uncertainty of status with Ghana adoptions. So far, he's been relating Samuel's coming similar to Yaw coming to live with us. In fact, after I mentioned a few things to him today he said, ‘Like Yaw?’ And then he asked me if Yaw was still going to stay with us. I had to break the news that eventually Yaw will go to school somewhere else and will move out. He just said, “Oh,” and then was quiet for awhile. I am sure it will take him awhile to wrap his brain around that one!

I feel like I could keep writing about all this excitement for awhile! It’s been fun to prepare for the trip, and I am also really looking forward to having 7 days with it being just Jake and I! I can’t remember the last time we got to take a trip with it being just us! Not to mention, could it really get any better imagining the hot African sun heating up my cold Iowa winter bones? It’s gonna feel so good!