Flights booked...now time to make Lists

We recently received exciting news! We have been given a court date!!!!! On March 17th we will testify to the Ethiopian courts and if all goes well, we will gain guardianship of our daughter. We were told to be in Ethiopia by March 13th. So, yesterday we booked our flights **dance of joy** and have been firming up our two month itinerary in Ethiopia. We understand that things might, and probably will, change as far as time lines and plans go...so our itinerary is "fluid."

Back in the beginning of this journey, when we first started thinking about our trip to Ethiopia, we were prepared to travel to and within Ethiopia without any familiar faces, just having each other. Although we love to travel alone we were shocked and thrilled to learn that there will be three other families, who all live in the Portland area, traveling at the same time. We couldn't believe it, how exciting! We hope to also visit some people in Addis who we know already, and a few that are family friends. It will be wonderful to see some familiar faces in Addis, and to experience some of the joys of adoption with other adoption families.

This week we plan to finalize our in country flight and travel plans, send off for our visas, and start checking off the multiple to-do items on our list(s). We are actually at peace with most of our travel plans and aren't as anxious as we thought we would be at this point. We just keep thinking about our daughter and holding her for the first time and peace washes over us.

“If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh