surprises

I know I have not been a particularly good blogger this past year (or is it even longer?), but even I can't believe that it's been about 6 weeks since my last post.

It suddenly seems as though we have so much to catch up on, which feels a bit crazy because for much of the past year, I struggled to blog because there was really nothing to blog about. Between June 2010 and late this summer when we started having to re-do expiring paperwork, there was basically nothing adopted-related happening (well, other than a few rule changes and the fact that as things unfolded, our estimated wait time grew and grew... but more than enough has been written about all that).

So imagine our surprise when we got a call in early October, not even 15.5 months into what we then expected to be a 16-17 month wait for a referral. In our experience, surprises are pretty rare in the international adoption process. Or, I should say, good surprises. We have had our share of unexpected delays and paperwork glitches, changes to the rules and process... So that call certainly threw us!!

And so now, just as we are finally taking it all in. Getting to know the face of this amazing little girl in Ethiopia and starting to think about an exciting new year ahead, we got another call that sent us spinning. In what I assume was one of the last tasks our caseworker, Sara, did on Wednesday morning, before Gladney's offices closed at noon for the Thanksgiving holiday, Sara told us to book our tickets to Ethiopia. We are expected to be in court in Addis on December 27!

For the first time in almost two years of planning for our daughter's adoption, I'm thrown. We've become so used to the long stretches between the various milestones of this process, that I never imagined we would have less than 30 days between learning of our court date and getting on a plane bound for Ethiopia. But that's exactly what's happening. Our journey is finally nearing its end, and yet in some ways also just beginning. We couldn't be more excited.