Court Success!!

Ehiopia has officially official-ed our adoption!! WAHOO!! We are a family! Nothing else can delay the process or go wrong; she is our baby. Now we wait until April 14th (the day after her six-month birthday) to pick her up forever!! (Our agency needs to apply for her Ethiopian passport and finalize her US visa. But it's just paperwork, no big deal.

It was a long day. At 6:30 am I rolled over to snuggle with my sleeping husband until I was finally able to accidentally wake him up by whispering "It's 9:30 in the morning in Addis right now." We had a good laugh and spent a few minutes reviewing how ridiculously lucky we are.

Then Eric went to work, and I sat and waited.

I was going to go to the orphanage this morning but I couldn't pull myself away from the computer, so I learned how to make a DVD for my friend's daughter's first birthday videos. At around noon, I figured out how to make my computer beep each time I receive a new email, and so at that point I was able to leave the room to shower and fry an egg for breakfast.

Eric called twice for news, so that broke the day up a little, and I researched flights to Addis from DC. They are expensive, and that made me sad.

But we both had a feeling that today was going to be a good day for us.

And now it is! I can't believe the relief. I had no idea how much I had been carrying around with me until we were cleared -- there seems like there has been something to worry or fuss over (although probably a lot of it was unnecessary) for three or four months now, from the moment we were first told about Dessi -- some reason to check my email as soon as I got home or woke up or just simply hadn't checked for more than an hour. And now it's all over and I can't help but think, "Well! That really wasn't so bad!"

Truly, I think this now. :)

OK. Now we are going to buy our tickets to Addis and have a nice glass of wine.

Here are our plans for the rest of the month:
>
> > March 28 - return to DC for a week,
> > April 4 - Leave Francie with our fabulous friends
in DC, fly to ethiopia for seven days of sightseeing!!
> > April 14 - pick up dessi, spend four days doing
court work and legal paperwork, hanging out
together, whatever.
> > April 18- fly to DC, pick up francie and get a
good night's sleep.
> > April 19 - fly to Montana, hang out, readopt Dessi
in Montana so she's a US citizen, apply for a
passport, maybe kayak and definitely hike a little,
and pretty much just do whatever little Dessi wants.
> > May 16 - fly to DC, "pack out" (meet with the
movers who will move all our things to Senegal),
maybe rent a condo and meet my parents in DC for a
few days so they can meet Dessi!!!
> > May 20 - fly to Senegal

And then we should be sitting relatively still for a while, which will probably make for some pretty dull blogging, just the baby the baby the baby :)

How thrilling!