COURT DATE!!!!!!!!

At about 11:30 Wednesday night, we checked our email as we wrapped up our meetings in Spain and we found an email waiting for us telling us that we received our court date for October 12!!! At first I was really disappointed that it was SO much later than we had hoped, but then my grief turned to excitement that we at least had a DATE! After months of waiting to hear ANYTHING certain we finally have a date to countdown...we are thrilled!

Also, while we were in Spain, we received a new batch of pictures of our (hopefully) kiddos and they are WONDERFUL! Our (hopefully) little boy was all smiles as he has discovered the screens on the digital cameras that the parents took with them...he was making some great cheesy smiles as he looked at himself :-) Baby girl still was stoic, but beautiful and healthy!! I wish so much we could share these pictures with you all!

Thank you all so much for praying with us for our trip. It was wonderful!! We had an awesome time with our friends and the AC in Spain provided such a relief to the Rome heat with no AC! We were privileged to be there to watch and celebrate Spain taking the World Cup--an incredible experience--the Spanish are NOT afraid to be exuberant...we took the kids out into the streets to take part in the celebration and watch...it was incredibly LOUD and chaotic and so much fun!

While we were in Madrid we also found out that they have many American restaurant chains and imports and we enjoyed these to the fullest!!! :-) YES, we also did tapas, gazpacho, and churros--but we reveled in the American things that we found. TGIFridays was right next door to our second hotel and we enjoyed their menu variety and free-refills!! We also went to the major plazas, the zoo, and the Palace...but squeezed in Dominos, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Taco Bell, KFC, and the aforementioned TGIFridays... most days we didn't eat lunch until 4:30 and wouldn't stop for supper until around 9:30 or 10...the sun sets SO late there and the evenings were amazingly pleasant--we lived it up!!

Our time with our good friends, the Bustrum family, was so precious...our 6 kids had a blast and the fellowship was sweet. I'll get some pictures up soon :-) If you want to see a video of Elijah during the celebration after the World Cup, go to my fb page...I linked it from youtube. He's a nut! :-)

The travel was basically uneventful--the flight to Madrid was VERY turbulent in the landing (causing Elijah to gurp in the provided sack...he has impressive aim, might I add) and as the plane touched down, it tipped severely to the side throwing us all off-balance, but the pilot righted it and we taxied to the gate applauding wildly--which then woke up a sleeping Iliana who promptly gurped all over herself, her seat, the floor and Elijah's leg. We were then the last to disembark and all of the passengers waiting to board looked at our family in loathing and I couldn't help but feel sorry for the person who has to sit in that seat--even though the cleaning crew was on the job...yuck. Our flight home was uneventful, just delayed about an hour out of Madrid...we hit the ground running when we got into town. We had a goodbye party at our house the next day for our friends, the Watts, who are moving to India...now we have settled down a bit and we are going to try and rest :-) as well as look for plane tickets to Addis for the 12th of Oct!

Pray for us to find the right tickets at a good price...and also, please pray for sleep for Jared and I...it has been so desperately hot here that sleeping has been next to impossible for us lately...we have three fans blowing on us but there is little relief...pray for our bodies to acclimate and for rest for us so we don't get sick.

I hope you are all as excited as we are for the Oct 12th date!

Thank you all for walking beside us and praying us through it all!!!