Everything is set!

We leave Monday night late...well, technically Tuesday morning in the wee sma's. We'll get into Addis around 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday. We'll get Canaan and Eden around lunch time probably and spend the rest of the day settling in and getting to know one another...for GOOD!!!! We'll go to the Embassy on Wednesday morning and I have no idea how long that will last. Then we'll chill out on Thursday and Friday during the day...maybe do a little more shopping or just hang out around the guest house and play and maybe watch Christmas movies...then Friday evening we'll head to the airport for our overnight flight to Frankfurt (8 hrs or so?) and then we'll layover in Frankfurt for a couple of hours, eat, and get on our flight to DFW (11hours--bleck!). We'll be in Dallas around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.

It's nice that we're going to airports that we are rather familiar with...we've flow in and out of Addis before, and Frankfurt several times, as well as DFW...so that might help us navigate a little better? Here's hoping!

Our family is going to meet us at DFW with a big van (thank you to our home church, First Baptist Hollis, for the loan!!) and we'll make the 4.5 hour haul from Dallas to Hollis!!! Then...we'll be home!!

Monday, the 13th, we start running the gauntlet of doctors, dentists, optometrists, and beauticians...that last is for me :-)

We'll also be trying to work on our legal documents...getting C and E's passports expedited, social security cards ordered, etc. Then we'll start with Italian immigration to get them their long term visas for Italy...we'll probably have to make a trip to Houston again to the Italian embassy--bleck! But hopefully all will work out before we have to catch our return flight home to Rome on January 10th!

Anyway, that's a rundown...I hope I will keep up with the blog during this trip...but you all know that might not be the case.

Please continue to keep our family in your prayers...if you are around Hollis we would love to try and see you at some point, but we will also have to be very attentive to Canaan and Eden's needs in all of this. We cannot overwhelm them with visitors and too much at once. We will probably keep them away from large crowds...which will include church services, I'm afraid. If we do come to church (probably not, but IF) we will slip in the back late and probably slip out early. It's not that we don't want to introduce them...we just have to be careful. We will be home-bodies at James and Jana's house as much as we can be. But hear us when we say that we WANT to see people...we just have to be careful and it would help us to have notice if you are wanting to come out and visit...just a small heads-up, that's all! Thanks guys!!!

We are so excited that our adoption process is winding down and our journey with OUR children will finally be beginning!!!!

Continue to pray for us as we travel. We will need a lot of endurance and good health and patience. Please pray for us all.

We love you guys!!!

Tickets...maybe

Well, this has been wild! We were working with one travel agency that had a lot of trouble understanding what we were trying to do and then they were unable to book tickets for our Ethi kids because we didn't have any passport info for them...even though EVERY family that adopts out of Ethiopia doesn't have that info upfront...but whatever. We switched to another agency and started working with them...SOOO much better! They are very knowledgeable and within an hour we had reservations made for all of us on all of our flights--together! I'm so glad because I didn't want to have to separate the family on such long flights! Instead of flying into OKC, we'll be heading for DFW...it was considerably cheaper to fly in and out of DFW...so our trip back to Hollis will be longer, but we saved about $400/person so that makes up for it!

We have no yet paid for our tickets...we're waiting for confirmation from our adoption agency (IAG) head on our flight time to make sure they work with our Embassy schedule before we solidify everything. But we have reservations!!

I joked today on facebook about how our kids won't be going to college now, but we'll all be coming home for Christmas...it's VERY expensive to do this. But the money is there and we believe that God had provided this money for this purpose and He will continue to provide for our family in the future. It's scary to deplete your savings on faith...but He'll prove Himself over and over to us...I KNOW it!

Please continue to pray for us as we scramble to get the kids' schools notified of their extended absence and all the luggage gathered and packed.

Pray for our kids as they enter an extremely chaotic time with LOTS of new things.

We've never taken back-to-back long flights before and we need all the prayer you can sacrifice for patience and endurance!

We'll let you know of more particulars later hopefully.

Thank you for standing beside us in all this!!

WE'RE CLEARED TO TRAVEL!!!

That's right! We JUST received word that we can appear at the Embassy in Addis on the 8th! That's 4 days before we need to be on the ground in Addis! WHAT?!?!?

So this is brief but I HAD to gather as much prayer as I possibly could.

We are desperately searching for flights...we have a travel agent working on it with us. We are praying that we can all fly together, even if we can't all sit together, and that we can AFFORD what these last minute tickets will cost! We are flying with 5 from Rome to Addis, then with 7 from Addis to Oklahoma City (or Dallas).

PLEASE PRAY that the details work out. Pray that God shows His sovereignty in a MIGHTY way through all of this...because we all know that there is NO way something of this magnitude will work out without the direction of the Lord!!

We will let you know what we find out!!

I feel a name change coming on...

Not for anyone in particular...but for the blog. I feel like the name of this blog would be more appropriately named "Motleys Wait" Because that is the basic definition of our adoption process. It is what takes up the most of our timeline...the waiting. We've been waiting to hear of an Embassy date since, basically, Oct. 12th. Our friends who appeared alongside us in court received their confirmation to travel two days ago (giving them only 7 days to get everything bought, tickets and everything, before they had to be in Addis at the Embassy)...we are still waiting to hear the Embassy's decision on our case. No, we have no idea what the hold up is. They are still working on it, I guess. We'll see.

So I know it's not exciting for anyone--but such is our adoption process...and I'd even venture to say that this is pretty common in many adoptions. It is not about instant gratification for most.

So please continue to pray for a decision to be made. For our hearts to be peaceful with whatever that decision is. and for all the details to fall into place in God's timing.

Also, just to throw this in, I am still really dealing with this pregnancy sickness stuff. It's terrible. I REALLY would love relief from it soon. Please pray for me as well.

We appreciate you all!!