Travel Dates!

We received our travel dates Friday afternoon!

We are required to be in Addis Ababa by December 26th and we have an appointment at the Embassy on December 28th. I was really expecting to not be able to travel until January, and it made me so sad to think of our baby girl spending her first Christmas in an orphanage. Turns out, just like Santa Claus, we will be flying around the world on Christmas Eve! Perhaps we'll be able to wave at him through our plane window! Santa will be busy delivering presents, and we will be on our way to receive our most precious Christmas gift of all--Miss V will be placed in OUR ARMS!

We just booked our flights today! We're scheduled to fly out of Tampa on Christmas Eve, we will spend a week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, leave for home on New Year's Eve, and arrive back home on New Year's Day! What a memorable Christmas it's going to be!

Both Hus-B's mama and mine have been quietly lobbying for months to convince us to leave the girls with them; the volume was turned up when it was announced that we'd be traveling over Christmas and cousins, aunts and uncles joined in.

We had few reservations about taking the girls along. Even though our agency discourages it, it was important enough to us that we negotiated the option early on in the adoption process. Hus-B and I have traveled abroad extensively and have dealt with enough airports, train stations, public transportation, missed connections, lost luggage, language and currency differences, etc.. that it’s just not stressful to us. And our girls are super little travelers—they’ve always done well with long plane flights, sleeping away from home, schedule and time changes, new food, etc… It is always a joy for us to have them along. Miss M’s spent so much time flying around Addis Ababa on Google Earth in the last few months that we've actually been counting on her to be our in-country navigator!

On the other hand, our extended family has many fun activities and outings planned over the last couple of weeks of December, and the girls really have been looking forward to participating in everything and spending time with some of their cousins that they only get to see a few times a year. We’ve traveled a bit without the girls and they do regular grandparent sleepovers, so we don’t have any worries about them staying with family. It will be easy for family to care for them during a time when work schedules are flexible, most of our visiting family will be here on vacation and the girls don’t have school or extra-curricular activities going on.

After much discussion over the weekend, Hus-B and I were still not sure what to do. Miss M is pretty mature for a just-turned-6 year old, and Miss A can always be counted on to voice her own little opinion, so Sunday evening we called a family meeting, presented the girls with their options and let them make the call. They opted to stay home. In making her decision, Miss M was sure to confirm that she would not be missing opportunities to see giraffes or zebras in Africa. In the end, cousins, playing with Gabby's adorable new dog and trips to Sea World and Disney's Animal Kingdom (where Miss M WILL get to see giraffes and zebras) definitely sweetened the stay-home deal from the girls’ perspective. They will receive tons of attention and their days will be so full of fun that we may not even be missed! And Miss V will get mommy and daddy all to herself for a week of bonding.

If the girls were joining us, we were planning to stop on the way to Ethiopia and spend a couple of days at a resort in Dubai going to the beach, riding camels, taking a desert safari out in the sand dunes and adjusting our body clocks. With family starting to arrive next weekend and with the girls not joining us, Hus-B and I will just be doing one overnight in Dubai to avoid waiting in the concourse during a 13 hour layover (we slept in enough airports back in our backpacking days!), and will limit our trip to travel time and the required week in Ethiopia.

Although we were excited about including the girls on the journey to bring home their sister, we have already been planning to take periodic family trips back to Ethiopia as Miss V grows up--so this will likely not be Miss M and Miss A’s only opportunity to see the country their sister is from (plus, those trips would have the benefit of more flexibility in scheduling and more time to tour the country). The week we will be spending in Addis Ababa this month will not be nearly enough time to really get to know the country.

It’s really happening, y’all! And REALLY SOON! We will be busy, busy, busy the next couple of weeks—not only with the typical shopping, baking, gift exchanging, programs, parades and parties that are jotted in virtually every square of our December calendar, but also with wrapping up and delegating work matters (I’ll be out of the office for at least 3 months)--and last but not least--PACKING! Whoo hoo!