Thursday, July 26, 2007

Day One: Leaving, but Still in Appleton

I literally have one minute to do this update. We haven’t left yet.We get on a plane a little after 1 p.m., which means that we have to be at the airport at about 11 a.m.. My father has taken a day off to drop us off, which is excellent, because we really, really, really don’t have room for all the stuff we have to bring.Right now, that’s:Two 30-inch duffel bags worth of stuff for the care center who is looking after our child.One 30-inch duffel bag worth of stuff for us.One 30-inch duffel bag worth of stuff for the baby – including, you know, formula and diapers and such.One backpack with mostly electronics.One backpack with a change of clothes in case of lost luggage, plus anything and everything that didn’t fit into the duffels.One diaper bag which will, of course, have stuff for Mihret as we’re coming back, but right now contains the last vestiges of our “adults-only” family – large paperback books (no room for hardbacks, up to and including the last Harry Potter sitting on the nightstand, which has two very eager Pattersons waiting to get their eyes on it).In the next three hours, we’ve gotta eat, mail the bills (so we don’t end up paying the credit card company interest for the cost of our flight today), put the final stuff into our bags (my comb, which I needed this morning) and take care of things like throwing out the trash.I have less than three hours.After that, it’s Appleton to Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany, and then we’re in Addis Ababa. We get there Friday night, after 8 PM.Hopefully we’ll be able to update again after that.

-Josh

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Adoption travel blog

My husband Josh and I have been holding our daughter in our hearts for so long, and in a few days we will get to hold her in our arms for the first time.We are en route this week to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the final leg of our two-year adoption journey, to meet and bring home our first child, Mihret. We’re scheduled to return home to Appleton on the afternoon of Aug. 4.Mihret will turn six months old this Saturday, our first full day at the foster care center. There, caregivers have been sunning her outside to relieve her diaper rash and feeding her the soy formula that helped her gain about half a pound in ten days this month.From the central highlands of the capital city, we’ll take a day trip into the country’s southern region, Mihret’s birthplace, to learn more about how Mihret’s birth family lives. We’re bringing along a map with a line we drew connecting Appleton and Addis Ababa - a token of thanks so we can show Mihret’s birth family we won’t forget their gift of love.Counting down the days until our daughter is with us has brought us immense joy that is priceless. And we invite you to share this journey with us.

-Kara