Court Date!!!

We got a court date!! Actually, we have had a court date for 8 days, and this is the first chance I am getting to blog about it. AND, this is my first time blogging with a silent house. Lily is sleeping and all three boys are swimming with cousins! Weird, we shall see how this goes....

Okay, so last Tuesday I was going through the morning routine of feeding and dressing 5 people. (For the record, I do not need to dress 10 year old Jake or 8 year old Luke, but I do need to tell them to GET dressed!!) I was getting ready for a much anticipated play date. And my man calls and calmly says...

Matt-"We got an email from Ben (our case manager) this morning"

I am very distracted so I just reply with an equally calm "Ooookay...." thinking Must not be a big email or my passionate, emotional hubby would be much more excited. Must just be a standard Ethiopia update....

Matt-"We got a court date." (Still calm)

Carissa-"Wait, WHAT!!?? Before the rainy season?!?!? SOON!?!? WHENWHENWHENWHEN?!?!?" ( I have never professed to be a calm person)

Matt-"Um....yeah. August 4th." (Incidentally, this is 2 DAYS before the courts close for the rainy season)

Carissa- *Snif* "Really? We are going to Ethiopia for real to meet Zoey?" then my practical, slightly pessimistic self showed up and asked "Okay, what can still go wrong?"

SO....here is the new situation in a nut shell. Zoey has a court date on July 19th. Our case manager will call us that morning and let us know if we passed that first court date and if our August 4th date is a for sure. We have been hearing for months that we have a 50/50 chance of passing any court date (btw, I have decided that those are the worst odds EVER). BUT, Case Manager Ben said that they had an "overwhelmingly positive experience" with the group that just went through court. In fact, most passed and those that didn't just had to fix little things! Which is beyond awesome!

Matt and I now have plane tickets to Ethiopia (through D.C., New York and Dubai) leaving on July 29th. We will meet our baby girl on August 2nd. We will go to court on August 4th and tell the judge that YES we want to adopt this baby and YES we have met her! Then we fly out of Ethiopia on August 6th and come home on the 7th (without Zoey :(, that is another trip) just in time to celebrate Luke's 9th birthday.

We are bursting with excitement over here. Our to do list seems to be getting longer and longer even though Matt and I knock things off of it every day. We are both fully vaccinated, our plane tickets are bought, we have been trained on traveling to Ethiopia (DO NOT drink the water!!!), Our pup is booked at the kennel, and we kinda know where our kids will be for 10 days! We also have a lovely packing list that makes my head swim. To top all that off, I have the "nesting instinct" that I had so strongly when I was pregnant. So, my house is all torn apart. Dumb.

One last note, Case Manager Ben said something SO COOL yesterday during our webinar (web seminar for traveling to Ethiopia) He said that he had been blessed recently to have been in Ethiopia when some of the families he had handled got to meet their children for the first time. He had prefaced this by saying "Try very hard not to have any expectations on how your child will react to you. There is no way to predict it. The reactions run anywhere from smiling and running to their new parents to losing it completely and clinging to the orphanage worker."

And then he said something awesome....

He said that he was so overwhelmed by this scene of adoptive parents meeting their children for the first time and how it represents the love our Father has for us. No matter what the reaction of these children were, the parents were there for them, to adopt them and bring them home where they belong. I just picture our Heavenly Father anxiously waiting to wrap his arms around us and bring us into his family. No matter what our reaction is. Whether we are running to him with a smile, or indifferent, or fighting him tooth and nail. God wants us in His family SO BADLY. He puts up with a lot of our "stuff" and still waits for us.....That kind of love takes my breath away!