Ups & Downs

Ups

Our I-600a has been approved and we have received the official letter! I guess they accepted my sworn statement of having no criminal history so we're good to go. We have received our travel packet which is tons of great reading. It has so much information in it from how money works, to meeting birth families, to local cultural norms. We await our court date which will not be until at least a week from next Friday. After court we should get our Adoption Decree in about 3 weeks. With that in hand, Scott will be ready to travel to Ghana to file the I-600 at the embassy.

Williams received the bag of goodies from us last Wednesday. This bag, called the Welcome Bag, is a gallon-sized Ziploc bag that announces to the child that they have been matched to a family for adoption. Included in it was a TY monkey, a soccer t-shirt, a photo album of our family and life, a letter, a bag full of Hot Wheels cars, stickers, glasses with big googly eyeballs, and a little notebook. What a strange sensation it is to imagine him looking at pictures of us and reading the letter that I wrote him! We received a picture of him holding all his loot and it makes my heart do flip flops.

Downs

I got a call from our Adoption Coordinator this evening to let me know of a unforeseen situation that has arisen with our case. I can tell when she calls, just by her voice, whether it is a happy call or a not so happy call. Flip flops from the stomach again, but not in a good way. Best case scenario, this new situation will not effect us at all or slow down our process. Worst case scenario (very unlikely) everything falls apart. I have to let myself consider each option in order to prepare for anything, but I will not get myself worked up. Now, if I can just get Scott to stop saying, "This sounds really bad!" then maybe I can really not obsess over it. I think a good synonym for "adoption" would be "obsession". God can handle how he chooses.