Travelling!!!!!

We just got word yesterday of some possible travel dates, the earliest being this Tuesday, Sept. 22nd. So, we decided not to wait another moment longer. We bought our tickets today and will be flying out this Tuesday, Sept. 21st. We will bring Andrew out of the orphanage on Thursday, Sept. 23rd. We are so ready to bring him home.

Every year we take a family vacation to Hilton Head Island the first week in October. It's our favorite trip as a family. This year all available funds were spent on two trips to Bulgaria instead. So we promised the kids we would take a long weekend. As we debated which dates we would travel, we soon realized that we would not be able to make the long weekend to HHI. As we gently broke the news to our children, their immediate response was "WHO CARES!!! We want our brother home!" We are so proud of them. Our entire journey has been a family endeavor and we could not, nor would we have done any of this without all of them. We'll write more on that in a later post.

Our first trip came upon us suddenly and with a weeks notice we were scrambling to have everything in place. We knew this trip was coming so over the past 5 months we have been slowly collecting items we would need for this trip (toys, clothes, travel items, etc.). That being said, a week to get ready is still just a week and we again are scrambling to make sure everything's in place. From mowing the lawn, to arranging rides for the kids, to setting up skype on our home computer -we are busy.

This week our oldest daughter and (now)oldest son each have birthdays. Our large family party for both will have to be postponed. In the meantime we're having two, much smaller birthday/family night parties before we leave. Complete with milkshakes, root beer floats, games, and finishing Prince Caspian, they're sure to be fabulous!

Since our last post God has provided $7,090. We are still needing another$3800, but for God there's no time crunch. We are continually reminding ourselves of all that He's done in the past. Last trip the final $1200 didn't arrive until 2 days before we left. He is faithful to complete what He started, and we'll rest in that. We are currently waiting to hear from an adoption grant that we've applied for. Ironically, we'll hear from them no later than the 21st, the day we fly out. God's funny.

We can't wait to be able to share Andrew with all of you!! Thank you for your prayers, encouragement and support. There has been a tangible grace on our family at every step.