No one said it was going to be easy, they just said it was going to be worth it.

That is a motto that we have been living by, and it is oh so true.

As for the road trip part, things are going well. We left a bit later than planned (but we wanted to tie up some loose ends, make sure the house was in ok enough order, and give Precious extra attention). We made it to West Memphis tonight, which is about 2/3 of the way. So we'll have a quick and easy day tomorrow.

Cell phone coverage was spotty sometimes, which didn't help much. We need to retain a lawyer in I for the ICPC (Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children) portion of the adoption. And it's not as easy as we thought it was going to be.

We fully expect to probably have to stay in I until the beginning of the new year. And we are prepared to do that, have the vacation time, etc. (Lucky for Mike, he was using 2 weeks for this year, then in January his vacation starts over again). We made arrangements for the mail, deliveries, care of Precious, etc. We figured we'd probably stay in the hotel with the baby, gazing at him and pinching ourselves that he is ours! (It's cold and flu season, so we are going to be a bit particular as to where we take our newborn. We're not going to be overly protective parents, but that's just common sense).

However, we haven't been able to find a lawyer to help us. We were referred to two of them, but they are about 200 miles away from where we are headed and are unable to do it right now. One is going out of town, and the other can't do 200 miles on such short notice during the holidays (totally understandable!). They both recommended us to another one in town, but he's got too much on his plate as he ties up his activities for the year.

So we have the call out to one more and are waiting to hear from him. He runs an international adoption agency, but is a family lawyer and is familiar with the ICPC. So hopefully he can either 1. help represent us or 2. recommend someone local who might be able to.

As we are here in the hotel, one major project we have tonight is researching and looking to see if we can find any lawyers in town or the surrounding areas that might be educated in and able to work the ICPC for us. We purposely drove further today so that we'd be able to go meet someone tomorrow if we need to.

Baby boy has not been born yet. Now, we find out that potentially some steps need to be done (and one of the three involves some paperwork going before a judge) before we can leave the hospital with our son. That's not even leaving the state, but being able to have custody of him and take him to the hotel. The courts are open on Friday, but not all of them are open on Monday (some only half a day!) and of course they are not open on Tuesday. So, if baby boy doesn't make an appearance tonight for sure, or possibly this weekend (and also if we don't find a lawyer who will represent us) ifi he is born before Christmas he will spend it in the hospital. We should be able to visit him, just not take him back to the hotel with us.

So, we're a bit unsure if we want him to be born now, or to wait until Christmas, (where it'll be easier to get through the legal stuff in order to bring him to the hotel with us!)

We're keeping faith, as we know that everything happens for a reason. As well, things happen in due time. So, we are confident that things will work out the way they are supposed to.

Anyway, that's the update! We're keeping positive and can't wait to meet our son! As I packed his luggage I brought an outfit over to Mike, and we gazed at it, realizing that OUR SON is going to fit in this tiny little outfit. OUR SON. WOW.

Thanks for following along with us!

Our check in call and a quick vacation

Sorry the post is a bit late, we had our check in call on Monday night, then left the next day for a mini-vacation.

The call went ok. Typical stuff- don't need any new profiles, no news to report, etc. It was good to talk to her, but it was basically almost the same stuff.

We did learn one very interesting and very important thing that we need to correct. Apparently our home study (bringing back the homestudy issues (and more issues) we had with the homestudy lady again) does not reflect our preferences enough, and could limit us if some particular type situations came up if they are out of state. Apparently if they come up in Texas, it's a bit different since we won't need our home study immediately for the ICPC . But if they are out of state, we could run into some problems. We've tried emailing the homestudy lady again (according to our Lifetime coordinator, it's pretty normal to make adjustments periodically with the home study), but as usual, she is not responding to our emails or phone calls. And still hasn't made the adjustments we asked her to do a while ago. So frustrating.

So, we are going to contact our wonderful adoption lawyer and ask for some recommendations for someone to do a home study for us. He said we'd need to do another anyway most likely, using a home study person from our county. So, we figure we'll just go ahead and see about redoing it. How frustrating though.

We will still be considered for insta matches- we are just limited a bit and would have some issues if a few particular situations came up that we technically are not home study approved for.

We had a nice little vacation, a much needed get away. We flew out early Tuesday to San Francisco, and rode the trolley cars, went to Fisherman's Wharf and walked down the side of Lombard Street.

We got up Wednesday morning, and boarded the Golden Princess for a trip from San Francisco to Vancouver. It was SO neat to go under the Golden Gate Bridge on a cruise ship. We arrived in Vancouver on Friday morning. We literally got off the ship, then waited in line at the Port of Vancouver to get in line and board the Norwegian Star for a quick trip to Seattle. We got off the ship, walked around a little bit. That's one more state to mark off my list of states to visit (now, I only have North Dakota, Montana and Alaska!) Then, we caught a taxi to the airport and flew home. We enjoyed it a lot. It was my fourth cruise on Princess and Mike's third, but the first for both on Norwegian. It was an interesting experience. Anyway, we are glad to be home, and are relaxing, doing laundry, and basically trying to catch up.

We'll call in tomorrow or Tuesday to see what we can find out about a new home study. Ugh, how frustrating!

Great news for my friends!

I just got an email from R. Her soon to be daughter's birthmother is very uncomfortable right now, and the OB/GYN thinks she is going to have the baby within the next 12 hours. Yay! R is going to be a mommy soon :) I am so happy for her!!

And K (katd) and her husband and daughter(!) are on their way back home. The ICPC (adoption paperwork) is done, and they got the all clear to go home today :) She's a little nervous about taking the newborn on the airplane for the first time, but she'll do just fine :)

Woohoo!

What a great adoption day :)