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!