Getting on a Plane

Five years ago today Bill and I got on a plane bound for Ethiopia. 

We had 4 suitcases, 3 boxes of dryer sheets, 14 girl outfits, 14 boy outfits, 56 socks, 14 pairs of jammies, 72 diapers, 12 burp cloths, 8 bottles, 104 bottles liners, 6 cans of formula, a gallon of  hand sani, our dossier, about 10 pounds of dried fruit and $3000 dollars in new crisp bills.  Of course we had tons of other stuff (problem pack anyone), but these were the items I had packed and unpacked at least a dozen times in the last 6 weeks.  I stared at each outfit and marveled at how tiny it was and the thought that soon a tiny body would inhabit those clothes. Not just any body, but a son and a daughter.  OUR son and OUR daughter!!  Everything was soooo tiny!  Little did I know how much tinier our little ones would be!  I of course cried as we said goodbye to our parents.  The crying continued as we checked in-I know you're shocked!  I calmed down just in time for the ticketing agent to ask, "what is the nature of your trip to Ethiopia?"  Bill said, "we are going to bring home our babies".  And of course I cried all over again.  We were excited and nervous all at once.  We knew that in a few short days our lives would be changed forever, but we had no idea what that really meant.  We talked and talked for the first few legs of our journey and then as we got closer to crossing international waters, we just started praying.  I was so excited to go back to Africa, as the summer before, my life was changed forever by the trip I had taken to Kenya.  Bill was getting more and more anxious as he had never been and didn't know what to expect.  He had that "papa bear" thing going on and that's really hard to do when you cannot control one single variable.  So we prayed.  We prayed for our babies and their caregivers, and their birth parents and the people who worked at the embassy and our driver and our guide and any other families we might come across at the guest house.  We prayed for our lawyer and all of the people working at the guest house.  We prayed against stomach issues and water borne illness.  And we were still over the Atlantic Ocean:)  We spent the next 2 days in airports and on planes making our way to becoming a family of 4.  Stay tuned for more of this amazing journey...