Looking Back . . . Wednesday

Okay, WOW, so it's been way too long since I've been back on this blog!! I do want to get some more pictures on here of our trip, and since I stopped at Tuesday of our week in Ethiopia, I'm now onto Wednesday. I don't actually have many pictures from Wednesday because the main event for that day was our appointment with the US Embassy to get visa approval for Isaiah to be able to come back to the U.S. This was the appointment that was holding up our travel plans for a few weeks because they waited until the week before to confirm with our agency that we could have the appointment.

When we showed up for our appointment Wednesday morning we went through security (no electronics allowed). After all five of our AWAA families had passed through security, we all sat down to find out that they had decided to close the day before, so our appointment got moved to the afternoon (par for the course for the "bumps" in our trip!). So, we all loaded back into the vans and headed back to the guest house. There we decided just to flip-flop our day. We did more shopping in the morning, had lunch out and then went to our embassy appointment. The appointment basically consists of waiting for a few hours in a crowded, stuffy room (glad it was "winter"!!) until they call your name. Then we go up to the window where they ask you a few questions (literally 5-10 min. total) before they give you approval. Fortunately for us, Isaiah fell asleep on me shortly after we got there and was sleepy the rest of the time . . . some of the other families with us weren't so lucky and had to chase kids around for hours!

Besides knowing that we had Isaiah's visa approval, the most exciting thing of the day was FINALLY GETTING OUR LUGGAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so excited to finally be able to get our donations sorted for the transition home and orphanages. As I mentioned in my post while we were in ET, the only things missing from our luggage were a box of latex gloves and a large bag of candy (meant for a gift for some of the people who helped us while we were there). I wish I had had more time to get stuff more organized for pictures, but below is what I got in the chaos of sorting and separating. I wanted to take these pictures and share them with you because they were donations from you - so many of you prayed and sacrificed financially so we were not only able to complete Isaiah's adoption, but also be able to bring around 150-175 lbs. of donations for the orphans!