We have some very exciting news, we have booked our fourth and final trip… the trip that will result in Sweet Girl coming home with her family! We had hoped to do this at the end of Oct, but several factors caused us to delay slightly, something that doesn’t seem like a big deal but pained our hearts when we’ve been so diligent about not delaying her homecoming due to things we can control. But we have booked our final trip from Sun 11/11 to Wed 11/21, putting all us of home and together the day before Thanksgiving… there will be no shortage of things be thankful for this year. In just nine days this chapter will come to an end and a brand new one will begin.Since we had a couple of weeks delay we took the opportunity to spend quality time with Cranky and Happy and our families. We are legally a family of 5 right now, but with only two little ones in the house currently, we wanted to take advantage of the last days of our man to man defense before we transition into zone defense. I know no post is complete without pictures, so here’s some from our trip to the pumpkin patch and corn maize with the girls favorite cousin Benjamin!

So back to Sweet Girl..

Once in country, our itinerary goes something like this… after we arrive, we will spend the first two days in Sweet Girl’s region, making final preparations for her departure from the orphanage. We will pick up her passport that I applied for on the last trip. Vita confirmed for us last week the passport office says its ready, so hopefully no surprises there. Then Tues afternoon, we will grab Sweet Girl, let her say her goodbyes and depart the orphanage for the final time. It’ll take all we have not to run to the car. We are expecting she will leave with literally nothing, not the clothes on her back, not any of the toys we previously brought her. She was an orphan, she had no possessions, only communal property.

We will dress her in her first very outfit she can call all her own. We will then immediately take the 3 hour car ride to the capital that night where we have rented an apartment near the US embassy for the remainder of our time (and be spending our first nights together as a family). We will say our final goodbyes to Vita as she hands us off to Boris, the facilitator that handles the capital region. We’ll begin the 5-day program there on Wed which will consist of getting her medical exams, interviewing with the US embassy, getting her visa to enter the US, and finally registering her at her country’s consulate. Even though this is pitched as a 5 day program, we hear its almost always completed in 3 days so we might have a chance at coming home early.

Booking plane tickets was slightly more complicated this time… we looked at adoption fares as the attractiveness here is there are no change fees. No change fees would be nice and increase the possibility of being able to afford coming home sooner. But quickly realized just what a scam these “special” fares are. Not only must she have a 1-way ticket which is more expensive to begin with, but they only discount their most expensive (not cheapest/internet) fare. So an adoption fare still ends up being like 4x the amount of a regular round trip internet fare, hardly worth it, even if we end up paying change fees associated with a normal internet fare. So what we decided to do what book our 2 tickets normally as we have in the past, then separately book her a round trip ticket originating in the opposite direction and she would not use her return flight. We could then call the airline and get all tickets linked together as a traveling family. So our plan was sound except for one problem, you can’t book a 4yr old an international flight by herself, without a parent on the same reservation, the website won’t allow it. After some ingenuity, we were able to overcome this problem, purchase all our tickets at the exceptional prices we wanted, pay for hers with the miles we’ve earned on previous trips and get them all linked together. We all sit together on our international leg, but she doesn’t yet have a seat assignment on our domestic flight as only exit row seats were available, but thats a minor problem I’m not too worried about dealing with. We also choose to depart/return to a different local airport than we’re used to in order to try to cut down on our 4hr layover in JFK. Our new path gives us almost 2hrs for all 3 of us to get through customs and passport control and make our connecting light… which will be close with an adoption, but should be possible and will keep Sweet Girl busy and cut down on boredom sitting in the terminal waiting.

I want to thank everyone for following our story, supporting us, and getting us to this point… I can’t express that enough. It seems very surreal to be at this point. Please continue to pray for us and Sweet Girl as she prepares to make the journey to her new home and family. She’s leaving all she’s every known – her country, her familiarity, her safety, her food, her language, her caretakers, even the same clothes she wears day after day – to take a chance on the love of a family. We are already heartbroken knowing that she will have to grieve this loss. It’s hard knowing that we are the cause of her grief and we are doing this to her. There is no way to explain to a 4 year old that we think this will be better for her in the long run.

Stay tuned for exciting updates from Trip #4!