The news we've all been waiting for!

Sergio and I are thrilled to announce we are leaving Friday the 18th to pick up Leul and Hana!

We will spend one night in NYC before heading on to Dubai where we will also spend one night due to a 13 hour layover. We'll arrive in Ethiopia Monday the 21st around mid morning, go through customs, dump our stuff at the hotel and then go to the orphanage to get the kids!

We are leaving Ethiopia Friday night and will arrive home late Saturday night after 7 months of waiting to have them home with us!

God has abundantly blessed us in so many ways with our travel dates and I wanted to share some of them with you all.

First of all Sergio and I are getting a night in NYC. We'll be there for a little over 24 hours which is the same amount of time we had when we went there a few years ago and we got to see everything we wanted then, thanks to my obsessive planning and scheduling! This time we are just going to relax and enjoy the city. Okay we might not relax, but we will definitely enjoy the city!

Second of all we are flying on one of the nicest airlines out there right now, Emirates Air. They have all new aircraft, really good maintenance records (which is a big deal for me!), roomier seats and are supposed to really cater to kids having over 600 movies and games available to watch and play! When we were originally going to go over in May, I wanted to fly Emirates but at the time tickets were way too expensive!

Third, the route we are taking is supposed to be a really good way to go. We will have a 13 hour flight from NY to Dubai which I'm not doing cartwheels over, but once in Dubai we will get to spend the night at a hotel courtesy of the airline, wake up and shower and only have a 4 hour flight to Ethiopia. I have heard from many traveling parents who have taken this route and they have all said how nice it is to arrive in Ethiopia refreshed, rather than arriving after flying straight there. The electricity and water are not too dependable in Ethiopia so I am very glad to know I will at least get a shower on Monday morning!

Fourth but probably the biggest blessing I will share is that there are two other families from our agency traveling at the same time. I have gotten to know both the mom's online as they are both Christian homeschooling mom's. They are both adopting boys close to Leul's age and one of the boys even shares a room with Leul! I am happy we will all be there at the same time but what I'm really thrilled about is that we have almost all the same flights! We will be meeting up in NYC and will fly over together and fly back as far as NY with one family and as far as Seatac with another! This is nothing short of God's blessing and provision! He knows I need some prayer partners on those flights with me. It seems unreal that only last Dec. I turned down Sergio's offer to go to San Diego for our anniversary in order to avoid the 3 hour flight and now I'm facing 47 hours of in flight time withing a week's timeframe! I am so thankful God put my two friends on the same plane as me because I can almost guarantee that without them, Sergio would be asleep by takeoff and I'd be left to fight the fear alone!