July 14

After a long night without much sleep, we woke up still not knowing exactly what to do. I had done a bit of shopping the night before – particularly at the pharmacy and Mike’s mom came by train to help out with the kids – just in case I left at any minute. One option was to wait one more day to see if anything changed but I couldn’t get a flight for Wednesday. The next available flight would be Thursday evening and we felt that was way too long to wait. The MP’s office didn’t have an answer for us at this point and my flight was only on hold until noon.

The ultimate decision was made by Mike. He finally said I should just go. This decision was made a few minutes before noon so I quickly called the travel agent and said to go ahead with the booking. Thankfully I was all set with my passport and immunizations. My sister was able to pull it together at the last minute too (I had called her to let her know the situation on Sunday night) and we agreed to meet at the airport at 3:00 pm – less than three hours later. Wow! Packing in about a half an hour is not a good idea and this became even clearer when I arrived in Ethiopia without some fairly necessary items. Oh well – not the end of the world.

By the way, the entire time since Sunday night, my three precious children at home (Victoria, Austin and Samara) were pretty much ignored. I was super stressed to say the least and felt like I had no time for them. I felt horrible about the way this all went. I’m sure they were so confused as it’s hard for them to understand what was all happening. How do you explain the bankruptcy of an adoption agency to three young children? To be honest, all they cared about was that Mommy was heading to Ethiopia to FINALLY bring Denver home. At one point I happened to mention that I may have to stay for a while (didn’t say specifically just how long that might be) and this just about did Austin in. He had a bit of a hard time and missed me a lot when I was in BC at the end of May so he wasn’t too pumped about this whole thing. But kids will be kids and they took it all in stride. Me? Not so much. It was really, really hard saying goodbye and not knowing how long I’d be away.

At some point before leaving home for the airport our super duper, fantastic, amazing, awesome (you get the picture) social worker Donna called. We had been in touch via email on and off over the past few days but it was so good to hear her voice. She reassured me by saying that if she were in my position, she would be doing the exact same thing. She said we need to trust our gut and she can relate to the mama bear instinct. That was exactly what I needed to make me feel like we were for sure, 100%, making the right decision. After all, jumping on a plane and heading to Africa isn’t something I, or most people for that matter, do on a regular basis. So thanks Donna!

With only 15 minutes left before having to leave the house, I called the Weygoss Guest House in Addis Ababa where I knew other adoptive families often stayed when traveling to Ethiopia. I just happened to get through on my first try (even though I found out later that it was a power out day) and booked a room. I also got a hold of someone that used to work for our agency as a driver/guide and he agreed to pick me up at the airport and bring me to the guest house. We could already see how God was watching out for us on this journey.

We got stuck in traffic on the way to the airport – yep, just what we needed. We still arrived in plenty of time though and met my sister there. Saying bye to Mike was even harder than saying bye to the kids. Again, I didn’t know how long I’d be away from him.

We boarded the flight and left at our scheduled departure time. It was a long, long flight to Frankfurt – eight hours. I didn’t sleep much. I’m not really good at sleeping on a plane regardless but having so much on my mind didn’t help. I had a major earache when we were descending into Frankfurt – excruciating pain – but other than that, everything went well and I was done the bigger part of the journey to Addis Ababa – only six and half hours of flight left.