Passport and planning!

The past few days have been a whirlwind of excitement, celebration, and attempts to plan international travel during a holiday week!

Our good news came on the night after Christmas.  Late on December 26, we were checking e-mail for a reply from a sweet India adopting family who had offered to deliver a photo album to Kavya for us.  Instead, we saw an e-mail from our agency with a most welcome subject line:  PASSPORT.

We were both in shock.  After waiting for so many months, I could barely believe it!

The boys were still awake, so we went into their rooms and told them.  The next morning, Anya climbed into bed with us.  We thought of a fun way to share the good news with her . . .  Since the first week of September, we've been telling the kids that we would celebrate Kavya's passport by going to our favorite Indian restaurant.

She stumbled sleepily into our room and laid down with her back to us.  We said good morning, and she mumbled "Good morning" back.  Then we told her, "We're going to S_____ restaurant for lunch today!!" and waited to see when she would figure it out.

After about two seconds, she whipped around with huge eyes, and said, "The passport came?!?"  Yes, indeed!!!

Since then, we've been frantically making appointments at the medical center and the embassy, and working with our travel agent -- we found out pretty close to the weekend, and there are holiday closures this week, so we had a smaller window of time to work with.

Then, just after finalizing our plane tickets and hotel arrangements, we discovered our cred*t card account had been compromised/hacked.  Yikes.  After a few phone calls, we got things sorted out and made sure that when we show up at the airport, our tickets will be there and paid for!

And we took down most of our Christmas decorations to boot.

Tonight, our family New Year's Eve celebration was especially happy as we looked at the empty chair at our table.  It won't be empty for much longer, thank God!