About one hour and 15 minutes

Pictures: Sorry, I have 2 pictures of all the stuff that was on our bed awaiting the suitcase and accidently posted the same one twice; Kevin in the car ready to head to Boise Inn America for the night before our trip to Ukraine

That's how long until we're scheduled to leave our house. We'll drive to Boise tonight and then get up bright and early to go to the airport and head to Ukraine. Honestly, I've been so busy trying to deal with all the paperwork that goes along with making sure our kids are OK while we're gone: temporary guardianship, list of medications, calendar that shows the day-by-day schedule plus who is taking care of various assignments for that day (like who is providing supper and who has basketball practice, etc) that it's easy to almost forget why we're doing all this stuff: We are going to meet our son! That fact started to somewhat dawn on me as I was packing toys for him. Well got to go. I will appreciate all your prayers.

I love adoption

I love adoption. My wonderful husband of 13.9 years would probably say I am obsessed with adoption. I have spent multiple hours of many days over several years poring over waiting child lists and reading adoption or orphan-related books and more lately reading other people's adoption blogs. I have loved adoption at least since I was a young teenager and read books like The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss. My dream was to work in an orphanage and hug babies--before I had a clue how vital affection is to human development. I loved adoption before I got married, before I experienced the horrible emotional roller-coaster ride of difficulty conceiving, before I knew the gut-wrenching pain of miscarriage and before I had a medically-necessary surgery that ended the chances of pregnancy altogether. And by then I had four children whom we'd adopted wanting to see my surgical incision. God knew all along how important adoption was going to become to our family.

We are now just 2 weeks away from flying to an Eastern European country for the first of two trips to adopt a little guy with Down syndrome. I hope to write more about that in future posts. Let me warn my readers (if there are any of you out there in cyber-world) that I've never attempted a blog before, so please be patient with me. I plan to write about the loves of my life: Jesus Christ, my family, sanctity of life and adoption, of course. If I could influence just one person to consider the adoption option, I will consider this blog a success.