Donation Day!

Today has been such a fun day! My sweet friend, Kim, is in town from Texas. She's the kind of friend that is nothing but HELPFUL & FUN to have around. Caedmon, Kim, and I ran a couple more errands this morning and then we started packing donations. I felt like Santa Claus preparing gifts for all of these sweet children we're about to meet! Look at our pile!!!

Formula, wipes, toothbrushes, crayons, jump ropes, shoes, granola bars, medicine, candy, fruit snacks, bottles, dolls...WOW! The amazing part is that Andy & I spent less than $100 on these donations. Other families really chipped in and supplied all of these items. God is so good!!

I was so happy to get to share this experience with Kim. It's much more fun that way. Andy will have the fun of going through it all with me when we unpack it and give it out in Ethiopia, but I would have been packing it up by myself if Kim wasn't here because Andy is really busy with work trying to get all the loose ends tied up before leaving town.

These are the gifts we're giving to the nannies, drivers, America World staff, and Guest House staff. Just a little something to say, "Thank you for all you do to care for these orphans who are so precious in the eyes of God."

This was a last minute idea. I was planning on bringing some gifts for our son and was going to include one outfit. But then I had the idea that each day when we see him, we could give him a new outfit. Our son is too young to care about what he's wearing, but I thought it would be a good "nurturing activity" to change his clothes. We're going to let Andy change our son's clothes each day so that our son can begin associating us as caregivers and people who meet his needs.

We're intentionally letting Andy do this as opposed to me because our son is rarely around men. There is a male pediatrician at the Transition Home, but all of the nannies are female and his father abandoned him & his birth mother when he was young. So our son probably has no association of men providing care for him which could potentially make bonding difficult. We want to start working on this right away by creating special, nurturing moments between him and Andy.

A couple other gifts for our son. Caedmon picked both of these out for his "baby brother". We're also going to give him a couple books and a photo album of our family.

Can you believe we got it all to fit?! Three boxes, fifty pounds or less. We are going to drill small holes around the perimeter of each box and secure them shut with zip-ties. I'll bring extra zip-ties with us so airport security can cut them off if they need to.

Andy and I will pack all of our personal stuff in one large suitcase plus our carry-ons. We will have a load! Please pray that everything makes it to Ethiopia!!

7 DAYS UNTIL OUR JULY 8TH COURT DATE!

5 DAYS UNTIL WE MEET OUR PRECIOUS BOY!