Two Weeks From Today!

It is hard to believe that in two weeks, Sean and I will be flying into Washington DC to catch another flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia! We are SO ready to see our baby and bring him home! We are keeping busy with the many things that need to be done before we leave. Our flights are booked and now we begin the process of packing! We will meet Will T on Monday the 15th and he will stay with us from that point on. We are gathering all of the things that we will need for him such as clothes, diapers, bottles etc.! Haven't had that kind of stuff around here in a long time! It has been fun! Even though we have LOTS to do, we still have many other activities going on. The regular season of baseball ended last Saturday. The River Dogs won their last game and we celebrated with pizza and trophies at Mr. Gatti's Pizza. It was a fun afternoon! The Machine Pitch league had a tournament this week and the River Dogs (12th seed) beat the 5th seed in the tournament on Thursday night! It was a great game! They played again today and lost 13-12. It was another great game! I am proud of both of my River Dogs! (Beckett and "Coach Sean"!) Check out Beckett's blog, The Slam for a couple of video clips and his thoughts on the season! Here is a picture of the boys at Mr. Gatti's last Saturday.
On Thursday, we met Jill, Connor and Lillie in Maryville and drove over to the Cade's Cove picnic area. We met Nana and Papa there and had fun playing all morning until the rain sent us home a little earlier than we had planned. Lillie and Beckett had fun in the water with inner tubes!

Here is a cute picture of the four cousins that went that day. Can't wait to get a picture of all SEVEN of the cousins when we get home with Will T!

We are headed to Chattanooga tomorrow after church to meet mom, dad and Susi to celebrate mom and dad's 45th wedding anniversary! Susi is our REI connection and she is hooking us up with all kinds of good stuff for our trip! Hope everyone is enjoying a great weekend!

We're Going to Get Him!!!

We received a call this afternoon that confirmed our embassy date in Addis Ababa for the 15th of June! We will leave here on June the 13th, arrive in ET on Sunday evening the 14th and we will get Will on Monday morning the 15th! We are SO excited! I haven't had a whole lot of time for blogging, but I did want to update everyone and let you know our good news!

15 Years Ago Today......

Today is our anniversary! Sean and I have been married for 15 years! What an amazing journey! Each year just keeps getting better! On our tenth anniversary, we vacationed in Maine. We had just found out that we were expecting baby #2 and we were thrilled! Who would have thought that for our 15th anniversary, we would be celebrating by traveling to Ethiopia to bring home baby #3? What a blessing!
I am so blessed to be married to my very best friend. Sean is a wonderful husband and an amazing father! He is so funny and keeps me laughing all of the time. He leads our family so well and seeks wisdom from God in all decisions. For this I am so grateful. I love you so much Sean! I am enjoying the passage of time on earth with you! It's just a lovely ride!

Update

Well, plans have changed. First and most importantly, Will T is out of the hospital and back at Hannah's Hope. We were told that he is doing much better and is smiling at everyone and very happy. This is a huge relief!

The second bit of news was a little dis-appointing. Our travel dates will have to change. The paper-work for Will T's birth certificate and visa did not get processed in time to have the June 1st embassy date. When I spoke with Julie yesterday, she was quite certain that this would be the date, but something happened and it didn't work out. So now we wait. She said that we might hear something about a new embassy date in the next week or so. At that time, we will make travel plans and she expects that we will now travel sometime in the middle of June.

There are some positive aspects to this news. We obviously will not be so rushed to get every thing planned in such a short amount of time, so this is good. Another good thing is that now I can work on collecting some donations for HH! I'll be letting you all know how you can bless Hannah's Hope (Will T's orphanage) with the items that are needed and Sean and I will be able to take those things with us when we travel! When everything began moving so fast, I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to pull this off, but now we can get some things together to take to HH! I was really excited to be traveling so quickly and getting him home so soon, so I'm a little sad. But I am choosing to look at the positive side of things and hopefully these next few weeks will fly by!

Thank you for your prayers for Will T! We are so happy that he is out of the hospital and doing better! We will continue to keep you updated about the next round of travel plans! We are confident in God's perfect timing and trusting Him!

The Countdown Begins

Everything has moved so quickly with this adoption process, that we had not even sent a care package to Will "T". I was planning to mail it last Friday, but when we found out that we were going to be traveling so soon, we decided just to take the items with us. Then we spoke with Julie again late on Friday afternoon and she said that if we could get it to her by Monday, she could put it in a package that was headed to HH on Tuesday. So on Saturday morning, Helen and I went to Fed Ex and sent Will a few little goodies! My dear friend Marilyn made this "taggie" for him on Thursday evening! She embroidered his Ethiopian name on it and put the little silk tags around the edges. Both Beckett and Helen had them and loved them. Thank you Marilyn for making such a special gift for us to send to him! We also included a UT onesie, a Pooh Bear rattle and a soft plastic covered picture book with pics of Sean, me, Beckett and Helen so the special mothers can help him look through it before we arrive! Julie got it today and it will be sent tomorrow. Will will have his goodies by Friday!

Helen held the package tight all the way to Fed Ex!

After making our delivery, we headed to Beckett's baseball game. It was a great game! If you check out Beckett's blog, he will be posting about exactly how fun the game was! The picture might give you a little hint!

We did not receive any updates today regarding Will's health. Julie said that no news must mean good news, but we are still anxious to know how he is doing. Please continue to pray for his improved health! Thank you!

Amazing!

I'm not even sure where to begin. I'm quite certain that I haven't fully wrapped my brain around what has happened in the last 48 hours. This has been and continues to be an amazing journey. On Wednesday afternoon around 3:00, I received a call from our case manager, Julie. I was a bit surprised to see her name on the caller ID, but hopeful that she was calling with a court date. We were, of course, waiting to hear about our court date. We were expecting to receive a call sometime in the next week or so to hear that we had received a court date in mid-June. She began by telling me that she did indeed have a court date for us. And that court date was.....May 15th. WHAT? She meant June 15th, right? No, she said MAY 15th! Mind you, I was talking with her on May 13th! Yes. I. freaked. out. We have only had our referral of Will "T" for 24 days! This is not the time-frame that we had been told to expect! (Of course a wait time of two months on the waiting list was not what we were expecting either!) I'm not really sure what all I asked her, although I know that none of it made any sense! I asked her how this had happened and she wasn't sure. She said that the court appointments are always quite random, but she had not seen anything like this before. She even went back over paper work and made a few calls before she called us just to make sure that this date was not a mistake. We were thrilled and couldn't believe that this was happening! We got on the phone and sent out emails asking family and friends to pray. There were many prayers throughout the night on Thursday night/early Friday morning as Addis Ababa (capitol of Ethiopia) is 7 hours ahead of us. This morning, we talked about how strange it was knowing that our case had been heard and that a decision had been made, and yet we would have to wait through the weekend to find out what had happened. Wrong again. At about 1:00 this afternoon, Julie called to tell us that we had passed! Will "T" is ours! (I don't know if I can officially tell his Ethiopian name, so I'll keep it at "T" for now.) Will "T" Harper! AMAZING!

Julie also let us know that Will "T" is currently in the hospital. This, of course, is quite a concern for us. He has pneumonia and was taken to the hospital so that they could keep an eye on him while he is given antibiotics. Evidently, this is standard procedure when one of the little ones at HH gets sick. He had been having some difficulty breathing and they wanted him to be at the hospital. Just typing this makes me feel sick. It is hard to explain how my heart has been so drawn to this little one who I have never even held in my own arms, but it is truly love. Thinking of him there in a hospital room without a loved one to hold him is breaking my heart. Almaz was with him this morning and told Julie to assure us that he is doing well. Still. Hard.

One final surprise was the travel date. When I spoke with Julie on Wednesday, I remember telling her that we didn't know much about the travel aspect of the adoption process. Although I wanted to get him as quickly as possible, I wondered if, given how quickly this had come together, would we have a little extra time to make travel arrangements. She had said maybe three weeks. Well, today she said that our embassy date is June 1st. They need us to arrive in Addis Ababa on May 31st. Again, just typing this has made my stomach a little queasy. There is so much to do and not a lot of time to do it! HOWEVER. I am trusting in the One who has led us this far and who has placed this sweet child in our family forever, to help us in the details of the next two weeks. He is the God of order and I know that He is with us.

We went out to eat dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants tonight to celebrate. Here is a picture of my THREE children! Beckett (7), Helen (4) and Will (6 months)! We are truly blessed!
I must end this post with a special prayer request for our friend Elyse. She is the daughter of my good friend Marilyn and she is very special to our family. Elyse's boyfriend Joe passed away unexpectedly this morning. It has been a day of roller-coaster emotions for us as we have been shocked and saddened for Elyse and we are so grieved for her loss. Please remember this wonderful young lady as she begins the process of grieving and then of healing. They were a special couple and Joe was such a great guy. Please pray for Elyse and for the family and friends of her boyfriend Joe.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27

I find great comfort in these words that Jesus spoke to his disciples and I hope that Elyse will too. I am praying for her inner peace in the midst of this unthinkable storm. I am also finding comfort in this verse, as I have a bit of un-easiness about Will "T"s health as well as all that must be done in the next two weeks. I am confident that God is faithful to carry us and that He will give us peace in uncertain times!

Weekend Fun!

It was a slow, rainy weekend...but we made the most of it and had fun! Two more baseball games were cancelled, so we spent a lot of time at home! (We will be playing over half of the season during the next two weeks, but at least we got rested up this weekend!) On Saturday afternoon, we decided to make pretzels! We are big carbohydrate fans here at the Harper Hullabaloo, so we took our yummy recipe from the old "Oliver Twist" pretzel shop and went to work! They were SO yummy and we had fun making them! Helen had fun playing with the (in the?) flour!
Another fun project on Saturday was pulling Beckett's second front tooth! (We pulled the other one earlier in the week!) It took up quite a bit of the morning! That tooth was just hanging in there! Sean was bound and determined to get it out of there! He ended up getting it out of Beckett's mouth by wrapping dental floss around the base of it and pulling tight! Ugh! There were a few dramatic moments, but we are all glad that it isn't dangling in there anymore!

On Sunday, we went to Nana and Papa's house after church to have lunch with Sean's mom. All of her kids were able to be there along with all of the grandkids (minus one little cutie who is still in ET!) We had a great lunch and a good time visiting and hanging out with family! The picture above is of Nana with all of the grandkids! The picture below is of Beckett and Lillie with their front teeth missing!

And finally, a picture of me with the kids at church on Sunday morning. I LOVE being a mom and I am so blessed with a wonderful family! It was a very special Mother's Day!

Love That Smile!

We had our "next steps" call with Julie (our case manager) today and she surprised us with new pictures of Will "T"! They were taken about one week ago and they are precious! I just had to share this toothless grin and his sweet dimple! He looks great and we can tell from these recent pics that he is putting on weight and doing well! We are so blessed to know that he is being well cared for at HH! We should hear something in the next couple of weeks about our court appointment! We will keep you posted!

To see another precious snaggle-toothed smile, check out Beckett's blog! He finally pulled one of his front teeth! The other one is just dangling in there! Maybe it will come out in the next day or so! He also posted about his fly fishing experience from last week! Check it out here... The SLAM! Let me apologize (before you visit his blog) about the annoying music on his playlist. He loves it....and it drives me crazy! But, it IS his blog, so I let him choose the songs he likes! Feel free to scroll down and mute the Crazy Frog! :)