T R A V E L ! ! !

We got THE CALL from Jenny Friday night while my husband and I were out at dinner. My husband has asked me several times over the last few weeks whether it is possible that we will travel in September. I assured him EVERY time that there was no way that we would be traveling before very late September, but probably not until October. Everything pointed to October really. The last two groups who had referrals from Lang Son waited something like 14 weeks before travel. And I also knew that there were several people who were waiting to travel besides us. There are three other families that we knew of and I would guess that there are a few others who are not part of the World Child yahoo group.
Soon after we received our referral several of us who had babies in Lang Son started writing to eachother. For anyone who is going through this process you know how great it is to have someone else who understands it. The paper chase, the wait to referral, the referral, the wait for travel, the crazy questions and comments you get..all of it. I have to say that being part of this group of women made the wait so easy. Patty even flew to Orange County one weekend and I picked her up and we drove down and met Kim for lunch. It was great. After looking at pictures of eachother's babies we realized that these babies really are growing up with eachother and we want to keep them in eachother's lives. I was sure that Heather and Patty would be the next to travel and that hopefully Kim and I would travel next and meet up with them. I was fine with that and really excited for us all to meet up in Hanoi.
So I got a call from Jenny on Friday evening (at about 9:00 pm) and it went something like this, "Run, don't walk, to get your visas. Your G & R is scheduled for the 10th or 11th." My immediate thought was something like this, "Wwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaatttttt?" I was trying to figure out how I could be getting this call. THE CALL. Did Heather get this call? Did Patty get this call? Did Kim get this call? Are we all going?
It turns out only Patty and I got the call this time. I felt really badly about it because Heather has been waiting a lot longer than I have. But she is being very sweet about it and is happy for us, which gives me the okay to not feel guilty about it. Which is a good thing because I am trying to concentrate on what I need to get finished here before I go. I do have a million things I'd like to do but the truth is that if they told me to get on a plane tonight, I could make it happen. I have plenty of time. I just need to fill out things on a daytimer so my sister knows what is going on for my older children. I have to figure out things like how to get my two older children to their seperate high schools (one is about 25 minutes away and the other is 15 minutes the opposite way) so my sister can get my younger two to their school and her three children to their school. I am sure that everything will be fine while she is in charge, so that takes a lot of the worry away.
My husband was a little stressed the morning after we got the referral. He had asked me again on the way to dinner if it was possible that we would be traveling earlier because he had just committed to something on the 8th. I think I actually laughed and told him there was no way we would be traveling then. Sorry, Ray. I cried with happiness pretty much the rest of the night after we got the news and then stayed up until 3:00 am thinking about the trip and our baby. The next morning I woke up to a very stressed out husband. He kept firing off questions that may have had logical answers, but I am not a morning person especially after staying up so late. The other problem is that he keeps trying to be logical about every step of this. He doesn't understand that this is international adoption. Logic plays a very small role here. Anyway, as I said Ray is very stressed and I wasn't, which he found very irritating. So did we sit down and come up with a list of things to do, call about hotels and airline reservations, or any other travel things? No, we did not. He decided we needed to go out and buy me a new set of golf clubs. And I should try out a new putter while we were there. I wound up with new clubs (Nike somethings), a new putter, towel, shirts...We went home and started to figure out plane tickets with Todd and then what does Ray think we need to do next? Did you guess it? He thinks we need to go to the driving range to tryout the new clubs. I heard the clock ticking over my shoulder, but I also heard the clubs calling me. The clubs were louder, so off we went.