The Waiting. . .is the hardest part

That song by Tom Petty has been playing in my head the past few days.  It has been over a month since we received our referral for Samantha and got to see her face for the first time.  I'm really hoping that we hear some kind of news soon.  Here's what we have left in the process:

Find out that our case has been submitted to the Ethiopian courts

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Court date scheduled (we have no say so in this). 

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Travel to Ethiopia for court and meet Samantha for the first time

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Come back hame and wait some more

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Receive invitation to travel for our Embassy date where will be get Samantha's visa and bring her home.

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Much of my time has been taken up with preparing to make our first trip.  We are waiting to get airline tickets until we hear that our case has been submitted to court.  We will get our tickets before we know exactly when we need to be there.  Sometimes families only get 10 days notice before their court date, and it is very expensive to get tickets for a trip across the world in such a short amount of time.  It is cheaper to guess about when you will need to travel and pay the fee to change your tickets.

I have not had too hard of time waiting until lately.  Part of the reason is knowing that I might need to go to Africa next month and we don't have tickets yet.  I just want to hear something.  An update from the orphanage would be great!  We are getting our house ready for her.  Some friends of ours came over yesterday and helped us move our office furniture downstairs.  This was a huge help to us.  There is no way James and me could have moved our desk downstairs.  Her nursery will be where the office was.

I bought this new luggage at Macy's on Friday.  My luggage was given to me when I graduated from high school, and it is tearing up.  The zipper on the suitcase is shot, so I was very happy to find these for 50% off.

I'm trying to soak these last few days of having James to myself and the freedom that we have since it is just the two of us.  We've had over nine years of this freedom, and I think it will be a hard thing for me to give up.  If we want to go to a movie at midnight, we go to a movie at midnight.  We certainly want to have Samantha home soon, though.