Packing, Paperwork, and Planning

Brock exploring all the things we are taking to Hudson. Very curious about all the snacks and toys. He told me while he was looking through everything that he is going to share his cars with Hudson when he comes home. I was so happy to hear that he was thinking that way. Lets hope its a reality when Hudson actually wants to grab at Brock's toys!

Brock told me that he wanted to "help" me pack. Lets just say he wasn't the biggest help but it sure was fun to hear him chatter about all the things he was seeing being laid out to pack.

It was pretty crazy getting ready to leave. We just moved back into our home after the fire on the evening of December 3rd. At the time we thought we were leaving on December 28th. Things didn't work out for that so we ended up making plans to leave January 5th. There was still some finishing work being done on the house so there were workers at the house. plus, Service Master was delivering things that they salvaged from the fire, boxes and boxes of randomness to sort through. Lots of things to unpack and figure out where in the world to put it. In addition to all of that trying to get ready for Christmas and decide what necessity things we needed to buy like towels and sheets. Prior to moving out of the rental we had all of those things provided by the rental company so once we moved home we were without a lot of those things. We also had the normal care for our family of seven like meals, dishes and laundry. Then add in the communication with the Living Hope, our adoption agency to get all of our travel set up and locating all the necessary paperwork that needs to go with us to China. A few things we had to dig out of a box that we had set aside after the fire. It was ruined in the fire but we kept it just in case. Glad we did, we had to pack up one document that was moldy and smelled like fire. We just sealed it up into an envelope to take along.

Tom mentioned in a post how incredible our friends have been. This has been a VERY overwhelming year! We had so many come and help us from the moment the fire happened until we were getting settled back at home. We really have no idea where we would be without them. The out pouring of care, encouragement and support has been amazing. Pretty sure we'd be in a looney bin without all of these wonderful people in our lives.

So, here we are at a point where we are finally back at home getting settled and "nesting" to add to our family again! Another step closer to being a family of eight!!!