Tomorrow is the day!

We made it!

Tomorrow is the day!!!! We are finally going to pick up Bozi. I'm so nervous. We were walking to dinner tonight and I suddenly realized it was our last night as a family of four. I cried. I'm not sad, it's just change. Beautiful things come out of risks and changes. Marrying Kevy was a change. It meant leaving my parents and I sooo love my parents. Any "Father of the Bride" fans out there? That's me. I watched that movie in college and bawled my eyes out. Chloe was a change. Violet was a change. Starting this adoption was a risk and Bozi is a change. I wouldn't do any of it differently. In fact, we will probably do it again.

God has been preparing us. He has prepared Kev and me. He's preparing Bozi. He is preparing Chloe and Violet. Both the girls are nervous about these changes. On the plane, Violet sat in my lap for a little bit. Chloe was leaning on Kev and Violet looked around. She said, "When we fly back, where is Bozi going to sit?" These adjustments are sinking in. Continue to pray for these girlies. They are so excited, but they are nervous. But God... He is preparing them. I heard them today playing on their Kindles. Out of the blue, I hear...

"Violet, you are going to be a great big sister."

Ready-to-go!

"Really??"

"Yeah!"

"Thanks Chloe!"

I know we raised some pretty awesome kiddos, but that's God. That is His timing and His words.

Here's a quick rundown of the past couple of days. Sunday we drove to D.C. to fly out of Dulles. We had to make some last-minute preparations due to the impending hurricane that was heading our way. At the time it looked like it would head off a little north of us so we just brought our stuff in off the porch. Since then our awesome neighbors have taken greater precautions in caring for our house.

Monday we woke up, had breakfast, the girls swam in the pool at the hotel, we ate some Chick-fil-A, and we headed to the airport. Our flight was delayed, which was a little nerve-racking, but our awesome Adoption Airlines friend said although it looked tight she thought we would hopefully make our connection in Paris. We rode an Airbus 380--it was huge and brand-new. Air France was awesome. They had cute little bags for the kids, decent food and the girls were soooooo excited. That's an understatement. All that to say, they did not sleep more than two hours on the six and a half hour flight.

In Paris

We made our Paris connection, but not without leaving my super awesome DSL-R camera on the plane. Y'all know I love to document. Maybe this is God's way of keeping me focused and not distracted with taking loads of pictures and video. It's just an expensive and disappointing way of doing it. We didn't figure it out until too late and they wouldn't let us back through to the gates, plus we had a 20-minute shuttle ride to the other side of the airport. So, we reported the loss and moved on. The girls had their two seconds in Paris and then we hopped on a plane to Bulgaria. 

Other adoptive parents had shared that many times luggage connecting through Paris doesn't make it to Bulgaria, and we experienced this as well. Fortunately, we had packed accordingly and had some of everyone's clothes in all of the suitcases. So, we had one suitcase and our stroller unaccounted for.

Petko from Vesta picked us up at the airport to take us to our first apartment. We stayed for one night there (since we flew in a day early to save hundreds on the airline tickets). We took the girls to Happy since it was our first meal here in Sofia on our first trip to see Bozi. We got ice cream on our way home and went to bed. Petko made plans to pick us up at 1:15 pm today to move to the apartment we would stay in for the rest of the trip. We fell asleep at 9ish and none of us got up until 12:15pm today. We hurried to be ready to go and just beat Petko.

Elevator key pad

This apartment is awesome. It has two bedrooms. It's outfitted with some toys, high chair, potty seat, pack-and-play and stroller. There is a washer, full kitchen (although think Ikea European kitchen not your standard American kitchen).  There's a DVD player and TV in the living area and a small TV in each bedroom. I saw a cot in one of the bedrooms as well. It's very nice and the area around it is nice. We are on the 6th floor and there is an elevator. I've been on some small elevators before, especially in Brazil, but this is REALLY small. It has a door, like a door with a knob, and an accordion gate you pull across. It's cool, because you can see each door level passing and the concrete in between floors. 

I unpacked all our stuff. I found Bozi's cute clothes, tiny socks, wipes, bath toys, books, toys, snacks, snack cup, plates, sippy cups and travel diaper changer. I fixed the little gifts for the ladies at the orphanage--the people who remember him coming there and have invested in him for two years and invested in us for the past few months. How do you thank someone for loving your child, before you even knew he was your child? I chose a little bracelet from my friend's shop that has waves on it. I hoped it would remind them of Bozi. Little did I know those would be 83-foot waves--thank you Hurricane Florence. 

So while we pick up our cute little boy and stay here for the next week, our city is going to get hit pretty hard. We are fortunate to not be in a flood zone, but a day of category 3 storm winds can do some damage to a home. Aside from that, we have so many good friends living not far from us who will have lots and lots of damage. There will be extensive power outages that potentially affect us all and tons of damage to those on the actual coast line. Please pray for our community. 

Pray for us here and our friends back home tomorrow!