Africa bound!! Court date & tentative travel dates!

We have been out of town this week visiting family in Missouri. It has been wonderful. Today, we hit to road to drive the 19 hours back to Florida. I've been quiet this week in light of our travels, but I wanted to give you a quick report!

We received news this week that our court date has been scheduled for November 19th! We are tentatively scheduled to travel November 17-20 (adding a day for travel on either side). It's here. An actual date! We are beyond excited. We thought we would have to wait until the courts reopened to even be given this date, but apparently not!

How will we spend this trip? Well, for one, this will be Joe's first trip to Africa. There will not be much time for sightseeing on this trip, but for sure we will enjoy processing all we see together as a shared experience for the first time. We have been told we will get to meet Abby and spend some time with her each day we are there, so we assume November 18 will be our official "Meet-cha Day!", where we will hug Abby and see her face to face for the first time. Our actual court date is November 19th, so on that day we will appear before a judge and express our desire to adopt Abby. Once we pass court, She is official ours! At that point, we will be able to post pictures of her for you to see.

After that, we will return about 6 weeks later for a longer trip and our embassy appointment. When we return home from that trip, Abby will be with us.

So that's the scoop for now. Time to go load up in my Suburban! I'll leave you with some photos from our trip this week. See ya on the flip side!

Micha and Greg...and lots of food

Josh's little sandwich

Movies in Mema and Papa's theater room

Cousins hanging at Incredible Pizza

Incredible Pizza...not just for kids

learning back flips and dives

the girls with Mema

Joe and his Dad