High Court Order and Travel

Well Hello!

So last Tuesday we got fantastic news! The High Court Order was issued. Praise The Lord! Hallelujah! It only took 7 & 1/2 weeks. I cannot even tell you how shocked I was to receive the news. It took 10 & 1/2 weeks for my friends in Atlanta to get their HCO. We were not expecting to hear from HK until the week of Dec. 6.

So it happened like this. The kids and I were sleeping late. It was about 9:15am and my home phone began to ring. Nobody but soliciters call my home phone. I take that back, my sister in law and a few friends call it occasionally, but for the most part, it is just junk calls. We have one of the phones that announces who is calling. So instead of getting  out of my warm bed to answer the phone I waited for my phone to tell me who it was. When she announced that it was Bethany Christians Serices I lept from the bed to reach to phone. I couldn't see the phone so I mashed the wrong button and somehow had Alison on speaker phone.

It was really quite hysterical. The big kids were coming from their bedrooms all sleepy eyed trying to figure out why mom was knocking things over and making all kinds of noise to get to the telephone. Once they realized what had happened they joined me in celebration. Happy, happy day.

Mother's Choice recommended meeting John on Monday Dec. 3 which meant we needed to arrive the weekend before.  That gave us roughly  1 & 1/2 weeks to get to HK. Good grief, these people don't play. David spent the rest of the day making flight arrangements.

On a side note, our church (Old Peachtree Presbyterian) decided about a week or so ago to give us some extra money for the trip. God's timing is perfect. With the extra money we were able to buy Holley Kate a ticket to come with us! Yippee! She has been such a good sport about this whole process. She desperatley wanted to go. We have told her time and time again that we probably wouldn't be able to afford it, and not to get her hopes up. But guess what! God totally proviced a way.

Now you may be wondering about Calvin. I kid you not. The child begged me not to make him go. He had no desire to sit on an airplane for hours on end, go to a foreign country, eat weird food, etc. He just wasn't having any of it. The good news is that our family has come through for us. I'll drop Calvin off with his grandparents the day b/f we fly out. He'll go between both of David's parents' houses and maybe even get to go to Americus as well. I found out later on that he was super stoked to get to have his grandparents to himself. He said he had never had them to himself. Come to think of it, I guess he hasn't.

Praise The Lord for plans coming together! Everybody is happy with the arrangements. Of course I'm worried about leaving my eldest. I am not one of those moms that leaves her kids for any extended amount of time. I'm not super mom. I'm just extremely needy and want the ones I love close all the time. Heck, I  usually take our dogs with us everywhere we go. They even go skying with us in the summer. They hang out on the boath with us and bark at boats that come too close.

I have experienced about every emotion you can imagine in the last couple of days. I feel like I'm going into labor without the labor pains (for which I am grateful). I'm anxious about leaving Calvin, leaving the dogs, leaving my house... You name it and I've worried about it.

If you think about it, please remember us in your prayers. We've got a long road ahead of us. I'll be keeping everyone updated at this blog while we're gone. I'll also post pictures of John and maybe some of the other kiddos on a different blog, my password protected blog.
Here is that address:
schrammclan.wordpress.com

If you want to look at the picutres just  go to the site and fill out the new user info. It will send me an email asking me if you can view my blog. I'll say yes, then you can see all the pics.

 Love and kisses to all!

Waiting, waiting... and Pictures!!

Well, today marks 6 weeks that we received the Article 5 letter. The count to our High Court order began. The adopting agency told us the average is 8 weeks. So theoretically, we should hear in 2 weeks.

I'll tell you right now, I don't believe it. I think we have at least 4 more weeks before we hear. My friends, that arrived in Hong Kong this morning, had to wait 10 & 1/2 weeks to get their HCO :0(

That would put us in Hong Kong the week of Christmas. Oh, I do NOT want to be in HK the week of Christmas. But,  if that is that is what it takes to bring John home then we'll be there with bells on.

On a brighter note, they finally told John that he has a mommy and daddy! He didn't understand why we were changing his name from Kevin to John. How do you explain to a 3 year old that his older brother's name is Calvin which is way to similar to Kevin?

Funny thing is, on the video that we sent to John, I kept saying Calvin's name. That confused John since he thought I was saying "Kevin". Oh, this is going to be confusing when we get him home.

I'm not sure if I mentioned the video we sent John before, but it was about a 10 minute tour of the house. We made sure to go out in the back yard and show him the play set. Calvin and Holley Kate demonstrated the swings and slide. Apparently, the ladies in HK asked John if he was scared to go down the slide. His response was no, that he would sit in his sister's lap and go down.

Our heart melted! Holley Kate cried; I cried; I think we had everyone in the house in tears. It means so much to Holley Kate to hear that John wants a big sister. She loves him already.

So, for the most important part! Pictures! HK is real weird about us showing pictures of the kids. I have another blog that has pictures of John since I couldn't figure out how to password protect certain posts here.

So, here is the address:

schrammclan.wordpress.com

The wordpress blog  is password protected so if you want to see the pictures just private message me and I'll send you the password. You can do it via Face book or my regular email which is :

schramm.julie@gmail.com

Love to all!