Lighting the town Christmas Tree

I am in my 5th year, my second elected term, as a member of my town council.  This year, I am the functional equivalent of Mayor in my 33,000 person suburban 2-highway, 3 exit, fast-growing town called Deerfield.  As an elected official, we get to "host" the annual lighting of the town tree.  Actually, it belongs to the shopping center at the center of town, aptly named Deerfield Towne Center.  That's convenient because it allows us have a town tree but avoid all the messy non sequitur church and state arguments.  Our town is mostly Christian, but we've got an ever increasing mix of Jewish, Indian and Asian families moving in.  And although I tend to think of a Christmas tree as part of the secular celebration of Christmas (after all it's not like we've got an official town creche), I do want to be sensitive to those who don't celebrate.  So, at least for now, we get to have a town tree, and my kids really like going to the tree lighting.  It's a 40-foot tree and they always have music and singing, a horse-drawn carriage and hot chocolate.  It makes for a nice family event, and a great backdrop for a kid photo.  Here's how it turned out this year. 

I never tire of hearing Merry Christmas.  Can't wait for Tommy to be part of this photo and this season.  43 days till he's officially a Romano.

60 days

Our first visit to Ethiopia is just two months away.  We're so anxious to meet Tommy, but there's still so much to do and it just doesn't seem like enough time.

There's been alot of discussion around our house about how they prepare the kids for our arrival, and for their eventual departure.  We're all wondering "does Tommy know?"

He's been at the Care Center for over a year, and I'm sure kids have come and gone there.  I wonder what they know about where the kids who've left have gone.  One of the other families indicated their 4-year old couldn't wait to leave because he thought he was going to catch up with his buddy from the care center when he got to America.  As funny as that sounds, it may not be so far off the mark.  We've connected with a family from New Mexico (http://therobbsrevolution.blogspot.com/), who also have 4 kids and their little guy is at the care center with Tommy.  They're about 50 days ahead of us on the travel schedule, so looks like our guys are going to be coming to America around the same time.  We're very excited about the prospect of keeping them connected somehow (phone, Skype, etc).

We're a little worried about the show-up then leave part; will it confuse him?  Many of the adoptees are very young, and probably don't understand much of what's going on anyway, but Tommy's 3 1/2, and it's got to be confusing when some people who look VERY different show up, hug, slobber and dote over you, play with you for a couple hours, give you some nice trinkets, then disappear for 2 or 3 months.  He'll have to be wondering "is that what family means?"

Just one of the difficult parts of this journey.

Here comes some real work

So, it's taken the last week for some of this to sink in, but, we're actually going to Ethiopia in January.

We scheduled our shots; there's like 8 of them over 4 weeks.
We've called the travel agent.  Trying to schedule the trip so we're gone as few days as possible, but also recognizing that we'll be flying through Europe, and this may be a one-in-a-lifetime trip for us (the Europe part, I mean).  We're also trying to figure out how we can use the 200,000 skymiles my Mom offered (my Mom Rocks!)

It may be a little dicey, but I think we can squeeze in an overnighter in Italy to collect on a bet from my business partner who said he'd buy me a great Italian dinner.  And anyone who's been to Ohio knows you can't get one of those here.  So why not go right to the source.  Turns out it may be cheaper to stop over in Italy on a Saturday night than to flight straight through to Africa.  We'll see.

We've filled out, but haven't mailed our Visa applications yet.  There's some question as to whether it makes sense to mail our passports to Washington when we can just get them in Addis when we land.  We're worried they'll get lost in the mail or in someone's in-box in DC.  Don't have much confidence in the DC people.

We still have to update our wills and powers of attorney, but that's scheduled.
We still have a bit of a cash shortfall, but we're certain that'll work its way out before trip 2, which is probably not 'till March.

Yep, lots to do.
It's no longer waiting.
It's doing!!!

BIG NEWS!!!

Within 24 hours, we received our approval (I-171) from USCIS (Immigrations) and Holt gave us our court date!  January 12, 2011!!!!!

That's just 71 days from now!  "Excited!" doesn't half cover it. 

The funny part is the 171 says "it has been determined that your are able to furnish proper care to an orphan..."  Ya think?  That's the government talking.

We were just starting to get antsy since it'd been a couple weeks and we were seeing all the 2010 trip dates get handed out.  The really nice thing is Jenny and I can spend her birthday in ET meeting our son for the first time.

Signs you're family is excited about adoption