Preparing for "Mighty Mo"

Our kids with the help of cousin Keegan

(and extra help here from neighbors) sold

pop and otter pops out on the street corner

yesterday to raise money to buy supplies for

Mo's orphanage for us to bring with us. They

made $117!

The day was also full of packing, and cleaning up baby gear that my friend, Julee, has loaned to us. Here is Maria trying out the newly cleaned stroller.

We are so thankful that Mike has a 3 day weekend. We made a lot of progress on the huge "to do" list and Mike did an amazing job being a cheerleader for the fund-raising project while being careful to keep a distance so the kids could be in charge.

We did buy our plane tickets on Wednesday. We fly out of Seattle 1pm Friday the 10th, change planes with a 2:30 layover in Amsterdam and arrive in Addis Ababa at 8:45 pm July 11th. We will have the 12th to hang on our own and explore a bit. The orphanage is only a couple blocks from our hotel but we will not be allowed to go there until the 13th. On the 13th we get to go to Hannah's Hope (where sweet Mo is) and meet the workers and receive him into our arms. That afternoon we have an appt at the US Embassy as part of the process to get the documents needed to bring him back to the US with us. There is some flexibility with the rest of our time there and right now we are unclear if and who any other families will be traveling with us. There are quite a few families through our agency who have recently passed court but may be too late to get this July 13th embassy appt. We fly out of Addis at 10:25pm Thursday the 16th. Again a layover of about 4 hours in Amsterdam and then straight through arriving in Seattle at noon on Friday the 17th. This will be 2 days short of Mo being 4 months old. Amazing.