Tara made it!

She's here folks! Yippeee!

What's even better is they routed her to Fort Walton Beach instead (the difference between a ten minute drive and an hour drive.) Unfortunately, they did not route her luggage so we still aren't sure how that's going to work out. Hopefully, somehow, she'll get her bags today.

As I scoured my drawers for clothes that would semi-fit Tara, there were Nigeria flashbacks all over again. Only then, there were four of us missing luggage. Only Ajit's toiletry bag made it (with one bar of soap, one pack of razor blades, and one thing of Head and Shoulders.) And I was the only girl who had clothes that made it. Now, I have a washer that she can use to wash what she does have instead of trying to wash and dry the one outfit she had by hand. Now I have a whole closet to scour instead of being forced to give her a pair of JB's boxer shorts and the smallest shirt I brought which was still way too big on her!

It is great to see Tara and so wonderful when friends as close as family come into town. I didn't bother to make the bed or run the vacuum. It's Tara! She's seen us at our worst, for six weeks, in Africa. She's also a dog person, which is good. Scrubs has been going crazy when new people come into the house. He can barely contain himself. It takes him about ten minutes before he is a normal dog again. Anyways, it will be wonderful to have Tara here and catch up on her life. Last night consisted of her and JB swapping a lot of stories. I can follow about half of them. The acronyms often mess me up. But it's fun to hear them talk.

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In other news, please pray for us and for peace and patience with our China adoption. We got word yesterday that the wait time is now up to 27 months. In addition, they are estimating that the wait time will increase from 6 months to 1 year for every year you are on the list. In other words, this could make our wait be as long as four years. And we aren't even on the waiting list yet. We still have to get all of our stuff back from immigration and send in our Dossier before that happens. I was hoping to have that done by February but it is looking like a new goal of March might even be a bit lofty.

We are okay with waiting as we will have our little XY here. I can't imagine the frustration of all these delays if it weren't for his presence and the dream of his presence. But there are some other complications to the wait that we aren't sure how to deal with.

These include the fact that we still want to go back for our embryos. We are okay waiting on this, but neither of us are sure we want to wait seven years (the years for her to get her and then a bit of time after she gets here.) There is a chance, with the new rules about concurrent adoptions, that we could try while we are waiting as baby XY gets a bit older. As, we all know, there are no guarantees that going back means it will work, but we would still need to confirm with our agency that a pregnancy wouldn't cause us to be bumped on the list. But it's complicated. And expensive. Quitting my job at Mayo means I will lose my 50% discount for subsequent IVF's. Each cycle costs about $2000 with the discount. (That means about $4000 without.) We will have to go back at least two more times. Possibly three. We are also paying a monthly storage fee while we wait.

We also may be overseas after residency, and we have to continue to update our home study and some other paperwork for every year we wait which will cost a bit of money. We aren't even sure this can be done from overseas.

This may sound like I am really stressed or really worried about the money. I really am not. I really do feel peace about this. I know the Lord is in charge, and I know he has our daughter picked out already! I just want that peace to continue and for us to continue to trust him during this difficult wait time.