Wednesday, April 25th

Troy has a coffee meeting with Luke Simmons (pastor at our church) at 8:00 am, we talk about our small groups, the church in general and LaDonna and my hopes to adopt soon; we actually discuss it in great detail. Then I went home, it was my usual day off and I didn’t have a lot planned—so I thought. Around 10:00 am an American Adoptions social worker leaves a message to call her (she’s in Arkansas). At the same time, this social worker calls LaDonna and tells her there is a little girl in Arkansas that we’ve been chosen to adopt! Within a few minutes, there’s another call that she was wrong, it’s a little boy in Louisiana! She tells us that he was born last night at 5pm and we need to get to Lafayette, LA by tomorrow afternoon! Well, the scramble is on…….we call our friends the Hoverson’s who’s gift for several weeks has been that when we get the call—they will give us Southwest Airlines tickets anywhere they fly! Well, we contact Wayne and begin working on trying to get to New Orleans, LA, the only place Southwest flies in Louisiana. Wouldn’t you know it? It the Annual Jazz Fest in New Orleans and there are no seats available tomorrow—so our friend works diligently to try to get us close–Jackson, Mississippi. We tell him to book the tickets, since we at least will be able to get there by 7-8pm the following day. We leave at 6:15 am from Phoenix to Houston, layover for 3 hours then fly to Jackson and eventually drive to Lafayette. It’s not as soon as we want, but it’s the best we can do. We wait for the social worker to fax LaDonna the “match agreement” at her office and then we rush to a UPS store for a notary and to send it back overnight. At this point, Troy’s already stressed—he likes to PLAN things and he DOESN’T like to fly! BUT, he’s excited to meet this little boy! We begin to make calls to let people know what’s going on and think about what we’re going to need for 3 weeks potentially—and then PACK! The mad rush is on and what about our dogs? Troy’s brother, Terry and his wife Dee offer to take the dogs (even though they have a 5 year-old daughter, 3 year-old son, and 2 month-old daughter!). So as LaDonna works to secure a few things at work before she’s gone, I go home to get things ready to pack and to take our dogs to my brother’s house—in Surprise! That’s right, we live in Gilbert—it’s only about an hour away :-) ! We spend the rest of the evening packing and coordinating with friends and relatives on plans. We finally attempt to go to bed around 11 pm since we have to get up at 3:15am so we can leave by 4:15 am to catch the 6:15am flight to Houston. Shocker of all shockers, we didn’t sleep a wink….That was Wednesday.