Today

Wow. What a day. I am exhausted and writing this in bed with Dominick snoring ever-so-loudly next to me, he is one tired dude too. I will try and write a little more tomorrow, and include a few pictures if I can, but I might not have much time to get too much written and I wanted to visit with you all while I could tonight.

Today was...well...what do you say?? Amazing? Surprising? One Wild Ride? A funny thing happened this morning before anything transpired. Dominick was at work, sending me an instant message and I replied saying "Why do I still feel like we are going to leave tomorrow? Makes no sense, there is no way that is going to happen." Dominick's only statement was "Because we are.". 5 minutes later I receive the email from the courier saying "They asked us to wait 15 minutes...he thinks they are going to do your visas right now!". Yea, the Twilight Zone theme ran through my head at that moment.

I jumped out and called out to the boys who were watching TV "In 15 minutes we may be getting good news...if we do, Team LaJoy needs to kick it into gear...TV off and time to rock!". They all got excited and asked what was going on and I explained, then ran to shower quickly and then sat next to the laptop waiting impatiently for the next email. It came in and I shouted out "TV OFF!!!! TIME TO ROCK!!!" and I heard the loudest cheers and they all came running.

That is when Team LaJoy really showed it's mettle. Man, these kids are AWESOME. All day they worked hard, side by side. They cleaned bathrooms, they carried out trash, they picked up all over the house, without being told they attacked Dominick's wish list and the next thing I knew all of them were out in our gravel driveway with shovels and wagon in tow, moving gravel to fill in pot holes that we wanted to get leveled out before the snow came and we had little miniature ice skating ponds in our driveway. Not an ounce of complaining, they hauled luggage and swept and mopped like a well oiled machine. As I was on the phone chasing down hotel rooms, and attending to many last minute details, these boys proved well why it is EASY to take them on a trip like this.

And they spent much of the day giggling together and growing more and more animated with each passing hour. Such fun to watch their excitement building!

And now all but 1 Team member is fast asleep, getting the much needed rest before we begin our Kazakh Adventure!!

I had to drive to Grand Junction on an errand late this afternoon, and had a little time to myself to think. The hour there and back was accompanied by my favorite Taize CD that one of our blog readers kindly sent me a couple of years ago. This has been the theme music for our entire past couple of years...driving across the snowy mountain passes to Gunnison each winter with postcard perfect vistas before me, I did more praying for this adoption than I ever care to admit. And when the words wouldn't come out of frustration or fear, the music spoke for me. It was ever-so-appropriate that I was able to spend part of the early evening with it once again before we leave as a reminder of God's goodness in all things. The full moon was awesome before me, and for a brief moment I let my mind wander from the tasks still at hand to imagine and dream about the coming days. I am not one much for fantasy, but I suddenly could picture our complete family in my mind...a picture I have purposely not held often as I was too afraid it would never come to pass.

And now, we are days away from the reality.

There is so much I wish I could put into words, but that might almost ruin it.

I'll visit a little more with you all tomorrow. Good night everyone, we have a Big Day coming up!