To Africa & Back

I figure that my hiatus from blog life is justified by the fact that I had a hiatus from husband life.  One might think that a husband hiatus might precipitate a rise in blog posts, but life kept moving on at its busy pace, even without Kevin around.  While Kevin was in Africa helping Josh bring home his sons, I spent 5 days with Josh's wife Courtney in a city about 6 hours from here.  We chatted, laughed, and filled her deep freezer with enough baby food and frozen meals to feed their growing family.

The guys, on the other hand, did not do as much laughing & chatting as we did.  This is what they were usually doing:

Though on a regular day, I'm not sure the smiles were as big as they were in this pictures that was taken right before they headed to the airport to come home.  Their stay was extended to around 10 days because the Chinese embassy was less than willing to grant the boys visas.  It took navigating a maze of red tape to finally come home.  Nights were long, tears were abundant, and diapers stinky.  But there is certainly a redeeming quality in knowing that the source of those sleepless nights, shrill cries, and foul smells are these little guys:

And of course, there was the highlight of getting to love on our little men as well.  Kevin took plenty of videos for me, which I have been watching several times a day for the past week or so.  I even attempted to upload on the blog to share with you but gave up after 6 hours of waiting for our slow internet to do its job.  Pictures will just have to do!

The update on Sami & Micah is that their paperwork is ready to be submitted to the US embassy for review.  Our agency representative attempted to do it last week but was unable to because he was informed at the last minute that he needed yet another document.  Thankfully, it was easily obtained, and the embassy should have our boys' files in hand this week.  It can take anywhere from one day to 6 weeks for the US embassy to give their approval, so there is still no way to know when we'll be able to travel again.  To whittle away at the wait time, I did my first loads of little boy laundry this week.  Now if only there were little boy bodies to fill those little clothes...