The Final Countdown

We are so close to Charlie that I can almost taste it.  We are fully funded and went for our USCIS (Customs and Immigration) fingerprints on Wednesday.  We drove over an hour to get to this place for our 9 am appointment, walked in at 8:45 and were back in the car by 8:59.  I texted our facilitator to let her know we had those done and she told me to start calling USCIS and bugging them for an officer.  When I had called a couple weeks prior we still had not been assigned an officer, our home study hadn't been matched to our application and they had sent us a letter requesting more documents before they could proceed.  

I called USCIS, gave whoever answered our case number and she told me, "Hold, please; I'll connect you to your officer."  We had an officer????!!!!!  I left a message with Officer M. and when she called me back the next day she informed me that she had reviewed our file, all looked good and that, once she got our fingerprints on Wednesday, she mailed our approval letter out the same day.  For those of you who don't know, this is absolutely unheard of.  The average wait time for approval is 75 days.  And that's once you've been assigned an officer.  Which can take weeks in and of itself.  If I could have reached through the phone and hugged Officer M. (who, by the way, was extremely friendly and helpful) I would have.  I can't tell you for sure how many times I thanked her but it had to have numbered in the thousands.  

As I texted Hubby and our facilitator to update them, the butterflies hit.  

In the beginning I was 51% terrified and 49% excited.  As we moved through the paperwork and things proceeded relatively easily, the scales shifted to 25% terrified and 75% excited.  I'll be honest, now that I know travel dates are looming on the very near horizon, terrified is back with a vengeance.  Before, this was all paperwork with an occasional picture of a very cute little boy.  But now that picture of that cute little boy is about to be replaced by the ACTUAL little boy.  

Sh*t just got real, y'all.  

The last of our dossier will be mailed next week and that's it.  There is nothing left to do but wait for travel dates.  So, as we end the paper chase part of this journey and enter the next phase, I'm praying for lots of peace and sanity.  (And wine.  I'm not gonna lie.  Because hey, sometimes, when all else fails - wine.)  I'm praying for the strength to use those butterflies for good and not for evil.  To focus on the goal and not get bogged down in the doubts, because daily it could go either way.  

Ready or not, Charlie, here we come!!!      

Family

Aven spent this past week at camp and brought home all of the crafts they'd made.  One was a "family tree" picture.

She has me, her dad, all three sisters and, at the top of the "tree", she included Ason, which is what we have decided Charlie's name will be (we are going to spell it Aeson, which is Greek for a man who was given a second youth.  Pretty fitting, huh?).  She did this herself, without any prompting or any "and who else is in your family?".  I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me that, as we impatiently await his arrival, when asked to name her family, Charlie is just naturally a part of it. 

Life Balance

I've found that life comes in seasons.  Sometimes those seasons last only weeks, sometimes the season seems like it will never end.  And every season has a theme.  This season can best be described by the quote below:

I feel like every day I am doing okay.  Just okay.  We aren't jumping ship yet but neither am I going to fill journals with all the wonderful things each day here lately brought.  I'm not sure when the day got so short but there is just not enough time for everything.  And I'm not talking about fun stuff like swimming at the beach or weekly massages.  I'm talking about the mundane every day.  When did doing what you need to do begin to occupy so much time that there isn't any left for the things you want to do???

The thing is, I'm not unhappy with my life.  I love what I do, my family, where we live.  I just feel like the amount of time I'd like to devote to each of those things every day adds up to more than 24 hours.

It's all a means to end; I get that.  This season will pass just like the rest of them.  I just hope, at the end of it, that my children will forgive me for yelling too much, for hugging too little, for being a bit too distracted and hurried...

The next season of life will be a beautiful one.  And this current one?  It serves as a beautiful reminder that sometimes it's okay if some days all you can be is okay.