(Scott and Vinny’s first pic; Vin reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie; spicy noodle breakfast; chicken/rice lunch; Stanley enjoying Scott’s head lamp; boys and iPad game; our adoption folder with the lawyer’s assistant)

We are home from a great 3 day/3 night trip to see Vinny and co.!  It was a whirlwind trip but also felt like we were there longer than we were… in a nutshell:

1. Scott and Vinny had a great first meeting and got along just great.  We enjoyed our time with all 4 boys.

2. We made it to our 2 court dates on Monday (first to see a lower court judge and sign our names in front of him in the “blue book”- which was a 3 inch notebook with lots of signatures in it and one that made me wonder who is in charge of that important book every night when it’s time to go home, second stop was civil court).

3. We saw our lawyer Monday afternoon and got copies of the paperwork we needed for filing our I600 on Tuesday AM.  One of the documents was an item of contention b/w Rock and the lawyer last June when we were in his office!  This document just arrived at his office on Monday morning… it’s like a key document for the whole process.  And, we needed a copy of it for Tuesday, as well.  God is always on time 🙂

4. We made it to the U.S. Embassy for our 7:30 am appointment on Tuesday morning.  We were there until 11:30 but it got done.  Vinny got to come with us.  Had I known he was coming prior to getting in the truck, I would’ve packed some books and stuff for him to do… he was happy at first to be skipping school.  After about an hour he said we were “prisoners.  For life.” He learned rock paper scissors, played tic tac toe, hangman, drew pictures, wrote letters, etc…

And the rest of our “free time” was spent in traffic, hanging out with the boys (legos and ipad/iphone games were a huge hit), running errands with Rock/in traffic, visiting Rock’s sister and mother, getting copies of documents (no local Kinko’s), Scott taught a few English classes (he was a rock star- and took one for the team big time),  monitoring homework lessons, and enjoying meal time conversations with the boys.  They are all so much fun!

(our family photo :); Vinny’s class; Scott having a beer at Edelyn’s- Rock’s sister; Stanley’s broken arm is healing; heading to the Embassy; Vinny wouldn’t let his lego guys out of his sight; and the building of our first court visit and the blue book)

(on the back of this bus it says, “Exodus 14:14”- the verse I mentioned a few blogs ago! Brought me comfort again; Vinny and me on the way to the Embassy- he jumped in the truck at the last minute, snuggled up to me and said, “Hi, Mom!”; and Vinny reading to Stanley and me)

(Scott’s intermediate class; me with 4 of the 5 orphanage/school employees- they are all so fun and sweet and I wished I knew Creole so I could get to know them on a deeper level; another breakfast; Scott and the boys in our bathroom on bug duty- they killed it; Vinny and me with Rock, his sister Edelyn, and his mom, Mrs. Cayo who was visiting from NYC).

We can’t thank you enough for your thoughts and prayers for us this week! Oh- and saying goodbye this time wasn’t very eventful.  Vin basically blew us off 🙂 we had said a more formal goodbye to him at 8:00 before school- then, we hung around the building until we left at 10:30.  By then, he was like, “see ya.”  Made it easy.  Later, Scott said, “saying goodbye was the easiest thing we did down here.”  LOL.

“The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still.” Ex. 14:14