Egypt

Just an update...
We arrived in Washington DC Sunday in the late afternoon and were able to hire a driver to take us on a tour of all the major monuments. It was a very nice start to our trip, and especially fun since Emily and Kenneth have never been to the nation's capital before. We left Monday morning for the very long flight to Ethiopia. It was actually not as bad as we were anticipating. We were in Addis for only part of the day and then left late in the evening for our flight to Egypt. We had an absolutely wonderful time in Egypt, although we were experiencing some pretty major jet lag on Wednesday. We arrived in the very wee hours of the morning, and were up and touring just a few hours later. We saw all of the major attractions of Cairo and Luxor. You could easily spend a week in Egypt and see something new everyday. All of the people here have been very nice and Cairo is a lovely city.

We are leaving Cairo in a few hours to head back to Addis. I think everyone is excited but nervous about this next part of our trip... we are so eager to meet the twins, but worried they won't like us! Please pray for us to have a good meeting with the girls and for the remainder of our trip to be safe and as smooth as possible. Hopefully we'll be able to post from the guest house in Addis.

And We're Off!

We're leaving tomorrow morning for our trip. First stop, Washington D.C. Next, a day in Addis followed by a late flight to Cairo for three days of touring in Egypt. Finally, the main event... meeting our twins and bringing them home! These little beds will have occupants in just two weeks.

We're going to try to keep the blog updated while we're gone. Stay tuned! :)

Graduation (and some birthdays!)

Today was middle child Emily's graduation from Elkhorn High School. We are so proud of her. She graduated with an honors GPA and received a great scholarship to Iowa State, where she will be majoring in architecture.

Today was also my mom's 70th birthday and the twins 5th birthday. Happy Birthday Mom, Candace Selam and Sarah Fikir!

So much to do, so little time!

Only two weeks until we leave on our trip. Gosh, it's been busy. We had a diving meet over the weekend in Columbia, MO at University of Missouri. It was fun and Anna did well, but it's a five and a half hour drive. Tiring. This coming week is Emily's high school graduation. Both sets of grandparents are flying in from Indianapolis... must clean the house and get ready for guests. I still have lots of things to purchase for the orphanage and we aren't quite done with our immigration paperwork yet. Not to mention the packing. And of course, all the usual stuff we have to do anyway! Busy, busy, busy.

Travel plans

We finalized our travel plans today. Since the kids will be out of school and Tom is available, we are going to take a trip to Egypt before we go to Addis. We are leaving Omaha on May 24 and will stay overnight in Washington, DC before leaving on May 25 for Addis. From Addis we will fly to Cairo and spend three days touring Egypt. We will back in Addis on May 30, anxious to meet the twins on June 1. Everyone will fly home together Friday night, and we will be home in Nebraska by dinnertime on June 6. We're flying Ethiopian Air because the flights worked out the best and we got a really great price since we're flying on to Cairo. We've heard mixed reviews about the airline, so I'm hoping it all works out. Actually, I don't even care, as long as we get the twins home!