THE Trip, Day 3, Six Month Flashback

Our second trip to Ethiopia was much more low key in some regards.  On one hand we were living the craziness of being parents for the first time in a foreign country.  On the other hand, our agency requests that once you take custody of your child, you stay at your guest house with the exception of official appointments.  This meant a lot of spending time in our room, in the courtyard, and on the roof of our guest house.
Tuesday was, however, embassy day.  This meant that we had our official appointment to visit the United States Embassy.  The embassy appointment was really important because this is when we received final approval to have Mikayla's visa issued so that we could bring her back into the States.  We honestly don't have many pictures from this day because we spent the morning in our room at Yebsabi and then had our appointment at the Embassy in the afternoon.  You aren't allowed to take any kind of photographs at the embassy, and we didn't even take one of us before or after our appointment.  Oh, well!  We had heard different things about the embassy, but it was a fairly easy process.  The room reminded us of a drivers' license office.  We sat in chairs and waited to be called up to a window where a very kind man asked us questions.  We were the last out of our group to be called, but fortunately Mikayla had slept for a decent amount of the wait, and she was fairly content to be held at this point.  Of course Mikayla had a dirty diaper that needed to be changed right before we were called up to the window.  The man behind the window was MORE than happy to wait a few moments for Brian to finish with the diaper before coming with Mikayla.  After a few questions, we were on our way back to the guest house.

On our balcony at Yebsabi

This picture just makes me laugh.  We have lots of fun stories about Mikayla's bodily functions, and once again Laura was on the ball and captured her mid spit-up.  Haha!

Mikayla and her partner in crime, Silas.  These two are only a couple of weeks apart in age and were roomies at Acacia Village (with several other babies as well).  It was a blast getting to watch them together.  They enjoyed seeing who could be the loudest and taking each others' toys!

This was our first time giving Mikayla a bath.  She LOVED the water (and still does).

Lesson Learned from Today:

-Double check your bag BEFORE you leave for the embassy to make sure you aren't taking any prohibited items.  We stuffed what we needed in our backpack (which was our carry-on for the plane).  We forgot that we had our travel cell phone and a couple of sets of headphones still in the bag from the flight.  Whoops.  The workers at the embassy were insisting that we had a cell phone (NOT ALLOWED) and we were sure that we didn't.  We were totally the clueless Americans that I'm sure they rolled their eyes about.  Even though we totally held up the line and were so embarrassed, they were extremely gracious and kind to us.