Shocking!

If I had to choose one word for how I have been feeling for the majority of the day I would say that I have felt SHOCKED! Of course this is not the only emotion I felt as I have expanded upon below...

First of all, today is my Dad's 59th birthday (Happy Birthday Dad...you ROCK!), but we all kind of saw that one coming thus it wasn't much of a shocker. So do you want to hear what really shocked me? OK, I'll tell you about it.

I went to he pediatrician with the kids to get a re-check on their ears and yes, another 3 weeks of antibiotics is in their future. Not much of a shocker. We got the prescriptions filled at our favorite pharmacy and did some grocery shopping...more of a tradition than a shocker. When we got home one of our favorite neighbors stopped over with her two beautiful children and we chatted for an hour or so. Again, not very shocking. As she was just leaving to go home and feed her kiddos the phone rang. So after we said our goodbyes I went and checked the messages,and found that there were five messages. That's strange. I barely have five friends.

The caller ID said Ben had just called (he's in OH this week). So I called him back and he said the craziest thing to me. He said Terra (our social worker) called and she has a referral for us. I was like whatever dude... how's your day goin'. I totally did NOT believe him. I thought he was getting in touch with his "real special" sense of humor. But he just kept saying it and saying he wouldn't joke about something like this. So he told me the limited info he knew and I wrote it down. He said take an hour and let it sink in and we'll conference call Terra. At this point I still barely believed him. We thought we wouldn't hear anything until Christmas time. And let me tell you people: I was shocked!

When I hung up with Ben I checked the messages and sure enough one of them was Terra saying something about call her right away because she had a question for us and it was a fairly important question. I was shocked!

The I started going bazerk and I told the kids and we prayed and thanked God and prayed that these would be our kids and that God would give us wisdom and provide someone to love on them in ET. Noah was jumping up and down and giggling and Lyd was all smiles. I was..you guessed it...shocked.

Throughout the afternoon my shock turned into excitement and then into grief for all these kids have lost in their short lives. Then into guilt for being so sad for them instead of happy to receive the referral.

After what seemed like a week (it was really less than an hour)and several technical difficulties later we received their file to review via email. Ben and I looked at each photo and each page together, over the phone. We were like one, two, three, click on it!

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you anything about the children except that there are two of them. We know their names, ages, health status, and a couple other little tidbits, but not much. And we have pictures! For the kids safety and privacy we cannot share any of these things until we officially accept the referral and even then we cannot share photos until after we pass court. But, just so you know, they are beautiful.

Oh, man. I think I've moved past shocked and in to exhausted. There's so much more to say but I'll have to save it for another day.