Expedited Passport in hand today, tomorrow we go to Kenya, hopefully

Last night was the first night Gabriella was able to stay with us. It went fairly smooth, however, she did have alittle trouble falling asleep. But that is to be expected since it was her first night out of the orphanage. Eventually, she did fall asleep and she slept pretty much throughout the night, except for a short spell when she woke up around 4:00 AM for about 5 -10 minutes.

We all woke up early so we could make it to the passport office by 7:00. When we submitted the application we also submitted a written request for expedited service. Passports typically take 3-5 days, but we were requesting less than 1 day...not too unreasonable. As they were reviewing our request, they noticed that our attorney did not bring a key document. So we quickly went back to her office, got an un-notarized version of that document, went to have it notarized, and got back to the passport office by 10:00 AM. We had to get back quickly if we wanted to stand a chance of getting the expedited treatment. (And, oh yea, we also had to make it to the US Embassy to fill out another form and get it approved before they closed at noon.) To our surprise the passport office told us to come back at 4:00 PM to pick it up. So we did and were extremely happy about it. We also made it to and finished at the US Embassy before noon.

Some additional excitement happened around lunchtime when Laura thought...hey don't you think Gabriella's passport and the plane ticket ought to have the same name on them. You see, when we submitted the passport application we had to use her given name, Gabriella Igihozo, because by mistake her name was not changed as part of the adoption process. When Brian bought the tickets, he used her adopted name, Gabriella Igihozo Lauer....hhhhmmmmm, that could cause some questions at the airport.

After checking with out travel agent back in Maryland, she called the airlines and they said they could re-issue the plane tickets from Kigali to Nairobi at the airport. We are going to wait to process the tickets from Nairobi to Washington DC until we get a better idea on if we will leave Nairobi on schedule. At this time, we firmly believe we will, but, again...stay tuned.

Anyway, after picking up the passports we headed back to the orphanage to say goodbye to the Sisters. Laura was holding Gabriella and tried to put her down. Gabriella would have none of that. We are sure she will miss the Sisters, because afterall that was her home for over 3 years, however, we also think she was scared we were going to leave her. No chance.

After taking some pictures, we said our good byes and exited out the Blue Doors for the last time. We did tell the Sisters we would be back, but next time as visitors.

Tomorrow, the airport and then off to Kenya...