This might be the craziest weekend of my entire life.  Every day since the earth quake hit have been hard on us.  We have not slept much, we have neglected our kids, our friends, our house, and every other aspect of our lives.  To say we have been consumed with worry about our child, our friends and how to help people there would be an understatement.  I want to give you the low down of this weekend and how it all went down, but I know I'll leave stuff out and I only have limited time while ALL FOUR of my kids are resting and I have much more to do during this time, so bullet points it is!

  • Friday morning we had been told that today would possibly be the day.  I called SWA and put tickets on hold for a 2:30 flight out of Austin and straight to Orlando.  We were waiting on word to go, b/c they were only 95% sure it would be Orlando and we weren't even sure what day it would be.
  • Aaron had a show that night in Houston and we were waiting until the last minute to leave for that just in case we got the call.
  • 1PM rolled around and we knew we weren't going to make the 2:30 flight and so we frantically packed everything in the car, including kids, and headed to Houston.  That hour before we left would not have happened if it weren't for our friends that were here helping with everything.  Gosh we have the best friends in the world!
  • On the way to Houston I called and reserved tickets for 8PM at Houston Hobby to fly straight to Orlando.
  • All the way to Houston we check our email every 5 minutes and sometimes every minute.  Nothing.  All we know is that they are STILL at the embassy.
  • I drop the kids off at the Ivey's around 5:30 and get a text that it could still be today but not sure.  Keep in mind we are in the Woodlands and our plane leaves out of Hobby.  Those of you that live in Houston know how long this drive takes and what obstacles we could run into on a Friday evening trying to get there.
  • I go back to the Woodlands and on the way there get THE CALL that they are leaving and it is Orlando.  We sit outside Starbuck's for what seems like forever trying to find a flight leaving out of IAH or later out of Hobby and can't find anything until early in the morning and they are all about $250 MORE than the one I had reserved for 8pm
  • We decide to stay and for Aaron to play and try to get out in the morning when Philip Drake comes to the rescue and says “let's go” and see if we can do it.  We pulled out of the Woodlands Market STreet at 7:11 for an 8pm flight at hobby.
  • Several times we said we should go back that we weren't going to make it, but for some reason Philip wouldn't stop.  Aaron was calling everyone he knew to see if someone had a plane that could get us there.  NOthing.
  • We pulled up to Hobby and got out of our car at 7:55 and ran as fast as we could to the check in counter where there was no one in line, got our security stuff and ran to security where there were only 4 people in front of us, ran through security and ran like crazy people to our gate and nearly fell over crying when they said we knew you were coming and we were waiting.  I cry now thinking about that night.  We should not have made that flight and by the grace of God we did.  We sat down and were shaking in awe that we were on our way to Orlando.
  • we played through the last hour in our mind and couldn't help but thank God for the provision on the road (going 95 all the way down 45), for the emptiness of the airport, for the plane being held up a few minutes by connecting passengers, and for the knowledge that our son was waiting for us in Orlando

Jeremy Rodgers joined us on this trip to document it all and for that we are grateful.  He was a great companion and we hope that we can spread the word about adoption through our lives.

Here's one of the news stations story about us coming home:  My Fox Austin

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Jamie Ivey