Home Sweet Home

I finally got home late Friday night. Zack and Molly were eagerly awaiting my arrival. Zack had even gone grocery shopping, made some chili, and bought me some flowers. What a guy! It felt so good to sleep in my own bed, though my sleeping schedule is still pretty messed up. So, here's the latest...

• We can take our boy out of the orphanage on March 18, but we're not sure about our travel dates for the third trip yet. We should be able to book our flights by the end of this week, and we're 99% sure that he'll be home with us in Colorado by the end of March. We've got his Baptism scheduled for Easter Sunday, so he'd better be home by then!
• We're not going to share his first name until he lands in the United States, and we're not going to post pictures of his face online until that time as well. However, if I see you in person and you ask, I'll show you pictures of him on my phone! Also, we can now tell you that his Kyrgyz name is Shukhrat (pronounced Shoe-krot), and that will become his middle name. Can you see why calling him Shamrock is easier?!
• The third trip involves taking Shamrock out of the orphanage and taking him to the embassy in Bishkek for an "interview," which is really just having the officials there meet us and him. Then we are driven to Almaty, Kazakhstan (about five hours from Bishkek), where he'll have a medical examination and our papers will be submitted for his immigration visa. We'll wait one to three days to get the visa, and then we can fly home directly from Almaty. He'll become a US citizen upon landing at JFK, and his paperwork and passport will be processed at the airport.
• After he's home, post-placement visits/reports will be done/submitted after six months, one year, two years, and three years. Otherwise, he's all ours forever and ever!

We're so excited to get Shamrock home, but there's a lot to do to get ready in the meanwhile. Last night, we put together his table and chairs and the glider for his room. It's going to be a gray and white chevron room with yellow accents and espresso colored furniture. I'm excited to see how it will turn out! Today I'm busy listing all sorts of items from our former guest room (and other things we've got sitting around) on Craigslist. We've got friends coming in this weekend to join us in Winter Park for one last snowboarding getaway, but otherwise, we're in full Shamrock-preparation mode!