The countdown clock shows just more than 7 days remaining before our flights. In many respects I continue to feel I should have more to say - perhaps anecdotes of frantic scrambling and harried to-do lists, or of seemingly impossible deadlines. Our reality however is much more mellow than that.

Knock on wood, our most difficult decisions thus far have centered around our clothing choices for our court appearance, and which boots will work best for the snow and slush we anticipate. Hardly taxing tasks!

There is a calm and complacent aura around this journey that stands in stark contrast to the frenetic pace and elevated anxiety that preceded our trip in July. If one were inclined to believe in such things, collectively these are perhaps good omens, harbingers of a more positive outcome to follow.

Expectant families often talk of a desire to bring children into this world in a calm and tranquil setting. I suppose it is only fitting that the same desire be held by adoptive families in waiting. For all that our blog may not detail our transformation, certainly KJ and I are not the same people we were three months ago.

Apart from the obvious changes - new house, new community, new work environment - there have also been subtle advances in both our preparedness and desire to become the parents we want to be.

Don't get me wrong, it is not that I have been learning to change diapers on our dogs, or carrying around groceries in a Baby Bjorn. It's just that mentally and emotionally I've had time to process a little more, and in doing so, have found a new level of appreciation for the vastness of all that I don't yet know and have come to welcome it with alacrity.

Before wrapping up this entry I wanted to share an experience I had last night because I feel it highlights a particularly common, if oft-overlooked, reality - Few things are harder to answer than an innocently direct question from a child.

Regrettably I will have to paraphrase my niece's question for, in my struggle to devise what I hoped would be an acceptable answer, I lost track of her exact wording. We were talking on the phone about the daughter that KJ and I would soon be meeting in Kaz, and she asked "Why won't she be living with her parents?"

I fumbled and stumbled through something approximating misinformation and was left with both a slight disappointment in myself and an appreciation of the fact that this was but the first of many important questions I must be prepared to better handle. Take Care.