Sleeping through an earthquake, and other events of the week

Some of the anticipated items of this really full week, coming off a really full weekend of visitors, birthday parties, and helping with babies:

• Receive two important visitors from Texas who were here only 3 packed days (Monday morning through Thursday morning)


• Send off volunteer Melanie (Monday night)


• Welcome next volunteer Elizabeth (Tuesday)


• Put on a two-day nutrition seminar for about 16 of our staff members with two nutritionists (Thursday & Friday)...which, if I do say so myself, was a smashing success, woo-hoo!
  

Others I did NOT anticipate:

• Receive little lost boy, who now may or may not be temporary as was told us


• Sleep through 3 tremors, from 4.1 to 4.5 on the Richter scale, around 4am Friday morning (most everyone felt them except for me.....I'm a heavy sleeper but beyond that, it was an intense week, people!!) New addition to my list, since the experts are saying we could have a much worse one at any time: emergency plan for homes in case of major earthquake
  
• Find new house for HDA II after 11 months of almost constant searching?! More soon...


• Receive 26 emails on Friday, mostly personal...with nearly as many emails the other days, too

In other news, both of the local adoptions we have in progress passed milestones this week. We're trying not to get our hopes up, but maybe just MAYBE both of the babies can be in their new forever families by Christmas?? If not, the whole process is still well on track with NO DELAYS YET!! That is really a miracle, folks. I do not know of any other local adoption that is not derailed currently. I've heard that SEDEGES (the gov't agency we work with constantly) will change hands again in January, so it would be sooo much better if these adoptions could be done by then. It would also be better for other children, since we have a waiting list going for space in the Baby Home.

We also thought we were approaching a funding issue (i.e., not enough money in the bank to cover extra end-of-the-year expenses), but THEN we saw God working and we'll be fine, PTL!!

So, in a very small nutshell, that was my week, plus a Girl Scout award ceremony with my family and sister Emma last night and now this weekend is full of Emma's 10th birthday celebrations! As she put it last night, living 10 whole years is something to be happy about! She also imagined living 90 more years (to a 3 digit number, of course) and how many friends she would be able to make in that time. I admire that. If I think of living to be 100, I imagine all the things I could accomplish, haha. Like actually see my task list emptied and all those dozens of emails tended to.... Speaking of which, I really need to get out of this comfy chair and start my Saturday chores so that I'm done in time for Em's birthday party (which involves horses, of course).