From Pre-Marital Bliss to Dashing Disappointment

I feel like this Colorado weather is mirroring our emotions, lately, especially related to the unpredictable waiting period with the adoption. Yesterday it was 80 degrees. Today it is snowing! On Saturday I enjoyed hosting a bridal shower for our niece, Linnea. It was very fun! We had about 15 people at our new place. Everyone seemed to have a great time. Here are some photos.
I had also heard about yet, another, family who had heard from Thailand when they'd be traveling. My hopes were up high that we'd be hearing any day now. Then on Monday we got a discouraging e-mail from our adoption coordinator. So, we called her to find out exactly why we were being told that there is another delay in our case. She was quite surprised that ours was not one of the referrals she received on her recent trip to Thailand. Actually, I should clarify. Technically, it's not called a referral, in our case. That's because we're going for an older, waiting child. We picked her out from the start. So, I guess the thing we are really waiting for is called a background. Once we get this background we can write our official letter of acceptance. And then we should hear back from Thailand as to possible travel dates. We got all of our paperwork in (called the dossier) at the beginning of July. While others, with similar timing, have been getting travel dates, we were told that we will have to wait longer. It's sad to say that the reason is because our daughter is older. Somehow, I thought they would try to speed the process up with kids who've already been waiting so long. Instead, because she is older and has a thick file registered under the old system we are told it'll take longer to process and transfer everything over to the new system. How much longer will we wait? Nobody knows. So, while we had hoped to travel by Penny's birthday in early June...now we're just hoping that we can travel by late summer at earliest. I think the wait is harder on Jay than on me. I guess having lived overseas in Asia I'm not surprised by how slow things can be. But, it still seems unfair for these older kids. It's driving my mom crazy, too! I'm sure the one piece of clothing I did buy her will not fit her by the time she gets here. It's a good thing I only bought one! It's funny that the sermon title this Sunday was called, "People of Endurance". Unfortunately, I guess the only way to grow in perseverance, endurance and patience is to have a difficult test to make those traits grow. None of us enjoy those growing pains. But, I'm trusting what all are saying that once we have our daughter we'll forget about this trying time.