The Whichard Family: David, Rebekah, Kathryn, Evan, & Sullivan: OOT!!

I am happy to report that we are finally out of translation (OOT)!! I was starting to think we were never going to get to this point. Anyway, we received the call late Wednesday afternoon (July 3^rd) as we were headed out of town on vacation. In the “old system”, once you received OOT news, you could usually expect your LOA within 2-3 weeks. Now that there’s a new computer system in place, we really don’t have any idea as to when we’ll start seeing the LOA’s come in. Supposedly the C3WA (Ch’s adoption group) was supposed to meet late last week and try to work out the kinks in the system in regards to LOA’s. I haven’t heard anything further on that, though. I’m thinking we’re are about day 95 for our LOA wait, and I truly expect to join what we call the “century club” here at the end of the week (that’s what we call those who wait 100+ days for LOA). I honestly never thought we’d be waiting this long for LOA, and it has thrown out my original thoughts/expectations as to when we’d travel. I really thought we’d have Evan well before the 6 month mark of being matched, but now if I had to estimate I’d think we’ll be traveling sometime in October. We’ll see, though. It all will depend on when the LOA gets here and how long everyone else takes to do their part for the last approvals, etc.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, we were on our way out of town for vacation when we received the call. We went up to Devil’s Fork State Park in the upstate of SC for an extended weekend of camping. David’s parents and sister also joined us. It was….incredibly rainy. I really wish I knew how many inches of rain fell from Wed-Sunday. Luckily we had packed our 10x10 tailgating tent (to put over the picnic table) as we ended up huddled under that for a significant amount of time. The sun did come out some on Fri and Sat, and we were able to hang some bedding and what not out to dry on Sat. That was nice as we had been sleeping on damp bedding the entire time. We also were able to take the boat out on Lake Jocassee and see a huge waterfall in one of the coves. Anyway, despite the rain, we did have a good time. We spent Thursday and Friday driving around going to waterfalls (Whitewater Falls in NC, Gorges State Park in NC, Eastahoe Falls in SC, shopping some in Brevard, NC, and eating dinner one night at Hubba Hubba BBQ in Flat Rock, NC—one of the best BBQ places we’ve eaten at). We came home yesterday (Sunday), and I immediately dumped all of our wet bedding and clothing in the wash and got that all cleaned up. It was also wonderful to sleep in our bed last night! We have an air mattress for camping, which is okay for a couple of nights…but it’s not a “real” bed. Anyway, I do want to share the best quote of the entire trip, though. David, Kathryn, and I were all huddled together on the full sized air mattress every night (it was a tight fit). At 4am Thursday morning, Kathryn (who was getting restless and wanting to stretch out) woke up and yelled “It’s too small for me! I hate camping!”. We decided that for the remainder of the nights we’d sleep 90 degrees on the mattress (our feet hung off, but we each had more room). Below are a few pictures from our trip.