Following my ironman

After months of preparation, we are one day from Mike's 70.3 Ironman.  Tomorrow morning at 6:30, he will begin his 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run.  While he's doing all of that, Nicci, Addisyn, my kids and I will be waiting to cheer him on any chance we get.
Yesterday we returned more paperwork to our agency.  We are waiting to hear back from the US government approving our adoption in the form of I-800 approval.  After that, some steps take place in China.  We are hoping to travel by mid September.  As I was sorting through the new stack of papers, I was very anxious and nervous, concerned I would fill something out incorrectly.  Mike noticed and called me crazy.  He knows how thorough I am and I have already done the majority of the tough paperwork.   This is just a few simple forms that need to be filled out and returned and shouldn't cause me that kind of stress.  But it does.  I feel similar to when I was pregnant with my babies.  I wanted to give them my best, even when they were in me.  I ate well and exercised.  I went to my regular check ups.  I avoided any sort of risky behavior.  While God has the ultimate control over my pregnancies, I still felt responsible.  I think God would have delivered my babies to me healthy and happy if I hadn't been so concerned, but I still felt I had to do my part.  I guess that is where I am now with Grace.  I want to do everything I possible can, so she can come to us as soon as possible.  Again, God is in control, but I feel I have the responsibility to do my best while I am waiting.  Thankfully, we were able to get to the notary first thing yesterday and get everything signed and put back in the mail.  It will be delivered to our agencies travel department on Monday.  I have one more set of paperwork to complete, but I am feeling a bit calmer and hopefully things will go according to schedule, though my prayer has been things would move faster than would be expected and God would be glorified because of it.  God will be glorified regardless.
So here we are in Western Washington enjoying cooler temperatures and fog.  Such a departure from the hot, hot, hot we have been experiencing.  We plan an exciting day of Starbucks, packet pick up, IKEA, and bike drop off.  We are staying with some really sweet friends, so dinner with them and an early bed time.  Tomorrow morning we take off for the course at about 5:00.  The kids should be thrilled.

Just a picture of some strawberries from our garden that the kids and I collected Thursday. They contributed to a fabulous dessert of strawberry shortcake.