Dispatch from Brigham City, Utah

Oh, my.


Driving through the barren wastelands of Idaho today (and it is a barren wasteland - rolling brown hills covered in brown grass, all of it roughly the shade of, well, an Idaho potato), we got the surprise of our lives.


Kat's cell phone rang. Not that this was particularly surprising, as we'd had nearly full bars the entire route along I-84. Emily and Nicki's counselor, Sue, was on the phone. She spoke to Kat for a while, then asked to speak with me. (She had coached us earlier in the week that the girls would be there on Friday, and that they'd like to hear our voices, so we weren't surprised to hear that we were on a speaker phone). Then, the surprise came.


"Emily would like to talk to you."



My daughter.



Emily Christine.



Her first words to me were, "Hi Scott!" (Conventions like "Dad" will come in time, the social worker has told us. For now, it's best for them to go with first names. Fine by us).


We talked briefly - I asked her about her day, and how she was doing. She told me, "We just found out today that you're coming to see us on Monday, and we were jumping up and down when Sue told us!"

Darned near dropped the phone trying to hold myself together.

"Well, sweetheart, we were jumping up and down when we found out we were going to see you, too!"

I also called her "Em" at one point, then asked her if she minded me calling her that. She told me it was fine. Em it is.

I then handed the phone to Kat, who proceeded, in her masterful mothering way, to have a full-blown conversation with our oldest girl. One of the first things Kat told her was that we were in Idaho. "Have you ever been to Idaho?" she asked Em.

"No, but I know where it is. In fact, I know all the states in order. Wanna hear 'em?"

At which point my insanely brave oldest girl began singing the names of all the states.

To Katrina.

Over the cell phone.

From Colorado.

While were driving through Idaho on the way to see them.

Unreal.

Nicki then got on the phone. My middle girl seems to be just as courageous as her big sister, just in more of an eight-year-old sort of way rather than in a ten-year-old manner. We talked about what we were going to do this week when we see them, and she and I spoke at length about how excited we both are to see her little sister, Kayla. (Kayla is in a different placement from her older sisters - the four of us will spend one day with her next week. This is part of why Kayla won't be coming home with her older sisters right away - red tape and all that. We expect her to join us sometime after the first of the year).

When Katrina talked to her, she asked her, "Now, we saw that your name is Nicole, but Sue and Jennifer (foster mom) and Elane (social worker) all call you 'Nicki.' What name do you prefer?"

In a manner that I'm absolutely, totally, one-hundred-percent sure will melt my heart for years to come, she told Katrina the following (in one breath), and I quote:

"Well, you can call me Nicki or you can call me Nicole or you can call me whatever you want to call me and I'll answer you."


Oh, my.



Guys, they're cute and funny and articulate and I'm so in love with them.



I'll post more once we have our first meeting. If you remember to, please pray for us Monday morning at 11:00 Mountain time (that's 10 in the morning on the west coast). That's when we'll be meeting them for the first time.

Our girls.


Our girls.