Highlights (Adoption Hearing and other events)

Alex had two first programs in the past month, one with ELL and the other with his 2nd grade class. It answered so many of my prayers with school. He actually had lines in the ELL program and had to spell the word MISSISSIPPI in front of the audience in English. I had no idea he had lines, so we didn’t do any practice at home. We did not expect at all to have him center stage doing anything, as shy as he is in front of new people. BUT to our surprise, program night, he walked up front and spoke his lines (in English too!) in the microphone and spelled the word and smiled for the audience! I was in awe! Needless to say he has come a LONG way due to the help of some special teachers! That, coupled with how he interacted with the other children and teachers, made the decision to attend public school a good one. Some children told me as I dropped him off that he has lots of friends and they like to make him laugh at recess. He does have a cute laugh. It’s so good to see him thrive in this environment!

Jeni started gymnastics and loves it! Our gym is like a fishbowl so the adults can watch from above. I love it because it helps me see how she will do in school. She may not understand the teacher but she follows what the other children are doing very well. They dance, sing, play instruments, do a circuit of equipment, and trampoline work. I am most impressed how the kids don’t care if she speaks English or not, they just giggle with her and hold her hand and play together! In one week she learned the words, PIKE, STRADDLE, and BUTTERFLY. She can’t wait to attend the next week. It gave me so much confidence that school will go well. I already know that she likes to do sit down work for hours, but this clarifies how her socialization might go.

We also had some time with some of our Colombian friends in the past month. The Jensen family is so precious and it was good to finally meet in person after chatting via blogs for months! And the new Sinclairs…Angee, Manu and Vanessa had a blast with Jeni at Wonderscope! We are so happy to have you guys as extended family!!!

Darryl and I celebrated our 14th anniversary on the 25th of March…and we just couldn’t see our lives any happier than we are today! We are so blessed and in awe of what the Lord has done for us! We are beaming…double lucky 7s!!!

Finally, we had our Court Hearing for Recognition of a Foreign Adoption on the 26th that went really well…the verdict is in that we make a great family! We were surprised by the fact that we had to answer questions like real witnesses (all of which were really easy) and that we were recorded. It seemed so formal. We were sworn in and had to raise our right hand and everything! We were warned of our possible glitches…

*Trying to complete this in Jackson County when we were Platte County people. It was just cheaper.

* Trying to do this without 6 months of custody according to Missouri State law.

*And having a new commissioner to hear us out.

Turns out none of that was a factor, but we hit a glitch with something else. This particular judge wanted to see original paperwork on the Sentencia. We provided copies. It was an easy fix but left us as an open case until the paperwork was submitted (although we are already approved). Therefore, we do not have a Finalization Date yet…but we are close! We do highly recommend our lawyer, Sandy Kregel. His secretary is the reason he is so successful…she is awesome…go Sandra Herdler!!!

Sweet Things 1-9-09

Sweet Start
Alex started a prayer on his own for the first time. We have been praying very short prayers in Spanish, so they are understood by the kids. It has been a challenge because there is so much that we want to say, but are limited by our Spanish vocabulary. We were so blessed to find a Spanish bible for kids that has a short prayer at the end of each story, but that ran out about a week in to being home from Colombia. So we have been saying our own ever since. One night I said, “Oramos” but got to talking to Darryl before starting, so Alex just jumped right in with the start of a prayer. It was so sweet to hear him ditto my “Nuestro Padre Dios gracias por…” I think they both like the routine we have at night, but I think deep down they also are comforted by prayer before they sleep. If they think I might forget, they will remind me.

Sweet Words
We also have the “love fest” going on at home now, as both kids discovered the phrase “I love you!” or “I love you too!” Sometimes I think they just enjoy hearing themselves say a new phrase in English, but most of the time I just melt! Jeni told Mamaw (Darryl’s mom) “I love you” yesterday and I heard she welled up pretty good. I thought she flipped out when she heard Jeni actually call her “Mamaw,” but this was even better.

Sweet Game
Darryl had several firsts with Alex that were sweet. I thought Papi was going to cry when Alex finally brought down the ball glove that we gave him and said, “Juegamos!” Darryl said, “Get the camera…we are having our first game of catch!” So of course I did! It wasn’t a long game, but it satisfied them both for a bit. It ended with a game of kickback with the soccer ball, which of course is right up Alex’s lane.

Sweet Outing
And yesterday Alex and Darryl had their first father/son outing alone. Darryl got some free tickets to the Monster Truck Rally at the Sprint Center. It’s definitely not a typical event to see Darryl attending, but he knows how much Alex likes cars and trucks, so he went for him. I guess he wasn’t sure what to expect from Alex, but he is so much like Darryl. He doesn’t show a lot of emotion on his sleeve. We actually had to ask him several times if he enjoyed it. Darryl said that once he forced his arm up to try and catch a t-shirt in a give-away. That says something. I saw some excitement when he shared the pictures with me and when asked he said he really liked it. He tends to be a hard read. He said he saw a woman get shot out of a cannon and a monster truck fly over some cars. Overall, as field trips go, they both had a good time being entertained and enjoying each other’s company.

Sweet Friends
Alex and Jeni both have found a sweet relationship with their cousin Sara and her boyfriend Ryan. There has been a spontaneous outing almost every Sunday since we have been home with the kids. Sara and Ryan take the kids to the park, McDonalds, QT, to see lights, to an underground library, and to the park again. It is such a sweet time for all of us! Darryl and I get a quick nap in, which is extremely needed and the kids get quality time with two adorable family members! They are such good examples to our kids and we are super blessed to have them in our lives!

One Month Anniversary Home, Citizenship, & English

1-14-09

ONE MONTH ANNIVERSARY HOME
YEAH, we made it to our one month anniversary! Just kidding, we have had such a nice ride so far! We are crazy about our kids and think they are the cutest kids alive of course! In some ways it does feel like it has been a month as we have done some really hard things like discipline our kids, make it through shots, and watch our oldest go to school alone! In other ways it has gone quickly…it’s hard to believe that Jan is almost over! I haven't started the readoption stuff or the album from our trip or the life books...ahh! I’m also just in awe of how quickly they are growing! Traci Jensen…I feel your amazement! Alex went from a 13 ½ shoe size in Colombia to a size 3 in two months! How can a child do that??? I know they are both taller and thicker! We have a wall of height ticks that will never get painted and torn out of the wall if we ever move!

It does feel like we have settled into a fairly good routine. It does seem like everything we do is to entertain the kids…parks, games, outside play, biking, playstation etc. My old life is gone, but I love my new one! I’m just not sure when the paperwork gets done to finalize this adoption or the bills get paid. I fall asleep right after I put them to bed…even if it is 8pm!

The kids really love having their cousins Vro, Mikey and AJ spend the night. And they enjoy the weekly, Sunday visits with Mamaw and Papaw . They also love their outings with their older cousins Sara and Ryan to parks, lightings, and McDonalds. It seems they are loved in all the corners of their little lives! We still have periodic visitors come over to meet them. We try to keep it to one a week, so they aren’t overwhelmed. I enjoy that time too!


JENI
We are adjusting very nicely…Jeni loves school with Mami and usually begs for more. She can’t get enough puzzle time. She can almost write her name. The “e” is still tricky. She also loves to draw animals especially farm animals. She literally learned her colors in English over night! So cool!

When we do normal house stuff she likes to help me fold clothes, make meals, vacuum and set the table. So does Alex. Sometimes they fight over the chores. Good problem to have…we always split the assignments. Anyway, I really love teaching her and I see great progress, which is a teacher’s dream. I know I have a vested interest that makes me work harder in her case of course. She makes it easy though…she pushes me in our down time to do more work…writing, puzzles, singing learning songs, counting, naming everything and saying it’s color in English. She’s easy. The hardest thing for her is understanding that she is not the center of the Universe. She thinks she needs an audience for everything…and of course I have been waiting for children for so long that I give it to her..which is bad. Oh and on Jan 8th she told me in English…”I love you!”


ALEX
Alex seems to enjoy school. He doesn’t talk about friendships, but brings home pictures of other girls, so I think he is loved… hee hee! When I went up to the school to pick him up one day, I hear the other kids call his name and wave good bye or say kind things to him. That made me feel so good about his social interaction with the other kids even though he can’t speak English. We recently did a worksheet where he had to glue the school items in the right box as I said them in English. He knew all of them! I was so proud that I started to well up! He is learning…it just shows up in the recessive language first…so we don’t hear it coming out (the expressive language) until later.

He is a good boy, chivalrous and so organized! He has a competitive streak with his sister that seems silly as he is so much older. And we are working on not lying, even to tease. The hardest thing is when we have an event at night and have to get homework done and there is no play time for him after school. He really gets upset about that!

Dad still gets all the hugs and love, but he is opening up more and more to me. The strange thing is that he is like desert all the time with love and then one night it will flood for me and he will ask for more kisses or just give me a kiss out of the blue. No matter how it comes, I will take it!

CITIZENSHIP
We received the kids official Citizenship Certificates January 14. It was so cool! They came with a letter signed by George Bush which stated in short:

You are now a part of a great and blessed Nation. Americans are united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, and that no insignificant person was ever born. (I loved that part) …I ask you to be citizens building communities of service and a Nation of character….Welcome to the joy, responsibility, and freedom of American citizenship…

I got chills as I read this beautifully written letter with the White House letter head atop! My adorable immigrants are now officially American!

ENGLISH
The most amazing thing is hearing English come out of our tan little kiddos! I think they are learning a lot, considering that they are most likely processing 10 times what comes out of their mouths! What’s cool is they understand what they are are saying… they get the English in context. Right now they can say

Thank you
God bless you
Excuse me
Good morning
Cereal
Alex says, “Yes!” with a backwards fist punch too
Jeni says, “your welcome” which sounds like “Chewbaca”
Colors: blue, red, yellow, white, green, black, purple (my favorite…sounds like pwerple)
Please
I love you…Jeni says it mostly
One more…Alex says this really well (one more game, one more hamburger, one more math problem)
Numbers to 12
The Happy Birthday song
The song Jingle Bells, part way…they love the “HEY!”
The ABC song (some funny letters are involved)
Two Jolly phonics songs: A, a, ants on my arm (A, a Casa Mayor) and S,s,s snakes in the grass

SCHOOL

1-6-09

After much discussion and prayer, we have decided to put Alex into school. He needed the socialization skills and to learn English by his peers more than he needed the academics from me. His only model is his little sister, who is 4 and it was showing. We thought this might be an issue, but didn’t see how valuable these skills would be for him right from the beginning. We spoke with the school and the ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher and our doctor, who we love. Both said school right away would be vital, since he was showing signs of social awkwardness and they were getting worse.

We couldn’t be happier with our decision, as the Lord has shown us it was a good one through many answered prayers:

*There is a girl in his class who is bilingual.
*We love his teacher and the ESL teacher,who both are mother hens and highly experienced.
*We heard that the ESL program at Hawthorne Elementary is excellent.
*There is a boy on the bus who is a Spanish speaker and willing to befriend him (an awesome role model for him too!).
*He was placed in second grade and it is the smallest class at Hawthorne.
*The teacher said that her class is a very sweet and well behaved class (good models for Alex)
*He loves it (so far)! He even thought the bus ride was “Muy rico!”

I miss him at home, but I am also really progressing with Jeni and her preschool skills. Socially, she is fairly well adjusted. She loves to talk and play with others and follows directions well, so we can focus on academics at home. Right now she is a sponge with English and any type of learning games. We are having a wonderful time together. She also eats up any time you spend one on one with her…so working on letters or shapes, etc is like candy to her. Then when Alex gets home they get along better and we have fun riding bikes and playing games together.

I struggle with wanting to be Alex’s teacher and not fulfilling my natural role in his life, but I also feel a sense of relief that I am just Mami to him. That is a big enough role right now. I still have lots of opportunities to teach him after school and on the weekends. Learning is a lifelong process, so I will get my teachable moments as they come.

We heard that ESL kids lose their native language if it is not spoken at home regularly. It amazes me that a 9 year old would lose his Spanish like that, but that’s what his very experienced teacher tells me. We also heard that from a Colombian who said he came to the US as a 9 year old and struggled with Spanish in his highschool classes! So I am thinking the more that he learns English, the more I should speak Spanish at home, so he can become bi-lingual. It sure is flowing out of me lately…Darryl and I both said we are dreaming in Spanish and talking to the dog in Spanish! Sometimes I talk to Darryl in Spanish not thinking about it. Funny. Right now I am Dora the Explorer…saying things in Spanish and English: “Mira los pescados estan nadando…Look the fish are swimming!”

Lil Update

It's been a few days since our last update, so I thought I'd jump on the blogging train today. The latest thing that's happened was the kid's immunization shots on Monday. We were geared up for a general doctor visit just to get everyone introduced to each other, but in the back of our minds we knew there'd be a chance that the needles might come out. Alex is woefully behind on his shots and basically needs any vaccination that ever existed.

The actual "visit" went great, because that's all we did.....we visited with the doctor who, by the way, is awesome. He has a daughter that he adopted from Guatemala and put many of our fears at ease within the first 5 min of the visit. He did tell us that both kids would be getting some shots that day, though. In Spanish, he told the kids what was headed their way. Jeni immediately had tears welling up and Alex's signature scowl came across his face. The nurses came in and gave Jeni her 3 shots first with little struggle and then it was Alex's turn. I got to hold him from behind while the nurses perforated him with 3 shots of his own. At first he silently cried but then quickly broke into some heavy breathing mixed with squeals like a puppy. He struggled with me pretty good....I found out how strong the little guy is. When he was done, I think his anger was greater than his physical pain. His stare shot daggers at me as if to say, "I thought you loved me."

After about 30 minutes of sucker-licking, they were both back to normal. Unfortunately, Jeni has had some affects from the shots. Yesterday she was pretty listless the whole day. It was sad sight that she wasn't herself. On way home from the doctor, Alex informed us that the reason he cried through it all wasn't because of the shot, but because his foot hurt. Yeah, whatever dude. I knew it hurt him, because before bed I asked him if he wanted to hit me in the arm to show me how it felt. He didn't hold back and let me have couple of good punches in the shoulder. It did help me empathize with him and it got a little pinned up frustration out of him too. He hasn't complained about the pain since. Little does he know that he has to go back in a few weeks for more. Yippee.

Tough Transition

Our first week home was tough for me in this greatest of transitions for our family. I know all these factors played a huge role:

Missed a day of sleep on our trip home
Went from warmth and sunshine to frigid and cloud cover
Darryl went back to work and I lost my partnership
Outdoor play was less of an option, so the kids had less opportunities to run
Kids slept 2-4 hours less a night (went from 10-12 hours to 8 hours a night)
Lots of family and friends over for the holidays
House is too big for our kids (not really just in their minds…to us it just got a whole lot smaller!)

I was so tired, which is not so bad, but I just couldn’t see the end of that tunnel. I had so much energy in Colombia. I enjoyed so much getting to know my kids without cooking, cleaning, and with Darryl’s support and sightseeing something new every day. Walking everywhere gave me so much more energy and so did eating healthier. Here at the house the kids were glued to my sides like bread on a PB&J sandwich! They said they were scared to go to a room alone or even together without me. It was sweet when they said, “Who is going to accompany me to my room to play.” It always was said that formally. I couldn’t help but smile, but it was really wearing thin. Jeni needed either Darryl or I to stay with her until she fell asleep and then when she woke to use the restroom she would call down the stairs and ask one of us to help her go. She of course is capable of doing this herself, but in the middle of the night wanted company and someone to sit there (or rock her) until she fell asleep again. That wore thin as well, since she started going to the restroom 3 times a night! I just cried one night because I was so tired and didn’t see a light at the end. I couldn’t pay bills, clean the house, and I felt like all I did was cook and cook! And the stuff I cooked, they wouldn’t eat. What child doesn’t like pancakes???? Mine! Who’s child doesn’t like chicken nuggets??? Mine! Who thinks mustard and orange juice is too spicy??? Mine!

But all this is just a part of getting adjusted. Already, just a week later, things are kicking into gear nicely. That’s why it’s easy to write it all down now. We gave in to Jeni sleeping with Alex, at least in his room, not his bed. I don’t know why, but we both forgot that we said that was totally cool with us before we left and then we fought the battle with her sleeping alone all this time! They are all each other knows, and if this makes them both happy, well who cares! I think it’s sweet that they need each other!

Then I found some favorite foods: hot dogs, fish, mini tacos, pizza, hamburgers, grilled chicken. I can handle that! We just make sure to top it all off with a Flinstone’s vitamin!

Finally, they are adjusting to life in our BIG home, which is nice. They play in their rooms in the morning for an hour alone! And Alex puts on a good cumbia CD and bounces wild and crazy on the mini trampoline in the basement for long periods of time. Jeni will join him, but won’t do it alone. At least I am finding space to clean and just breathe! And Darryl signed us all up for the YMCA for Christmas...yeah! Now we can go swimming every day if we want!

Darryl is my anchor. He after a long day at work, comes home and takes over. He only asks for translations here and there. Really his Spanish is going great guns…he gets his points across just fine! Alex asks for him all day when he is at work. He says when is dad going to have vacation again…it’s so sweet! And when the garage door opens he gets so excited! Darryl has always helped cook, clean and had loving words of encouragement, but I don’t think I realized how important that would be when you have kids. He really does have big shoulders! He is always asking me how he can help ease my daily burdens with the kids…whatta guy! I just love him so much! I don’t think you can really go through a change like this unless you have this kind of support in someone you love! I am so happy the Lord gave me Darryl!

And my sister is the best sister ever! I can never repay her for all the love and care she has given me and my new family! I really don’t know what I would do without her! Good thing I don’t have to think about that. I truly believer she was almost as excited as we were that the kids were coming! Her and Mike are talked about often by Jeni. They are loved Tio and Tia! I’m wondering right now if we are interchangeable to them…hee hee! Nope sorry, Jeni and Alex are mine! But you will always be beloved by them both! Christmas was really special and all the moments we shared with family! I am just really happy and blessed to have such beautiful and well adjusted children! Thanks again to everyone who helped us get to this point! I am still feeling the effects of your fervent prayers on our behalf! Please don’t stop, our jouney has just begun!

Merry Christmas

Just wanted to take a quick moment and send out a belated Merry Christmas to everyone. I sincerely hope it was a blessed time for you and your family and that the new year is also blessed for you. I got a lot of the same question yesterday about what Jeni and Alex thought of their first Christmas here. It went really well.....I enjoyed watching the looks on their faces as they came down the steps to see a left over cookie and empty glass of milk that Santa had polished off. Santa told me that he enjoyed the treats very much! The kids inspected the fireplace to find any other traces of him. I loved seeing their innocence.....floods of memories came back as I thought about how my parents told me that Santa would come through our front door since we had a wood burning stove.

Anyway, Alex and Jeni unwrapped all their gifts under the tree; the majority of them were hand me down clothes that they needed or gifts from the adoption shower. Alex's favorites were his water resistant watch (it HAD to be water resistant), his new boombox, and his soccer jersey of his favorite Colombian team. After he opened those, he was content ( I'll get back to this in a moment).

Jeni loved her soccer jersey as well, along with her Barbie stuff. She's pretty easy to please...they both are actually. She took her time opening each gift and asked me to take each piece out of it's holder. When did they start putting toys in boxes with so much tape and twist ties?! It's ridiculous.....not like these are Faberge eggs or something.

Back to Alex. After finishing opening their gifts, Monica announced that it was time for Alex to shower so we could head over to grandma and grandpa's house for more gifts. We assumed the response would be, "Cool!!! Let's go." Instead, Alex said, "I don't want anymore gifts....I'm not going to shower." These weren't the words we were expecting to hear. To make a long story short, after about an hour of discipline (restraining hold) on Alex, he decided to shower and go. It wasn't till after I'd exerted a lot of my physical strength that I realized what Alex was saying by not wanting anymore gifts. He wasn't saying "I don't want what they have to give me", but rather, "I'm good with what I just got." I asked Monica if she thought that was correct and after pondering it for a bit, she too realized his attitude in saying what he said was not really one of rebellion so much as one of contentness. He was basically overwhelmed at what he got and couldn't imagine getting anymore. I felt really bad for not understanding what he meant and assuming he was being outright rebellious and ungrateful. Granted, he still should've obeyed Mom when she said, let's go, but his motivation was not what we had assumed it was. Once I got him over to Grandma's and Grandpa's and saw his cousins opening more presents, he was fine. Later on, he was getting the hang of it all as we went over to Mike and Vicky's for another round of gift gluttony. The kids were definately taken care of yesterday in the area of presents.

Alex was very at peace last night before bed knowing that he would have a full day to himself today to really inspect his toys and get down to business. I can't wait to see how he organizes all of his stuff. He's really good at taking care of things and putting things in their proper place (whereever he deems that might be.) Jeni is learning from her bro in that area, but still likes to just toss things around willy nilly. She's 4....it's expected.

I got Monica a used Play Station 2 with the Dance Revolution game. She had been asking for it off and on throughout the year. I was gonna break down and buy the Wii, but just couldn't pull that trigger. I like the thought of $50 over $250. Monica got me a set of 18v tools in a case. I can't wait to use them on something.

Have a great day!

Home at Last

We were glad to get back in KC Sunday afternoon. We got into Miami around 7pm on Saturday night but spent 3 hour at Immigration to process the kids' paperwork. It was agonizing. All of us were exhausted and a little cranky....ok, it was just me (darryl) that was a little cranky. After a 2hr. 45min. wait, our paperwork was processed within about 10min. There were over 100 other people there waiting for their paperwork to go through.



Thankfully, after that was finished we only had to go up one floor to the airport hotel. By the time it we got to the hotel and had a late, late dinner, it was close to midnight. That wasn't good since we had a 6:50 am flight on Sunday morning, first to Dallas, then on to KC. We were bleary-eyes.



We arrived at the KC airport to a huge group of family and friends. It was great to see everyone. Jeni thought she was a rock star and Alex was a wall flower hiding his face with his arm. He was a bit overwhelmed.

We settled in at home now and are as I tell folks, trying to get used to the "new normal". The house is livelier to say the least. The little organ that we have in our living room is a huge hit. We had aspirations of the kids taking piano lessons and playing some Mozart for us as we sipped hot tea in front of the fire place. What we actually get are little hands mashed on 10 keys at a time, volume blarring, and background march beats playing automatically at break-neck speeds.....hey, whatever gets their musical juices flowing.

The snow has also been a big hit this week. Alex loves sledding down the hill and even helps his little sister carry her's up the hill for her. Jeni can only handle so much of the cold....she comes in after a few minutes. Their cousins Veronica, Mikey, and AJ have also been a huge hit with them. Jeni has really attached to Vero and Mikey and AJ play well with Alex. I know it's frustrating for them all, not knowing what each other is saying, but I think it's good for them....teaches them patience.

Anyway, it's great to be back. We can't thank everyone enough for all the prayers and support we have been given to get Alex and Jeni home safely. It took about 4 years to get the kids but the real journey has just begun. We look forward to watching the children grow and mature as the years pass and plan on keeping the blog up. So check back in when you can.

Quirky Things

This post is just for me to remember all the strange things that the kids did.

JENI:

*She washes her hands like she is going into surgery. She just loves the soap! She lathers up until it bubbles all the way up to her elbows! The little hotel bars of soap are dangerous because she also likes to shove them down the drain when she is done...as most sinks here don't have stoppers, just big holes waiting to be stuffed with items!

*She is a mega-meat-eater! She is like a T-rex...she may skip all the veggies or side dishes for a second helping of meat!

*Jeni makes these short, mini-whines, when she gets up in the morning. She just opens her eyes and starts it, so you know she is awake. I thought it was cute and it didn't usually last long, but Darryl doesn't like it at all! It's funny because I make the same whine (usually just once) when I don't ant to get up yet either!

*Both kids beg for Flinstone vitamins when it's time for bed. They both only eat the "morado" purple ones...the day is coming when that won't be an option.

*AJ, you will appreciate this one, Jeni begs to see the last picture I just took, every time! She loves to look at herself especially...in the mirror, on the computer, or on the camera of course! She thinks ALL the pictures are videos and asks to "play this one," although she has been told over and over not all the pics move!!! We do have a ton of short 1-3 min videos though, so I can see the confusion.

*Jeni talks to herself even when no one is around (or she thinks no one is around). Like on the swing outside our room I overheard her saying:
I'm doing it myself.
I'm going higher.
My feet just touched that leaf.
This tickles me.
My hair is in my face...etc!

*She also sings pretty much throughout the day! Favorite songs:
Arroz con Leche
La Bandera de Colombia
Los Pollitos Dicen
Salio la O
An AEIOU song
La Abrella Brella
Feliz Cumpleanos A Ti
Hola....Cola (a bad one that we put to rest)

*both kids love anything I put our to wear, as all of it is new to them. However, both were pretty stoked about new underwear and socks everyday, which was really cute! Jeni runs down to the ladies who work in the kitchen because they dote over her so much. She twirls in her dresses for them. The first day she wore panty hose she lifted her dress to show everyone her "medias"...even Alphonso! What a lady she is!

*Both kids also get a kick out of watching me put in or take out my contacts.

*Both only sat, literally for one second the first time I read a storybook to them. I almost cried because it's my favorite thing to do with kids. I brought like 15 books in Spanish with me. They talked over my voice and then started jumping from bed to bed. It took me a couple of days to get over that to even try again. Now after 4 weeks they beg for more! Right now we mostly read Bible stories with questions and pray before bed. They are so cute when they pray. They put their hands in storybook prayer form and close their eyes, but sometimes peek. They say the book is "Rico" because it has prayers in it.

*Both kids love to count EVERYTHING! We are kind of sick of it. Alex can count to 80 in Spanish and 10 in English. Jeni can count to 12 in Spanish and 5 in English. Both skip 6 in English. Their accents are adorable...can't wait to hear more English because of that!


ALEX:

*Alex loves straws...they definitely seem new to him. He has tried all the tricks possible with one and can be entertained for a while with one in his drink.

*He also has a thing for "pilas" or batteries. Anything with it he will remove and replace several times. He loves them so much that I put some in his backpack just to make him smile. He pulls them out every now and then to count them or trade them out of a toy for no reason.

*He also loves bubbles, so the bathtub time is a riot! He really got me upset the first week when he used 3/4 of my family size Pantene shampoo in one shower!!! We had a little talk about how little hair he has and how much a dollup is for his hair and how bar soap is best for the rest of his body! No more issues...but I am not enjoying the tear free stuff I brought for the kids!

*We also think that Alex may become a mechanic some day. He likes to tear toys apart with true intentions to put them back together. He just wants to see how they work. It sure sounds like someone I know! hmmmmm

*This morning Alex got a thrill out of watching the toaster. He just giggled when they popped out. It's the simple things in life...right!

*He also showers in his underwear...so soaking wet underpants get squished out each day...fun!

*As you may already know, he is very "timido" when he meets new people, even to the point of crying, which seems extreme. However, he also opens up to people he has met several times pretty easily too. Then watch out because he can be very silly and playful and even loud!

*Alex is the one most excited about coming to the US. He has counted down the days and jumps for joy at the next leg of each trip that brings us closer. I hope it all lives up to his imagination!

Visa´s are in hand

Just got back from picking up the kids´ visas. I was sweating it a little bit since the embassy closes at 4pm and we got there at 4:05.....David, Lucia´s son, worked his magic and got us in anyway. That officially completes the paperwork in Colombia.

We would have loved to have left tomorrow but it would cost us $900 more for some reason. Soooo we are taking a flight from Bogota to Miami on Saturday at 3:30 and will get to Miami around 7ish. That means an overnight stay. Fortunately for us, our travel guy got us a room to stay in that is in the airport hotel....the hotel is actually in the airport. That will make luggage moving nice. We´ll catch an early flight Sunday morning and be in KC around 12:30 from Dallas (flight 880). I wanted to come home earlier, but we´re already paying a penalty for changing our plane tickets from next friday, so I couldn´t see paying another $900 on top of that. We´ll just be a little more patient. I think it will actually be better to get the kids home during the day rather than late at night. It will give them time to get acclaimated to their new rooms before it gets dark.

Will let you all know if this info changes.

Later.

VISA's APPROVED!!!

We got the kids visa's approved today and will pick them up around 3pm tomorrow. YAAAAAAYYYY!!! We will get in touch with our travel agent tonight and hopefully get a time early on Fri. to get out of Dodge. Fortunately, we got to spend the visa waiting time today with Robert and Monica Marlow....another adopting family from Cinncinatti. She is originally from Colombia and helped my Monica in making some purchases today after the visa's were taken care of. Alex made a new friend in their son, Gabriel, who ran circles around my Spanish. He and Alex communicated pretty well it seemed like.

After we checked out a little souvenier market, our two families went to catch a couple of taxi's back to our respective hotels. Finding an empty taxi in downtown Bogota seemed hopeless. After probably 15-20 min of trying to get an empty one, the Marlow's were able to snag one. We got ours about 5 min later. It was our longest taxi ride down here.....not sure on the mileage but it was about $8 or so. We accidentally left Jeni's backpack in the cab, but after a quick prayer, the driver returned it to the hotel. We were confident he would bring it back.

That's it for now....will update you all later on the plane info.

Goodbye Medellin, Hellooo Bogota

We were sad to say goodbye to Medellin this morning, but we were excited to catch the next leg on the journey home. We spent most of yesterday with our friend Fabian and his girlfriend. Fabian walked with us to the stadium to find a needle for Alex's soccer ball to deflate it in order to put it in the suitcase. We didn't end up finding one, so we just left the soccer ball as a gift for Fabian. Alex has a new ball waiting for him at home so we didn't mind giving it up. Alex was a little confused about what was going on, but Monica explained the principal of giving. It's helped him in his understanding of sharing.

After we went to the park with Fabian we went back to the hotel to meet his girlfriend and then went off to get some bandeja paisa at "the hill" park where Alfonso had taken us last week. There is a restaruant there that overlooks the little town mock up. The food was awesome. There were two kinds of meat on my plate.....i asked Fabian what they were, but he said, I'll tell you after you eat it. I know what that means, so I just ate it and didn't bother reminding him to tell me later; figured it was better not to know. After the meal, we headed up to the overlook to check out the river of Christmas lights down below. It was an incredible view.

We got back to the hotel at about 7:30pm and started to pack for today's trip to Bogota. We were called downstairs during packing to watch some of the hotel staff and Fabian light some candles. It's a tradition on Dec. 7th to do that as it's the beginning of their holiday, and if I understood them correctly, is the date that the angel Gabriel told Mary that she was going to have a baby.

Anyway, after that we got to bed pretty late and listened to the sounds of fireworks and gunfire for the majority of the ENTIRE night. I'm not exaggerating. Fireworks were still going off when I got out of bed at 6am. It was nuts......thankfully, the wee ones sleep like teenagers already, so they didn't budge.

We had to take two cars to the airport in Medellin because of our luggage and oh yeah, two kids that we didn't have before. The taxi's are pretty small down here. I (darryl) have a hard time getting in and out of them......I enjoy watching the taxi drivers face when I flag them down. They all have the look on their face like "oh, you're not EVEN gonna try to get in here are you?" The two taxi's were larger than the normal yellow ones we get....more like mini SUV's; a bit more expensive, but well worth it to give me a little more space on the 30 min drive to the airport. At the airport, we had no problems getting our luggage on the plane; we didn't have to pay any extra as they weigh all of the luggage at once instead of individual bags.....we made it under the total weight limit. Monica broke down in tears when we said our final goodbye to Alfonso. He was everything to us in Medellin......a great man.

As for the flight itself, the kids were absolutely giddy, but under control. Jeni almost missed the excitement of the takeoff because she was too inthralled with the inflight magazine. She wanted everything in it. Monica had to take it away from her so she could actually experience the takeoff. You could see the excitement/anxiety all over Alex's face. He had no idea what to do with his hands.....he fidgeted between putting them in his lap and gripping the armrest and folding his arms.....then repeating the process two or three times. Once the pressure of the thrust hit him, he was all smiles. He thought it was awesome.

The flight itself was less than 30 min which was good for their first trip. It got their feet wet for the full day of flying later this week. We got to our new hotel around noon.....it's the Zuetana and is super kid friendly. We've met the other adopting families here already.....2 from Germany and one US family. Will post some picks tomorrow of the place when we get them. I've got some new pics on FLICKR of yesterday's events and the flight.


Later.

Great Kids Playgrounds!

Everywhere you go there's a "circus" of sorts for the kids. You can go most places and find a carousel, a trampoline, a moving/stationary ball pit, a mini train, and slides! It is so fun here for the kids. Some places it's only 25 cents a ride, other places it can run $1.50 a ride. We found these rides at the local "Walmart," the zoo, "The Hill," the water park, inside the malls, at the parks, etc. For $5 we have an hour of fun at the Carrefour (our Walmart) for both of the kids. They get in the ball pit, ride bumper cars, play arcade games and red the mini rides like the motorcycle that wings Jeni back and forth. I may have to frequent our local McDonald's ball pit when we get home or they may get homesick!

Blessings!

Spiritually, we have learned so much on this trip not only because of the kids, but also the culture and the things that the Lord has desired to teach us! I'm sure all of you who have the experience of children, know how they show you clearly how the Parent/child relationship is viewed by the Lord. for instance when they don't listen to you how frustrating that is and when they do, how proud/pleased you are that they can/do have the ability to follow well! Just as the Lord sees us when we hear his Word and obey! Kids teach you about using grace and mercy in balance with correction and a firm hand. And they can certainly bring you closer in prayer than you've ever been before!



Medellin is visually stunning nature-wise. We are in awe of the surrounding mountains and amazing variety of trees. We saw four yesterday that made us stop in our tracks and run over to feel, smell, and see them up close! One looked like autumn back home, it had red, yellow, and green all over it. One had a giant white flower that looked like my peonies, but smelled like lemon. And the third had wispy, purple flowers all over it! Darryl and I marveled how the Garden of Eden must have looked before Adam and Eve fell! We look so forward to walking with the Lord there one day!



Finally, we have found so many good things about this place, but one hard thing for us to see is the Hyper-Sexuality that is displayed in this culture. There are tons of magazines in this hotel with nudity and porn, the billboards display men and women inappropriately, and the people, especially women dress in tight pants and revealing tops everywhere you go. And as we said before PDA is rampant. Unfortunately, our children have lost their innocence in this area to a degree. We hope to gain it back with time, but those images I imagine are ingrained. We want the kids to know that it is beautiful in it's right place and time. I'm sure it's a hot topic with the missionary work here.

Darryl has always said of the children at church that he didn't want to be leader who just raised up boy scout and girl scouts, but children who grew up strong in the Lord and were more like the Apostle Paul. That is our prayer for Alex and Jeni....not that they become a "good little boy and girl"; but that they desire to follow Christ and are unmovable in their relationship with Him. All the other "good" stuff will follow, if they do that.



There are so many other things we have learned, including special verses the Lord has given us to pray specifically for the kids. We see God's hand clearly throughout this journey! Thanks again to everyone praying for us! God is good and is answering your prayers and mine!

Money and Water

Figuring out the money can be a challenge. First it's hard enough to translate what the amount equals in US dollars. Second it's hard to comprehend the Spanish words for those numbers. Third you must then be able to count the correct amount to hand over! Here is what I found works best:

a. take off 3 zeros or move the decimal to the left 3 place values
b. then divide by 2 to get the US dollar amount
c. examples: 300,000 pesos= $150
506 pesos= $ .28
1,050,000 pesos= $525
6,010 pesos= $3.05
150,000 pesos=$75

I think I finally have the hang of it...it was stressful at first especially if there was someone in line behind me and I needed to rush. Really all these amounts in dollars are much less depending on the current rate of exchange, but it gives you a close estimate. Like the last example is really only $65, which is the cost of our hotel with 3 meals a day for 4 of us!

The denominations are as follows:
50,000 (says 50 mil on the bill)=$25
20,000=$10
10,000=$5
5,000=$2.50
2,000=$1
1,000=$ .50

coins:
500=$ .25
200=$ .10
100=$ .05
50=$ .025
20=$ .01


Water, we are so pleased to tell you that we drank the hotel water the whole time we have been here on the assured word of Alphonso that we would be ok. The first day we bought water and gatorade and used those bottles the whole time to refill at the hotel ONLY! We know we saved lots of money doing this as we drank more water than ususal due to the heat, walks, and having 4 mouths instead of 2. Neither of us got sick at all! The Lord has blessed us richly in this area!

Hair Cuts

This blog is just for me to remember our first hair cuts together, but really only Darryl, Alex and I got ours cut...I like Jeni's length right now and it may keep her a bit warmer for the winter. It will be enough of a shock to her as is. That's all...probably put some pics up tonight. Lots of love to everyone and thanks for the thoughtful comments! We thoroughly enjoy reading them daily!

Passport Morning

Got the passports this morning. Everything went smoothly for the most part. Hilma, our attorney is an absolute bull dog. She gets you to the front of the line and doesn't mess around. Alfonso, her and I stood at the window and verified all the info for the passports was correct. Each passport cost about 124000 pesos......$62. I signed Jeni's passport but Alex needed to sign his own. We had worked with him a little bit on writing his name so he wouldn't be put on the spot when we got there. Well, he froze when it was time. His shyness came out in full force as he refused to sign his name in front of everyone. Hilma took him into an office area where it was quiet to have him sign it there. Things got even worse for him when a lot of well intended women tried to hug him and console him. He freaked!!! When he came out of that room his arms were over his eyes as he quietly sobbed. It was actually good for us to see this from him as he hadn't been in that situation before with us to that extent. Now we know we can tell people, especially his school teacher, if he gets shy in front of them, don't make it worse by trying to hug him or kiss him. He hasn't learned to accept affection from strangers yet. He barely accepts it from Monica and I at this point.....although he's gotten a lot better.

I say all that to prepare folks for what you might see when we return. He's not cold, he just doesn't know how to accept or give love very well.....he'll get there though.

Next on the list is to get the pre-foster care paperwork (Alfonso calls it the "roots" paperwork) on the kids. Hilma is working on that now. After that, our contact in Bogota will be notified to get our flight set for monday hopefully in the morning. Then Monday and possibly Tuesday are Embassy/visa days. After that, we head north to the Estados Unidos. Yayyy!

Off to each lunch and then head to the park again.

Sentencia!!!!

We had our final verdict today!! It was really not a big deal after all; there was no imposing bench or judge to stand in front of, no judge asking us difficult questions. We just signed our names to a paper and that was it.....sorta.

We made our way downtown and met our attorney, Hilma. She is awesome by the way. She diligently looked over all the adoption decree stuff and her eagle-eye found an error. One of the papers was missing a code number that was necessary for getting the kids passports. So that paper had to be reworked. We were able to sign one of the documents but had to wait until later in the afternoon for the wrong one to get fixed. So on the second trip, I (darryl) went with the French family (they had passport business to take care of) to meet Alfonso at a Metro station. Monica and the kids stayed back at the hotel. I waited as the French family did their passport for their son. It gave me a glimpse of what we will be doing tomorrow. Looks like it is no big deal. Alfonso bragged that no other country is as fast as Colombia at working out passports. It took all of 45 minutes for Bryan to get his passport today. WOW!!

Anyway, Hilma came by the passport office to whisk me away to the place where we were earlier in the morning. I signed the final paper and was done with the Sentencia. I actually had the privilege to meet the judge (most of the work was actually just done with a clerk). He shook my hand and said, "Thank you for taking care of our Colombian children." I was blown away. You could tell he cared about each child that crossed his path. He was a super nice guy.....just wearing a button down shirt and blue jeans; no black robe or anything.

The Metro ride back was exciting because I missed two connections that the others were able to make. I was too busy letting ladies go in front of me first that the doors closed on me both times, so I had to wait for the next connection. Alfonso later told me to just push my way through the crowd to get on.....that is what is expected in this city. The he said, "Now when you get to Bogota, don't push your way on, they do not like that." I thought, "Good to know." So tomorrow I may get on the Metro and throw my weight around.

So here's what's next. Tomorrow we go to get the passports for the children. That should only take about 45 min. After that, we can technically hitch a flight to Bogota to get the visa stuff done. However, we wouldn't really be able to do anything because the Embassy in Bogota is closed on Friday. Also, we are waiting to receive the paperwork on the "roots" of the children. This is the paperwork that you have an option to ask for that describes the childrens history prior to foster care. We DEFINATELY want that paperwork. SOOOOO........we either wait the weekend here in Medellin or we wait the weekend in Bogota. I think we will stay in Medellin so we can see the big river festival on Sunday night and then head to Bogota early Monday. If everything goes well and quickly, we could be home this time next week. Praise God! We know that He has cared for EVERY detail of this trip.

Heading out to pick up some pilas (batteries) for Alex's truck.....he's worn out several sets already. Looks like we're going rechargeable when we get home. Might grab some celebratory pizza while we are out. Talk you all later.

Sizes

Turns out that Colombian sizes are much bigger than ours, which is odd because most people are much smaller than those in the US. We were told that Alex was a 10 and Jeni was a 6. I thought the clothes we bought in the US looked so huge for their sizes. Oh, well, better big so they can grow into them some day! So for those of you asking for the kid's sizes they are as follows:

Jenifer: 4-5 in clothing and 10 in shoes

Alex: 7-8 in clothing and 13 1/2 in shoes

Ode to Alfonso

Ok....it's not really going to be an "ode" in the truest sense but we wanted to post a tribute of sorts to our interpreter Alfonso. This guy is awesome and worth way more than a $300 fee. He met us at the airport at 1am when it was due to be in by 10:30 pm. He had to wait the entire time because he said you can't call the airport here ahead of time to get info on flights. I think we greatly helped his cause by introducing him to Flighttracker.com.

Alfonso knows Spanish, French and English all fluently....it's hilarious when we all go out somewhere with the French family. He will speak to them for a while in their language then turn around and speak to us in English. Sometimes he forgets which family he is talking to and will turn to me and start speaking French. My eyes cross and my head explodes when he does this since I am thinking he's maybe trying to speak to me in Spanish. By the time I realize he was speaking French, he's already said "sorry" and moved back to English. He is full of facts about Medellin and tells us background stories of the sites he takes us too. When we first met him, he told us that he was a retired Physics professor.....i think he would do very well as a History professor as well if he wanted to. He makes your stay here incredibly comfortable.

It's really great when he walks places with us and asks us how the kids are doing. He's a bit of a counselor/grandpa too and can take your child aside and speak to them about whatever you need to get across to them in a more direct way. He teases with the kids and eases pressure when your kids don't want to obey. He gets them to obey by being silling and teasing with the children. We don't see him everyday unfortunately, but he checks in on us periodically to make sure things are good. He left his number with us in case we needed anything at all.

Today, Alfonso took us down the road to another mall because I mentioned that I needed a new pair of tennis shoes. There were a ton of shoe stores in this mall and he patiently went to each of them asking, "Do you have a size 13 running shoe?" They kept trying to sell me 12's because that was the biggest they had. He would stand firm and say, "No, only 13's will do." I was grateful for his help. He told me that he has the same problem "in the opposite way." His foot is too small for a man's size and too big for a child's shoe. Last week he helped Monica when she was having stomach cramps. He was worried that she "got the amoeba"....basically a parasite of some kind. She didn't, but he was very willing to go get her any medical help she might have needed. Later in the day, he called to make sure she was feeling ok.

There are many things like that that Alfonso does to make you feel at home. He remembers things you tell him and genuinely cares about your state of mind and that of your children.
We feel like have a new found friend and hope that we will be able to keep in touch with him after we leave.

Fireworks!

We were awoken at midnight on Dec 1st to loud rapid fire. At first we thought more gunfire, then it errupted and sounded like thunder. We decided to risk going to the patio to check it out. The kids were sleeping like rocks! We found the whole mountainside lit up with fireworks! It was so loud and so cool! We thought they were celebrating a soccer win, as there was a game that started at 4:30 on Nov 30th. Nacional was playing, Alex's favorite team. We had hoped they would win. When we went to bed it was still tied one to one. The fireworks continued for 30 minutes everywhere. Then they just stopped. The next morning we found out that the Nacional game ended in a tie, but the fireworks were to cheer in the holiday season that starts December first. What a fun tradition! It's hard to think of Christmas when it's so warm...hee hee!

New Place to Visit

Alfonso took us to "the hill" today to visit. "The hill" is what he called it the first time we passed by it last week. We've asked him the name of the park but we keep forgetting what it's called. It's named after a Medellin king. It had a cool overlook of the city where we could take some nice pics. The place was jammed packed today with people because it was the start of vacations for the holidays. Alfonso said that last week was the last week of school for the kids for the holidays. There was a mock up of a small town there where you could walk through an old barber shop, school house and parsonage. Also, there were a lot of vendors of hand made stuff. Monica bought a couple of little trinkets that a guy made. He is a very talented artist. On the way out of the park, there were the long concrete slide for the kids to go down. They had fun especially when Alfonso found a couple of pieces of cardboard for them to sit on which made the ride faster. He knows all the tricks......he's also very intelligent. He taught us that "fabricator" comes from the latin "fa" meaning "to make" and bric meaning "brick". So back in the day, fabricators literally "made bricks". I dig that kinda stuff.

Anyway, later in the day we decided to head to the park on the way to our favorite store to pick up a bit of fruit. To our surprise, there was a MAJOR soccer game gearing up. The park that we go to has the soccer stadium in it. It was all blocked off with barracades and Medellin police. We could still go into the park but had to go through a pat down.....well at least I (darryl) got patted down. The place was nuts!! People were everywhere chanting and having a great time. Imagine going to Arrowhead stadium during the playoffs (i know that is hard to imagine) and then up the energy by 100 fold. You could hear people in the stadium singing a song in unison. It gave us chills. It was basically Arrowhead Stadium on steroids. Instead of red and gold, the whole place was green and white for the Nacionals.

The kids are still doing great. We're learning about each other daily and some things are becoming more and more clear of what we need to work on. As we said before, Alex has done great at learning to share, but he's been showing more of a habit of rebellion. He doesn't listen to you the first time very well. This wasn't unexpected at all, but it is something we want corrected very soon. He has the mentality of a preschooler right now.....his attention span is extremely short. In actuality, he and his sister are really at the same level but he's 9 and she's 4. It's a bit frustrating to see him not act his age, but we are working through it. Monica keeps reminding me to take it slow. God has seemed to answer our prayer about his lack of sharing, so we are confident that He will continue to work on Alex (and us).

Jeni looks like she's going to be just fine academically. She is bright and clever. Our prayer for her right now is to tone down the outbursts of yelling as well as the desire to be the center of attention. She says, "ma...Ma.....MA ......MAAAAA!!!!!" about every 30 seconds to show Monica something. I know it wears on Moni to hear it so constantly. This is all very normal for a 4 year old, but again, it's something we want her to grow out of quickly.....even before we get back home. She has a lot of pride and will throw a fit if you try to help her with anything. Her fits are extremely short lived, thankfully. You can tell that she has always been the main attraction where ever she's gone. We try very hard to equal out the praise between the two kids.....especially when the hotel workers gush over Jeni. Alex tends to get the short end of the stick sometimes.

We see so many postives in the kids that the negatives are really in the shadows. Through our early adoption reading and training, we expected MUCH worse behavior out of them. We believe that God put people in their lives before we got them that showed them a lot of love and care. This has helped them to become well-adjusted children despite their past. God is so good.

LOVE and GUNFIRE

Thought that title would get your attention...hee hee.

On November 27th Jeni first told me she loves me! She wrote MNMNNP on the top of a coloring page with crayons and said it like she wrote it..."Te-am-o-mi-ma-ma!" It's very annunciated sounding. I was so excited that I said "Yo te amo tambien!!!" back and squeezed her! Later that day we got on the metro to go somewhere and she grabbed my neck really tight and pulled my face to hers and gave me a long kiss on the lips! I was so thrilled because it was the first time she offered it first! It was long and awkward because I grew up only kissing on the cheek and we were in front of a ton of people on the metro, but I was too happy to care!!! I got a lot of kisses on that metro train ride that I will never forget! I think it may take a lot longer for that to come from Alex, but I am patient! I just give them to him to get my fill right now.


Last night we went to bed around 9ish and around 10:30 we were awakened by gunfire maybe a block or two away. It was VERY close. Darryl said it sounded like automatic weapons.....not single shot. It went on for about 15 min. off and on. We thought maybe someones favorite soccer team won a game or something only because we never heard any police or ambulance; not that that means anything. I told Alfonso about it this morning and asked if maybe we actually heard fireworks from a soccer game celebration but he said, no, it was gunfire....probably drug related. He explained that even though the big drug cartels were taken down, there is still a big drug trade going on that just isn't so in your face. So we now see the reason to be in by 6pm......guns might start blazin' after dark. We've never felt scared here at all. Last night's gunfire made us remember that we need to be careful. God has watched over us closely and has given us total peace on this trip.

Medellin Zoo

Just got back fromt he Medellin Zoo today. I was about to read an web article on it before we left this morning, but didn't get time. The title of it was "The Zoo that Drugs Built". I asked Alfonso about it and he said that didn't mean the drug cartel paid for it, but that the Pablo Escobar's (Colombian drug cartel leader in the 80's and 90's) of Colombia had exotic animals on their vast estates. When they were taken down in the early 2000's, the government took the animals and made a zoo for the people. It's a great zoo in the fact that you are extremely close to the animals. I'm not sure if the KC zoo has changed, but last I remember, you could see a lion if you were lucky about 200 yards away. The bad thing about the zoo was how cramped the animals seemed to be. They all seemed kinda bummed out and sad looking. Guess you can't have it both ways though; you either get to see bummed out animals up close or you get to see happy animals a long ways away.

Anyway, it was cool to see the animals. Before we walked into the zoo, we bought some maduro's. They are what I would call "2-bite" bananas. They are sweeter than the bananas we are used to. We munched on those while we walked around till we got to the monkey section. Then we broke some apart and threw them in to the monkeys pin and watched the melee. It started raining again so we took some refuge in a play area where you could buy tickets to let the kids ride some cheesy rides. They really liked the brinka brinka (trampoline). Jeni got knocked around like a rag doll when Alex and another boy jumped on it. She couldn't stop laughing.....she looked incredibly helpless. We saw the side of the kids today that we were warned about with Colombian children.....they push and push and push. We told them that we were finished with the rides but they kept asking......over and over. We steadfastly said no and held our ground.....i have no problem saying no when it comes to spending more money, though. :) I wonder if they've figured out yet that dad is cheap.

Putting some pics out on flickr. Our battery died early today so there aren't too many.

Later.

MEDELLIN

This post if for those who are interested in Medellin or who will travel here soon to adopt and have an interest in the details.

NATURE: Medellin is gorgeous with green! Many of the trees have huge colorful flowers on them that fall to the ground and cover it with color. There was a tree we passed that had hot pink all over the ground underneath it because of tiny little, soft needles that fell from the flowers. In one part of the countryside there were huge greenhouses bigger than I have ever seen covering the land. We discovered that 90% of cut flowers in the US come from here, as they can grow them all year round. There are beautiful birds that look like they just came out of a pet shop just flying around. There are little green parrots that live in a tree across from our balcony. We saw a red and black one that was really striking and a bluegreen one that looked so soft and fluffy. They also have little dark orange squirrels that seem really friendly to the passersby. There are also all kinds of palm trees and trees in general. Taking walks are my favorite thing to do, although Alphonso if he comes with us, walks really fast. I think I got shin splints the first day...I have since recooperated. hee hee Weather-wise, you can bet that most days there will be rain at some point within a 24 hour period. Most of the time it has been between 6pm and 6am that there was rain. There was only one day that we were caught of guard and got rained on around 2pm. You will see a lot of sunshine so bring your sunscreen. Apparently, adults don't wear shorts during the week, but they do on weekends....it's different. Kids wear shorts all the time. You may also see people wearing coats when it gets in to the mid to low 60's. We've seen some women wearing full blown winter coats while we walk around in t-shirts.

TRAFFIC: It's pretty nuts here. There are no street signs, but the rules are written on the street itself, but no one obeys them anyways. Out of the airport, you have to come down the mountainside to the valley that is Medellin. Our driver just sped around slower cars on hair pin turns, in the fog, at night, on a two way highway with cars coming up the hill in the other direction! We just hung on for dear life...ha! Crossing the street when we walk to the park daily is a little stressful, but has improved with practice. If Jeni is in her stoller I can run and Alex always runs across the street...he learned quickly not to just walk across the streen....you have to hustle. No one uses a signal, so it's hard to tell if someone is going to turn down your side street as you cross, so you just go fast. TAXIs are everywhere...we only wait a few seconds to find one coming down our side road to take us somewhere. It only costs about $2.25 to get anywhere fairly close and that's with a tip! It's worth it to take one even if your trip is short to avoid the traffic.

STORES: There are little stores everywhere. On almost every block there is an ice cream store, a drug store, a place for clothing, and a place to pick up some food or make a copy. We like the bigger store called Carrefour about 10 blocks from here. They have everything...clothes, toys, food, an arcade, barbershop, eateries, etc.

HOTEL: We are at Casa Mayor so we can only tell you about it. The staff is super sweet and helpful. You will want to present them with something when you leave for all they do. They are not like we have heard of the staff in Bogota where they want to interfere with your parenting. I think because our house is also used as a waiting home for those who are getting transplants or facial surgery at the nearby hospital. Medellin is becoming the place known for transplants in Colombia. It has been a good reminder to me of how blessed I am to be healthy.

SHOWERS: We have hot water for the mornings for showers then it runs out. It took us a week to figure out that the lines are crossed and the hot is cold and the cold is hot. You have to turn the hot on for about 5 minutes to feel it and it just trickles, but then you get the pressure you need by turning on the cold.

WASHER/DRYER: There is a washer but no dryer and it seems best to wash in the afternoon or evening. The staff does the sheets and towels in the morning. You have to buy your own soap, but they will do it for you. I asked to do it myself and the lady was so grateful. It was for selfish reasons, as I wanted a certain item first or didn't want to show my "skibbies" to anyone...hee hee! She told us she has a lot to do already. She showed me how to use this large stick with a nail on the end to hang the clothes under a plastic roof in a courtyard of sorts to dry. It's a bit of a trick to get them up there and down again. It takes the clothes about a day or even two to dry because it's so humid. Javon Rey is a blue soap that the ladies taught me to use on stains...but apparently it is also used to clean everything. Today the cleaning lady told me that a clean floor is good luck and she used Javon Rey!

MEALS: For less than $75 a day we get 3 meals included, which are very balanced. You always get soup to start, then a plate of meat, rice, salad, and potato. Often it is capped with a dessert. Many times you can tell the meat is prepared in advance and is kept in the fridge so it is cold. Most of the food is bland and needs salt, but you are never left hungry...not even my 6'3" hubby! I have enjoyed them very much and the kids eat more than both of us! It's really nice not to think about cooking as you get to know your kids and the culture etc. It's also fun to get to try all the typical cuisine of Colombia! I always ask what kind of juice is served or what kind of meat, etc...so I can make some of it for the kids in the future. I have told the kids what items they will find in the states as well as what they won't find, to prepare them. And if you have hiccups, you are told to take some sugar to cure them.

BEDS/AMMENITIES: The staff asked me earlier on if I wanted to keep the 4 beds in the room and if I needed a crib or anything else. When she asked she seemed to have a bad back, so Darryl and I opted to keep what we had and not make her move heavy stuff around. We did later ask for a baby tub for Jeni as she is scared of the shower water coming down in her face. Our beds are very hard, but the kids seem to sleep really well. Darryl and I struggle a little with our hips hurting as we lay on our sides because there is no give. We are getting used to it. The staff puts on very white sheets and tuck them in tight. The big wool blankets are left in the closet for us to get if we need them.

The closet is huge like a walk in with shelves, hangers, and drawers. The staff wants you to keep all of your belongings in there. Anything we pull out and forget to put back, they are sure to put there for you. Oh and there is a blow dryer hung up on the wall. My blow dryer that I brought was very much coveted by one of the cleaning ladies, who made it clear she could use one of those...so needless to say, I will be coming home hair dryerless...hee hee! There is also a little mini fridge in between the beds for chillin your drink or to stash some fruit. When it kicks on, the lights dim on the whole floor. Lastly, there is a TV with cable....you can find a lot of kids channels and American shows that are not dubbed in Spanish. However, if your kids are like ours, they are not into TV...we tried a movie and they only watched about 10 min of it. They would much rather play with toys, color, or go to the park.

Oh one last thing, we have a balcony, but I don't think anyone else does. It's so awesome to get some outside sun, or to do water coloring or playdough. Sometimes we just go out there to watch the street as it is very active!

OUR STREET: Speaking of sellers...there is so much noise all night long....cars go fast on this side street in the burbs of Medellin. People go by on bikes or pulled by a horse cart or on foot yelling what they are selling. The avacado guys comes by every day. One guy is the neighborhood protector with his horn that sounds like a clown horn...he honks all night just to let you know all is ok....Darryl has resorted to earplugs. I like the noise, but I used to leave the TV on to go to sleep.

THE PEOPLE: WOW, they just couldn't be nicer. Anywhere you go you can ask someone in Spanish how to get somewhere. People actually ask us that question a lot, but we can't help them. Everyone gushes over the kids, especially Jeni. You can tell they take pride in their city and homes. You will find everyone sweeping or cleaning in some way to keep things looking nice. Pretty much the whole city is clean...you find exceptions of bags of trash where they shouldn't be. There is such a mix of colors from the darkest of skins to the lightest. I was really surprised to find so many light skinned people. Darryl only sticks out because he is so tall. There is a lot of skin showing here, especially in women. Also PDA is totally cool and there is a lot of it! It is a romantic city! It is rare to find a chubby person! Darryl and I have found the guards with the rifles to be very helpful and friendly too!

THINGS TO DO:

Botanical Garden-that is free and beautiful, it has a few animals too...fish, turtles, ducks, squirrels, and a cat (not sure if he belonged). Next to it is a kids museum of science that looked fun too, but at the time of this writing we haven't gone.

Bare Feet Park-there are two of them, one in the city and one near our hotel, they have fountains that the kids can get into, swings, soccer courts, a sand volleyball court, an outside theater, basketball courts and of course vendors

The Metro/Cable-this is a great way to get around! For less than $.70 each we can ride the elevated train to most anywhere. It's like a cross shape so you can travel, east, west, north or south. We rode it with Alphonso first to get used to it and took it to the far side to see the city. There are two Cable connections which are like Gondolas to ride up the mountainside...so cool! Jeni likes looking at El Rio Susio...she calles it the Dirty River.

Amusement Park-For about $75 (travel there included) we went about 50 miles away to another town in the mountains to an amusement park/swimming pool. It was a day event with so many things for the kids to do. We could have paid to go on the rides with the kids but Alfonso said that he would take the kids if we didn't want to pay more...so we agreed. We are glad we didn't pay...mostly kiddie rides like the train, the carosel, a mini ferris wheel, and kiddie pools. Although it didn't cost much...I think $6,000 pesos which is less than $3 without riding and $10,000 pesos or $5 to ride. The kids said their favorite part was a stationary airplane that only lifts with hydraulics to similate take off. They are gonna love the real thing!

Botero Square-Botero is a famous artist from here who makes these black sculputes you will find all over the city. There is a lot of outdoor shopping and eating, etc to do there. We haven't been yet, so I will fill this in when we go there.

Integration Day

We sat with our attorney, social worker and interpreter to go over how the past week has gone and it was a chance to ask us questions about the children. Probably the best thing that we got out of today was that we got to know our children a little better in light of being together for a week. We told the social worker what we noticed in the children as far as personalities, habits, behaviors, etc. Frankly, the information that we were given about the children before we got them was dead on. Nothing was really a surpise this week.

In order for me to let you know a really positive aspect of today, I have to explain part of Alex's personality. He is very shy, but he also only knows how to really express one emotion well......anger. We have seen signs of it when we have pressed him to share his toys with other children in the hotel but it's just manifested itself in a prolonged pout. We never saw him explode like we were warned that he might. We told the social worker that the most anger we saw was pouting. She was very happy to hear that and told us that he must really trust us and feel comfortable with us. She made it sound like the explosion should have happened by now. You can definately see anxiety on his face when he doesn't have things go his way, but we're working through those issues. We saw marked improvement tonight as two new boys came to the hotel and asked to play with his remote control truck. Alex told his mom, "I'm going to let him borrow it." without blinking an eye. Monica and I looked and each other with a "Praise God" in our heart and smile on our face. We had been praying for a moment like that all week. Alex was rewarded with another Star Wars sticker. Astoundingly, five minutes later, he let another boy play with his Vtech game. WAH HOOOO! He got another sticker. I'll buy stickers till the cows come home if that helps him. He's a good boy who needs a lot of reassurance; reassurance that he hasn't consistantly had for 9 years.

Jeni is Jeni. She's a sparkplug that makes us laugh. We were all sitting on the bed last night pointing out our moles(when you're in a bedroom this small, you become very creative in your games) Monica has a few on her shoulder and neck and I have freckles....so we were pointing to each one and trying to count them all. All of the sudden, Jeni yells, "Hey! I have two!!!" She pulled down her shirt and showed us her chest and pointed! We were crackin up. She just looked at us like, "What's your problem?"

Anyway back to integration day. After all the talk, the social worker asks if you want to move forward with the legal process of adopting the kids. She says, "Do you need more time or do you want to move forward." Obviously, we said lets get this show on the road!! So now, we wait for our attorney to get all the official paperwork drawn up for us. Hopefully that will go quick.....like a week. Pray things move quickly. We wanna get these kiddos back home.

Till Later.....

Rice and Hip Hop

Ok, we're 8 days into our trip and i can see now that there are many things back home that I take for granted. I want a hamburger!!! I am tired of rice. It's with every lunch and dinner we've had since we've been here. Don't get me wrong....i understand the place of importance that rice holds on the world stage. It feeds billions and is the main sustinance for many cultures. However, after 8 days of it, I'm hitting the wall....it's a tall wall made of giant pieces of rice.

In other news: Jeni seems to be feeling better after a 3 hour nap. Girl after my own heart. Alex and I had some more soccer time today. He's extremely shy when we are alone together. I know it's due to the language barrier. Frankly we are all leaning on Monica so much in communicating. Her Spanish has really come back to her while we've been here. It's kinda cool having a bilingual wife. We're like Ricky and Lucy in reverse.

Alex is watching a Christian hip hop video on tv now. He ran into the bathroom to get his Superman ball cap and came out with it turned sideways doing some kind of dance. He might break into the ole Cabbage Patch dance here in a min. Jeni is jirating too. The chick has some moves.....a little scary.


Viva la Hamberguesa!!!!

Goofed

Sorry everyone praying so faithfully, i goofed...tomorrow is our Integration Day. So we are all prayed up. :) It's a good thing too because Jeni has a low grade fever of 100.7. She refused the medicine. I put it in some juice that I hope she will drink later. You sure can tell when she doesn't feel well...she barely ate anything at breakfast or lunch and she just quietly cried. Normally she eats a ton and cries really loudly! After lunch she slept and is still sleeping. It has been about 2 and a half hours. I am not sure if I should wake her or let her recover through sleeping.

Alex and Darryl got some good BONDing time...hee hee. They went to the park together to play more soccer. I am hoping for icecream later! That's all for now! LOVE seeing the comments from everyone! Don't forget to check out the pics in FLICKR...they are both so cute. :)

Integration Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the next milestone in the adoption process.....Integration Day....3pm. This is held about a week after you get your children. The purpose of the day is to go before a judge who asks us how everything is going in order to continue the adoption process. Two weeks later we should be able to finalize the adoption process here in Medellin, then it's off to Bogota for a few days before returning home. I don't really know how tomorrow will work in detail, however, we ask that you'd pray for all to go smoothly. If I had more details I'd let you know how to pray more specifically, but God knows.

In other news, we just got back from the park. Alex and I (Darryl) had some good futbol time. It was fun. As most of you know I could care less about soccer.....I am a baseball guy. All I know is that a bunch of guys pass the ball around alot until the announcer yells, "GOOOOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL". It's my understanding that it hurts to get kicked in the shins; that's why I never played. But Alex likes it, so I'm gonna start liking it. It was cool to hear him say before we left, "I'm going to play with my dad." Whao....that'll get the ole ticker beating a little faster.

Jeni jumped in the game with an excited, "Juegamos!!!!" Literally meaning, "Let's Play." But with her "go get 'em" attitude, I think it could loosely be translated as, "Let's Get it ON!!!"

Gigante Domingo

Sunday was a big, fun, tiring day for us. Alfonso took us to a water/amusement park about an hour and a half away up in the mountains. It was a nice diversion for the kids. They got to ride on an old airplane. It never left the ground, it just nosed up a few times to help the kids understand what a takeoff might feel like. They rode a little train also, but Alex said his favorite part was the airplane. That's good since we're not taking a train back to K.C. :) Thank goodness! God supplied the right kind of weather for what we needed. When we first got there, it was ultra sunny which worked out well for the kids since they wanted to swim first. Then after they finished, the cloud cover came to keep me from roasting while the wee ones rode the rides. Further up in the mountains, the sun feels like it is about 10 feet away from you.

I think Jeni's favorite ride was the carousel. Alfonso went on with her the first time, then she flew solo after that. The look on her face was one of massive amounts of pride. That might be one thing she doesn't need more of as she could stare in the mirror all day. :)

I made her cry pretty bad yesterday.....i felt horrible. She was riding on my shoulders and i didn't duck low enough under an overhang and she got whacked on the forehead. It put a nice little cut along her hairline. She normally ducks and giggles when I get to a short area, so I'm not sure if she wasn't paying attention or what. Either way, I should've not walked under it.....my fault. Mom kissed the wound and she stopped crying. Monica and I work well together.....I start the pain, she stops it. Team parenting at it's best. Alfonso was great with her too. She already had a scar on the other side of her head that she got BEFORE I GOT TO HER. Alfonso told her that she now had matching boo boos which made her smile.

We really thought that the kids would take to swimming. Alex was pretty apprehensive about everything, but Jeni floundered in the kiddie pool and seemed to enjoy it. It was funny watching her in 3 inches of water with floaty devices on her arms....it was overkill, but it's ok. She thought is was cool. Alex hung out at the edge of the pool for most of the time.....he takes after me apparently. He did slide down the slide once into the water, but i think it freaked him out a little so he stayed away from it for the rest of the time.

After the swimming and all the rides, the nino's were pooped. We headed back down the mountain for another 2 hour ride of nauseating hair pin turns at 50 mph. It was the last ride of the day. Jeni crashed on Moni's lap....it was the first nap she's taken since we got her. The only way we could wake her up for dinner was to remind her that meat would be in her plate. She liked the spaghetti and meat mixture.

I'm reporting a day late on it since our hotel internet connection was down. I went to the receptionist today and got her to reset the router. I didn't know I could explain something technical in Spanish.....that was fun. Basically it was just a lot of hand gestures and saying, "Si". We'll try to report back tonight on the rest of today's events.

Yesterdays pics are heading out to Flickr.


Later.

Rainy Saturday Afternoon

Today is our first day with Alex and Jenifer where we haven't been able to go out to the park to swing and kick the ball around due to rain. In parenting terms, this is the first day we haven't been able to run them ragged. :) Alfonso took us and the other adopting family on the Metro (train) to see more of the city. The city just keeps going and going. At one of the stops on the metro, there is a cable car that will take you up the mountain. Lindsey would like the light rail system down here. The kids really enjoyed it....and were in awe all the way up the mountain. We saw a cool mountain-side library that was a gift from Spain. Must've had a huge bow on it, cuz it was a big library. Anyway, when we got back, we had lunch and some "quiet time" and attempted to head back to the park....that's when the rain started. We made it about 2 block and turned back. Now the kids are sitting out on the balcony playing with their Vtech devices that Tia Victoria got them......the LOOOVE those things.

We invested in an inexpensive stroller for Jeni. The blisters on my big toes were screaming for help and since I carry her alot, this was the only thing I could think that might help. I am hoping that since she has to be buckled into it, she will get used to it and not be upset with the seatbelt on the plane and the car seat back home. We'll see. She is a VERY independent little girl....we do a lot of corraling with her.

A couple of funny things that I think shows they feel comfortable with us. I was patting Jeni on the back the other night and she scooted up a little so my hand was on her rear end. I thought she was just squirming then all of the sudden she passed gas....and giggled like crazy. You getting the picture yet of this little girl? Yeah....you're getting it. She said, "Ha ha ha .....rompio!!" I asked Monica what that meant and she said that's the word for as if you would rip a piece of paper....then we realized she basically just said, "I RIPPED ONE!" Yeah, you're gettin' the picture. She's a bit of a tomboy with a Diva attitude. Didn't know those two went together, but we found it in Medellin.

Alex is such a dream. He is a bit of a day dreamer, but when you ask him to do something he's all over it. A lot of times he wants to help you without being asked. We got him a soccer ball today. His eyes and smile were huge when Monica asked him which one he wanted. It was that, "Are you kidding me?" look. A wall of soccer balls to choose from for him is like free pizza for me.

They both eat like horses....not the little foo foo horses, but giant Icelandic monster horses. The eat just about everything that is put in front of them. You can tell that they haven't been tainted by high fructose corn syrup. Mangos and apples are their candy. Alex asked all night last night for a mango or apple. We finally convinced him to wait for it as a treat at the park. When we gave it to him today you would have thought that we had dumped Halloween candy in his lap. Jeni is a meat eater to the highest degree. Meat on her plate is a sitting duck. (no pun intended). PETA is not her friend.

We are so excited to have them (if we hadn't mentioned that yet). Monica will blog later....just wanted to give folks an update....there are more pics out on flickr too.

Hasta Luego.

Thanks for the Encouraging Words!

I just want to thank everyone for the kind comments! We love reading them, even look forward to getting online to see who has commented next! We send all our love and hugs home and to all our adoption friends everywhere!

Darryl and Monica

Joyous First Days

This is Monica...Darryl has been writing lately because it has been hard for me to get away or I am just exhausted. I am just in awe of what the Lord has blessed us with...they are beautiful! They are more than I even dreamed they would be! I feel like I am floating with love and joy!!! It has to be how Bobbi and Brandon are feeling!

Alex is so sweet and obedient! He can be very shy with others, but he has already opened up to us like we are family. I feel so proud! He loves the little V-tech game you gave us Vic and Mike! He yells..."GANO!" which means, "I WON!" It took him a while to figure out the matching game, but now he can do it really quickly! He is super helpful with Jeni, which is what he calls her, so we do the same. He put her fears to rest the first night telling her that her new Mami is nice and don't worry. Then when she is unsure if she wants to do something, he does it first to show her it's ok. He is soooooooooooo precious! I could just eat him up!

Jeni is so adorable...everyone calls her what I was called as a child, "Monequa" (most likely not spelled right) it means "Doll". I thought I was called that because it sounds so much like Monica...but maybe I was cute too...hee hee! Actually, we have so much in common, sometimes I think she came from me! She is double jointed like I am in my fingers...so wild! She wines when she doesn't want to be woken up, like I do...ha! Her voice is so adorable...it's a bit raspy and deep...warm like. She talks up a storm, describing all she does...even when she is alone in the bathroom! She is in constant need of attention saying "Mira!" "Look" louder and louder until you do. She also throws a few tantrums that if ignored, she will come out of quickly. I just love sweeping her up and giving her lots of besos y abrazos...kisses and hugs! She loves that!

Yesterday we went to the huge park nearby. Jeni swang the whole time....I am talking like an hour or more! Alex played with the remote control truck he loves! I forgot who got him that, but thank you again...it's hours of fun! On the way back we got Alex some gel for his hair...which when you ask for it sounds like you are saying hell. A bit strange to say!

We tried to walk to the big store but got tired and lost, so we got a taxi and asked him to take us to a store with clothes, toys and food. He took us to a huge mall with all that stuff. We found an EXITO, which is like a Target or Walmart. We picked up water, mangos, and a ball for the park. I love the fruit! I have to be careful to not eat too much!

We are so blessed....for $75 a day we get a room and 3 meals! I planned for double that just for hotel! The rough part is a bed that feels like a table with a sheet and a freezing cold shower. Fortunately it is hot every day, so a cold afternoon shower feels ok.

Ok, I better talk more later....SORRY ABOUT THE PICTURES...IT TAKES LIKE 2HOURS TO UPLOAD 4 OR 5 ON FLICKER ALONE...SO WE ARE STICKING TO THAT...EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE TAKEN A MILLION PICTURES!

Hasta despues...hope that says...until later...hee hee! Miss you all...but having a blast with the kiddos!

Gotcha Day.....Whatta Day!!!!

In a word...."WOW". Alex and Jenifer are everything we thought.....just beautiful in everyway. Alex is shy and polite. Jenifer is a ball of energy....she's a pistol. Our gotcha day started out with a trip to the Botanical Garden. Alfonso took us there as a nice diversion from the anticipation of going to meet the children. It worked. We got to ICBF about 40 min before we met the children. We met with the director, a social worker and a couple of other people that I didn't know. I'm sure we were told, but frankly my head was spinning. We spent about 40 min going over some important info. Monica was taking notes of what the social workers were saying even before our interpreter translated what they said. I was so proud of her! Toward the end, I could tell by the body language of the social workers that there was no more to talk about and that it was time to meet the children. Our final question to them was, "How do the children feel right now?" One of the social workers just laughed and said "listen" and pointed to the room next door. You could hear both of them in the other room playing and having fun. She said, "they feel great about this." Monica's tear ducts were set off then and there. Alex and Jenifer came into the room then my tear ducts opened up. They were a sight to behold. Check the Flickr pics to see what I mean. We're bedding down for the night.....doubt we'll sleep.

Hola from Medellin

We made it to Medellin at around 2am yesterday morning. The 3 legs of the trip were pretty uneventful except that we had to "unboard" our plane in Miami and wait for another plane to take to Medellin. Something was wrong with the pilots window heater or window itself....I got differing stories. So the whole plane swap made us about 2 hours late. American Airlines did comp us some ear buds for the inflight movie, though for our trouble. Saved $5 there!! Our interpreter, Alfonso, met us at the airport and took us to our hotel. He's a great guy. We're staying at the Hotel Mayor. It's very humble, but has everything we need, including 3 meals a day and Wifi....those are two things we can't live without. Today Monica and I explored about a 5 or 6 block area. We went to the park where we will be taking the kids to frequently. It's really more of a sports complex/ park. A local soccer team plays in the stadium next to the park. As we walked by the stadium we watched a line of about 300 men almost turn in to a mob trying to get tickets. The Policia were called in to calm down the crowd. They are passionate about their futbol! I'll be uploading pictures to our flickr page....you can find that link on the right hand column of this blog. Heading down to eat. Talk to you soon.

Visas and Sizes Came!

Our visas came this afternoon at 1:20. I was just about to go to Wal-Mart for a ton of last minute purchases, when the UPS guy arrived. I raced to the door and got his picture from afar and he started laughing. He said, “Is this to prove that this delivery truly happened for someone?” I thought that was funny, he must get that a lot. No I said, “You are holding our visas to pick up our little ones from Colombia and I am just excited.” He smiled and posed for a close up! So after all that paperwork compiled to send to the Chicago Consulate…all you get back is your passport with a small, brown slip of paper in it officially signed saying Republica de Colombia Visa. Cool! I mean “Chevre!” (not sure if I spelled that right).

Then around 3pm Julie shared our kids’ sizes with us. I was expecting height and weight in centimeters and kilograms as all the paperwork stated, but she said they gave her sizes instead, which is unusual. The shoe sizes were European sizes though. Our kids are HUGE! They sound so healthy and tall…maybe normal for US standards, but certainly not the rumors and facts we have heard from other families. Our newfound friends the Parkers adopted children the same age and told us they were in 3T and 7s. Maybe they do take after Darryl after all. :)

Jenifer’s shirt/pant size: 6
Jenifer’s shoe size: 10 (European size 27)
Alex’s shirt/pant size: 10
Alex’s shoe size: 13 ½ (European size 31-32)

The 3 T's: Time, Tickets, Travel Call

Time: We received our date for meeting the kids. In Colombia it’s called the Encuentro; we will celebrate it as our Gotcha Day forever! I can’t even imagine how it will go! I am dying to see them in person and hear their voices and squeeze them tight! Our Gotcha Day is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov 19th! We found out via email. We had to write a Follow Up Commitment letter, send CHI $980, and our FBI fingerprints and Medical letter. Then we had to start gathering the necessary paperwork for the visas…which called for notarizing and apostilling again too. Darryl also had to get his picture taken for his visa, which cost us $20 at Wal-Mart.

Tickets: We tried for a couple of days to figure out our tickets. It was frustrating trying to get a ticket to Medellin and return tickets from Bogota, understand the fees for changing our return date, and get the kids tickets just to return with us. So finally we just gave it all to Tim at Federal Travel to plan for us. After doing so, we realized that we should have done that from the beginning! He got us much cheaper tickets, could tell us what the fees would be for the different airlines, and had some tricks up his sleeve for getting the kids home! And he did it all for only a tiny fee…he said it was a labor of love for adoptive families as he has adopted himself. I wish he was close so I could hug him! It feels so good to have these coordinated. Now we can apply for our visas from Chicago.

Travel Call: We looked forward to this special call from our Director, Julie. It’s a 1 ½ hour call chock full of information about what to expect on our trip. She asked us to read the Travel Guide and be familiar with it before our call. I read it like 3 years ago, but we received an updated one, so we read it again. It took us 6 hours to read through it, as we stopped to pick up things as we read. I recorded the call so I could recall all the info later if we needed it. She put our mind at ease about paperwork, money, adoption processes, and our first meeting with our children. She answered a lot of our questions at the end and hooked us up with 2 families that had traveled before us to Medellin or had kids our kids’ ages. Really, I could not feel like we were in better hands! I feel bad about what I said earlier about CHI because they have always been kind and helpful and kept us aware of all the details. They are just in transition to try to stay alive as an agency. At any rate, I had to take a big sigh of relief after hearing all about the details from Julie herself! Now I have a lot of paperwork to line up for the trip. I also need to finish the lifebook and purchase all the gifts we have to take and pack! Aside from the little household things that need to be done as well.

Video's from the past

Monica did some organizing of our video cabinet tonight. We have a ton of VHS's and many that we haven't watched in a loooong time. She pulled the below tapes out of the back of the cabinet. I remember getting them when I got our first pc right after we got married in '95. Looking back, it's hard to believe that I actually wanted these. They've never even been in a VCR. Lamest $20 we ever spent.

July thru Sept 08 The Restructuring of our lives!

August began with lots of work! I cleaned up the basement filled with boxes and files of teaching material. All of it is now in clear, labeled tubs in the garage! Here’s a picture of how cool that looks!

Then I started arranging the basement to look like a mini classroom with a writing center, manipulatives (building) area, a drama center and an area for whiteboard work! I even made a magnetic wall, which took 6 coats to make it sticky! Boy will I have my work cut out for me working with my own children. I am nervous-excited for it all to begin! Here is what the basement looks like now. Slightly crowded, but it will do.

Painting Alex’s room was a blast, as I had good help from by buddy Dawn and my niece Sara and her bo Ryan. We whipped a navy and lime green, soccer room together in no time flat! I messed up the ceiling paint because I ran out of the first can of white paint…so thinking they are all the same, I picked out another half empty can of white paint in our garage. Needless to say, no two white cans of paint are the same!!! The first was flat and the second very glossy. I kept wondering why it never looked dried! So the whole ceiling got a second coat of glossy. It looks pretty sparkly in there! What do you think?

After Alex’s room, we really debated about Jenifer’s room. We had planned for a baby boy, so it’s a nice, fresh, light blue. I hated to waste that hard work (as it was our first big paint job in the house). So we opted to have pastel polka dots added to make it look girly. I love it! Big, pink, purple, and white dots were added to make an adorable and feminine little girl’s room!

The bad thing about painting is that the new really shows up the old! So now the bathroom and hallways look like they need freshening up too! I only had the energy and money for the bathroom, so we settled on a nice jungle green to go with the fun monkey theme that just happened in there! Thanks Vro for your decorating advice at Target! It turned out adorable…ooh ooh ah ah! Check these pics out!

We are still working on the hallway floor, so it still looks like a construction zone upstairs, but it’s all coming along nicely! In some odd way, it reminds me of preparing for the kids at school in August. The anticipation of the new class of children is very similar to the anticipation of meeting our forever family! (in some ways)

Still to do: get the swing that the Smiths donated to us and the play table that the Altenbergs gave us, file for more adoption grants, lose weight, practice my Spanish, read all the books I ever wanted before kids come…HA just kidding, I know it won’t all happen! So they get the real me…lifelong projects, busy days, bad cook, but a fun and loving mom!

Get Ready!!

This is really just a test post to remind myself of how to upload a video. In light of just hearing that a little snow is possible in the area this week, I thought I'd break out some old, mundane footage from one of last years many snows.

Our Assignment is OFFICIAL!!!!

Nichole Deal, our new social worker called us for the first time with the best news! It was so weird hearing it from her. I thought all through this process that we would hear the big news from Julie herself (CHI director) or at least from Denise Weller (our social worker for 4 years), but no it came from a stranger to us in our agency from St. Louis. She was really nice, but it didn’t quite feel the same. No matter, the news itself was too exciting… the staff in Medellin met and everything was in order and our assignment is official!!!! WOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO! We were stoked because up til now, the children we had prayed for were not “officially” assigned to our family. We knew in our hearts that the Lord was saving them for us, but it’s nice to have the paperwork say the same thing! This also means that we should receive our travel date next week. The papers have to travel from Medellin to Bogota to Lucia who will forward them to Julie in Oregon and then we should get a call. So now we can share with everyone the details of the newest members of our family. Aren’t they beautiful!!!

Ethan Alexander Bond
(for now “Alex”)
9 years old
Loves soccer
Shy
Likes to help out around the house (my favorite characteristic…hee hee)
Good in the manual arts

Nora Jenifer Bond
(for now “Jenifer”)
4 years old
Loves dancing
Enjoys playing with dolls
Outgoing
Likes to be with friends (she's social...just like Darryl..ha!)

Email from Julie about the Bond Family Mtg

When we get an email from Julie our hearts start to beat faster and we just can’t wait to see what the contents are…and today was no different. Darryl called over to me to come and sit by him on the couch with his work laptop to read it together.

Julie said that our family is on the agenda for the staff in Medellin for next week to make an assignment! We are so excited that someone on the CHI side of thing is finally looking over all our paperwork to help us build our family after all these years! 4 years ago…Nov 2004 to be precise! Julie said that we should know in 2 weeks when we will travel. So we are thinking by the 17th we will hear something. All the paperwork on the side of the kids has to be in order and all our paperwork has to be in order for them to make this assignment.

Our prayer is that all is in order and that we will travel early Nov because Colombia pretty much closes down business from Dec 15th to Jan 15th and we don’t want to get stuck in Colombia for over 4 weeks due to finances. Sure we would love to stay in sunny Medellin through the winter, but it would not be cost effective for us.

Garage Sale Fund Raiser #2

Oct 2,3,4
Jodi gave me the idea and encouragement to have another garage sale with the leftovers from the first garage sale at church. She says their neighborhood sale gets lots of traffic at her house. So 3 months later, here we are doing a second garage sale. There were tons of people, but she said it was the lightest traffic she had ever seen. We still made $600, so I can’t complain. I loved Jodi’s idea on the 3rd and final day, with only 3 hours left, to give people a bag and say, fill the bag for a dollar! It worked really well and we hardly had to pack any boxes when we finished. We had 4 truck loads when we arrived, but only like 5 boxes at the end of the day, which we donated. And upon donating our boxes we found a little kitchenette set for Jenifer, and the lady gave it to us for offering her our 5 boxes! Too cool! We also picked up bikes for the kids and coats. Still, hardly anyone had clothes for Alex’s size…bummer. Poor guy only has a few items. Vicky, my sister and Jodi, our pastor's wife, are very giving people that I take for granted far too much. I love you guys and appreciate everything you have done for us!!!


I had a blast talking to our visitors and to Jodi, Allen, Vicky, and Kalyn.


A couple came over with these puppies for sale...so cuddly and sleepy. You could pose them any way you like and they would fall asleep that way!



According to the owner, these spotted ones are rare and worth $400.


Vic worked all night and still came to help me out all day! Kalyn is such great company too!

We had 8 tables out, two dressers and a bed.

There was a steady flow of people all 3 days.

Sept 29th My Last Birthday without Children!

We signed up for FBI fingerprinting at 10 am on my birthday! That was fun! Only we thought they were the fingerprints we got at the Immigration office which cost $160, but they weren’t. We found out through this really rude lady at INS that turned us away with disgust and said, “We are not going to help you, your agency should not have sent you here, you should know better!” It was the nasty look on her face and the way she was not willing to help us figure it out, that made us upset! Just normal courtesy would have been nice. Thank goodness our sweet social worker Nikki DeSimone was a hundred fold kinder. She informed us of the easiest route, which is through the Platte County Court House in Platte City for only $36. Of course it is only open for fingerprints on Mondays and Fridays from 1pm to 4pm. AND we had to bring our own fingerprint cards printed on cardstock from the website. Talk about convenience! Naturally, we are getting used to the hoops we have to jump through, so we got them done! But go figure after we got home we noticed that one of the cards wasn’t signed by the officer!!! So two days later, I had to return, find the same officer and get a signature. Well, it’s just a small glimpse of the maze we are in adopting!

We did however, go shopping at Target/Lowe’s with the gift cards that everyone gave us and got 3 huge carts full of stuff. That was a marvelous birthday treat! I am so glad we saved it for today! Thanks to each of you for your generosity! The kids rooms are coming along nicely!
A purple rug
A quilt for Jen
A lamp for Alex
3 mirrors
An alarm clock for Alex
Dresser handles for Alex’s dresser
Frames for family photos when we get home
2 window unit air conditioners
Curtains
Curtain rods
Nightlight for Jen
Pom pom curtain for Jen
Shower head with 6 foot reach
Closet organizer kit
Outdoor lights for the stairs
Vent pipe for the dryer
A sugar jar
Shower rings
Shower rod
Door stops
Bicycle hooks
Hangars
Umbrellas
Hand sanitizer
Anti-slip bath mat
Tubs for storage
Boots for Alex
Plywood for attic
Non slip strips for the stools
Stepstools

Family Gathering

It’s been a while since the Hernandez, Avila, Newsome, McLear, and Bond families have all come together like this. We had a nice time of eating and chatting like all Mexican’s enjoy! Vic made great tacos, Nina made some sopa to die for, and Aunt Angie made some Mexican rice that just melted in your mouth! I need recipes!!! I hadn’t noticed before how many teachers there are in our family…Erica (2nd grade), Jake (special ed), Nina (preschool), Regina (kindergarten I think), Vero in Mexico (kindergarten) and me (first grade mostly). There was lots of good new news too: Regina is engaged to Joel with one big rock on her finger (date TBA but I think next fall)! Erica has a very nice boyfriend named Jake! Mike and Katy have a handsome new son, named Jarvis! What a great looking bunch we all are:


We celebrated many September birthdays: Joe, Gina, Katy and mine.


More sopa please!!!

Is she adorable or what!?!

Cute new couple!

Can AJ keep up with the big kids???

Proud grandpa!

Aunt Angie says...mmmmmmm!

He is so cute and so serious! I tried to get him smile.

Watchin' the Chiefs

Rita and I in pink

Michael and Katy and Isabella

My Nina Bonnie and Aunt Angie in all smiles!

Adorable Jarvis below!

APPROVAL EMAIL!!!

Julie sent us an email today at 1:30, but I was volunteering at Life Christian Academy and missed it. So Darryl called me at the school on Dawn’s Cell phone to announce the good news of the approval! Julie said that our paperwork would be in Medellin by the end of next week. She also said that the office in Medellin is very efficient and would not take long in making our assignment official. She said we would know by the end of October when our Gotcha Date (the day we get the kids) would be. I am assuming Nov or Jan, but November would be better! I would love to celebrate Christmas with the kids! A few days later I found out our official date of approval is Sept 23rd. Not sure why, but I really don’t care either…it’s all coming to a head soon!

School Shower

My teacher friends Nancy and Kerri decided to put on a shower for me at school even though I am not teaching this year, which I thought was really amazing! I guess they have been waiting with me all these years for the kids too. You really forget all the people who have been such encouragement as the months go by and then the years. Anyways, we had a wonderful time. It was held in Janet Switzner’s library at West Platte Elem School. Kim made an adorable cake with stick people that looked like our family…that was so thoughtful and delicious, and the first time I saw our family in stick people form. I tore open the gifts pretty quickly because I was more nervous than I have ever been in front of my school friends. I guess it was that whole “center of attention” thing I don’t enjoy too much. The kids got lots of clothes and toys, which is what they were lacking, so that was fabulous! I was so nervous and didn’t want to cry in front of everyone, but it meant the world to me that they would do this thoughtful thing on my behalf! So in my rush and shyness, I missed that the staff gave me a $300 gift card for Target on top of all those wonderful gifts! I felt so badly that I didn’t notice and make a big fuss at the shower. I had to call Dana immediately after opening all the gifts again in front of Darryl at home and discovering this major oversight. What a doof I can be! Sweet shower, fabulous friends, marvelous memories!




Kerri looking over the details. It looks great!

Kerri and Nancy, thank you!!!

Check out that huge box of play food for the play kitchen! Neat-O!

This book had great recipes for bubbles, edible playdough and other fun activities to do with my kiddos! Thanks Debbie!

That says it all!

Attic Storage

We put stuff in the attic for the first time. I didn’t think I would be such a collector of stuff. My new motto is “if we don’t use it, pitch it!” We don’t really have storage space at our house any ways. But with kids coming our rooms with seasonal items and scrapbooking stuff has no place to go! So we actually had to put things in the attic! We had to get some flooring for the attic because there isn’t anything but insulation up there. It looked like a pink cloud had settled on our attic floor. You couldn’t see floor joists or anything. So I wonder how often we will really get up there??? Maybe every Christmas…the rest will not be used as usual if it’s too hard to get.

Circus with the Nephews

I won 4 tickets to the Barnum and Bailey Circus because Veronica makes me fill out every entry form I can find at any public place of business (thanks Vro!). Veronica already went with her Girl Scout troop, so Darryl and I took AJ and Mikey to the Sprint Center to check out the hilarious and dangerous antics of Bello the Clown!!! What fun, I haven’t been to the circus in 20 years or more. The toys are expensive and the show seemed too far away, but we still had a great time! Darryl liked the dog tricks the best, I liked the tigers! Why are they so obedient…they could eat that guy whipping them?!?!?! The boys loved Bello! I remembered the glow in the dark toys the best…I always got one of those tiny flashlights with the plastic strings attached that glowed different colors. They didn’t have any of those this year, but AJ and Mikey still got some cool toys! Here are a few pics of the event:

AJ's sword glowed in the dark and of course Mikey got a vehicle (mini Mike).

Bello came out of this cannon, if you look carefully you might see him in the air!

The Elephants were adorable too!

Church Shower

Dawn and Vicky held a shower for me at the church and lots of kind and loving people showed up from many places and times in my life:

My very special Cornerstone family: Jody, Kalyn, Stephanie, Bobbi, Janet, Kris, Janet A, Amy, Tara, Kim, Denise, Lisa, Mary Ann, Joahn, April, Debbie B, Stacey, Teresa, Becky, April, Denise, Rachel S.
Some family members: my Aunt Angie and my Nina Bonnie, and Rita Silva
Also my wonderful adoption family: Rachel O’Connell, Chris Sinclair, and Robyn Zafft
And a few Preschool families: the Matias’, the Stalcups’, and the Hesses’
A friend from West Platte: Suzanne Rush
And one long lost buddy from Oklahoma: Lorena Harmon

The most memorable part about it was seeing everyone at once and the prayer over our children half way through. I tried to hold back tears because it meant so much to me to be covered by the Lord on this endeavor by all those who love us! It was unforgettable to me! Here are a few photos:




The morning of the shower was foggy and there was this huge spider web on our porch. It was so beautiful.

Dawn being a servant as usual. Thanks for all you do all the time Dawn!



This is my sis, whom I love dearly...her and Dawn went through a lot of effort on my behalf, in which I am forever grateful!



In case you can't read this it says, "Welcome to our Family Bond Kids."
























My sweet friend Robyn adopted adorable Miguelito just a year ago!
This is our psuedo "first family photo". Below is a close up of the poster of the kids I made and above is a poster about Colombia to share with friends and family.


Sergio just caps the whole event off with this cute picture after all was cleaned up!

Fundraising Blessings

The cookie dough sales are over although I still have a few boxes to dole out to a couple friends. We are blessed beyond the imaginable with raising $10,000 dollars in about a month!!! I guess God is telling us He wants us to go and pick these kiddos up! The cookie dough fundraiser gave us $4,000 of those dollars thanks to all the loving people of Cornerstone Bible Church and friends and family who actually sold the dough on our behalf. We have definitely been shown true love and unity by this very special “family” we have! Below are a few pics of the boxes and boxes of cookie dough purchased! Cheryl, after Christ, all the kudos goes to you girl! She is the fundraiser queen! Thanks from the bottom of my heart! All this work can never be repaid in monetary value. For those of you awaiting your gotcha day, Julie told me that 10,000 plus tickets to travel to Colombia would be more than adequate. Now these things change with time. I asked some friends who went to Colombia two years ago and they only paid $6,000 and one friend who traveled last year who said 10k total would work including tickets. So obviously the price just keeps going up! We are just grateful right now!



This is only blurry because they were working so fast! HA! It was so cool cuz Cheryl actually knew the delivery guys!





Here is Cheryl, AJ, me, and Tara. My sister and Anthony are missing from the work crew that day. Thanks for helping me sort guys!





This is a fairly good picture of all the boxes. I think there were over 600 cookie boxes here. That’s a lot of dough…hee hee!




Thanks again to everyone who helped us with this fundraiser!!!

Garage Sale Fund Raiser

I had so much fun at the garage sale Saturday! I saw friends from different times in my life come to take part in the fund raiser and to see the kids pictures. I felt like all I did was talk all day long. It was like a flashback to our wedding at times. It did seem strange taking money from those I love, but they did get a product for a good value too, so that helped.

The sale itself was just amazing!!! People we love, showed us how much they love us, by giving us fabulous products to sell, praying for the event, or helping out. Most of what we got were quality items…i.e. Limited Too kids clothing and brand name adult clothing, Mary Kay make up at a real discount, really nice house décor, small appliances that were still new and in their boxes, as well as exercise equipment and furniture. The stationary bike and weight bench went first and the treadmill went mid-day and they all brought in a lot of money. There was a nice swing and a blue recliner and a grill that brought in a pretty penny too!

I wanted to shop so badly, because there were so many fun things available, but all I had to do was think about the kids and how much it was going to take to bring them home, so I promised Darryl I wouldn’t really look until the sale was over. We made over $1700, which is wonderful and such a blessing! We now have $6,000 towards our trip! We only need about $4,000 more. We hope to make that through cookie dough sales and if we have to we will try one more fund raiser that will not involve the loving and giving hearts of our church family, as they have already gone out of their way to help us!

I am truly in awe of the giving hearts that beat in our church body! I want to personally thank Nathan who got up at 5:30 AM just to help us unload for the garage sale, and Mike and Vicky who did the same. Veronica who sold lemonade in the heat all day for an $11 profit! And Mikey and AJ who ate the watermelon J and dusted for me. And I would like to thank Jodi and Allen for the donations of awesome girls clothing and all the sweat it took to clean up afterwards! And Dawn who helped me know what to pitch and what to keep and how to organize and make signs as well as all the muscles used to help me pack up the mess. And Vicki T. who donated Mary Kay products and left with more than her and her kiddos could carry! I would also like to thank Cheryl who brought us chicken nuggets and Shatto milk…mmmm! And Lindsey who shared her big scrap booking day and helped out when she could, and for all the giving people who donated items to sell…The Barber Family, especially Megan, The Falter Family, my new friend Laura, my sister-in-law Mary, and everyone at Darryl’s work who donated really cool stuff…Jeff and Allison, Karen, Tammy, Dimple, Mandy, Jennifer, Mary. Karen your homemade jewelry was beautiful! If I missed anyone, please forgive me, the whole thing is a blur as it was all put together in a week! We can’t thank each of you enough for all you all did on our behalf!. We are forever grateful!

A Decision is Made

Well, the Lord has been doing a number on us. We have prayed for confirmation of our change in desire to adopt siblings. There have been so many instances of God-given affirmation, that we can boldly say that this change has been joyful and welcome in our lives. They are very personal confirmations for both Darryl and myself. Our testimony is that we acknowledged the Lord in this decision and he has guided our path. We have requested ICBF (the Colombian Institute of Child Welfare) to adopt 2 adorable children on the waiting list and we are awaiting their official approval in the next month or so. Julie (the Director of the Colombian Adoption Program for CHI) said that the children were still available and we were on top of the list in requesting them. So we believe that it is just a matter of time. Thank you to all of you who prayed for us and gave us wonderful words of encouragement!

In the meantime, we have been frantically planning and preparing for such a huge change. We have given all the baby stuff away and are searching for appropriate bedroom furniture, décor, toys, clothing, etc. I will be painting one of the rooms we have soon, and placing new flooring in the hallway upstairs due to Goldie.

I have quit my job, which was a huge decision for us. It was hard to say goodbye to my school after 10 years. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching and building relationships with the kind and loving people of Weston. For the last few weeks I have been moving my stuff out of my classroom and sorting and pitching all kinds of things. I used to be rather nostalgic about things, now I am envisioning new memories to be made and am tossing or giving away everything! I am really looking forward to home schooling my children for at least a year to build attachment, teach them English, and foster the skills that they need to learn for school the following year. I feel blessed to have some expertise in this area, so not everything is new to me next year. I have even been working on setting up a classroom in our basement.

On the day we made this decision, I drove around for 6 hours getting two pieces of paperwork for this big change of preference in to Julie. Fortunately my niece Veronica accompanied me and kept me company. Being on the border of Kansas and Missouri can make things complicated some times. But every piece of paper gets us closer, so it’s a joy to work each little step.

Finally Darryl and I are starting some fund raisers. That to us, is the most stressful part! However, we do not feel that the Lord has led us to this point without the promise to see us through the financial side of this adoption. According to some friends who adopted from Colombia within the last year, we will need approximately $10,000 to bring our children home from Colombia. We have a small portion, but still need to raise a lot of money. So we are selling cookie dough and having a church garage sale this month. So much to do in such a short amount of time…my head is spinning! I am so grateful that the Lord is on our side, as this adoption will be a miracle for all those who look upon it!

Siblings or a Baby?

It always seems to be the question lately. After all this wait, it seems we should just wait for the baby…we’ve “earned” it! But then we get these emails from CHI that show gorgeous children just waiting for a home. In Dec 07 we saw a pair Abel and Yadira and we were in love. She was 2 and he was 10. Such a huge gap in ages and so much of his life that we would have missed. They only showed up one more time in Jan 08 and then were adopted by some blessed family. I was happy for them and sad for me. Why didn’t I jump up and take them!? Now there are two more plaguing me: “A” and “Z”. They are beautiful. I say it over and over, they are beautiful inside and out, you can tell. Their little paragraph tells about how they want to be adopted together and how they get along well and how smart they are and well behaved. I can already visualize them in our family perfectly. Why do I hesitate? For me it’s the chance to care for a baby and have the influence over them from the start. Less trauma from the past and attachment issues in my mind. We have things fixed up for a baby…but two is nice, one boy and one girl…how perfect! The Lord will have to reveal this one to me because I am torn! Really, truly torn! Why can’t I have what everyone else has, a baby from conception to love? But why can’t these kids have a home and family to BE loved? They have been on the list for 3 months now and I know the only reason is because they are older, 4 years and 8 years old! I know the Lord will give me clarity. I am going to call Julie tomorrow for more info on these two beautiful children. If you are reading this please pray for wisdom in this decision.

May 2, 2008 A 30 Month Landmark

It’s kinda cool to finally hit this milestone in our official wait for a baby. 2 and a half years (the official wait with paperwork) really 3 and a half years from our first informational meeting at CHI. So many things have changed. Certainly our time frame for waiting for a baby has changed from 12 to 18 months to triple that! The last I heard 30-33 months was the wait for healthy babies. But if I calculate correctly, I am expecting 40 months. That’s the way God works anyways, when it comes to trials. This wait has become the trial of our lives at this point. So my best guess is March of 2009.

And CHI’s restructuring recently has really thrown me for a loop. We had such a nice staff with lots of hustle and bustle about them, a big office with lots of sweet pictures of children happily placed, and lots of activities to attend. The social workers all knew us by name and smiled and asked us how our wait was going. Now, our whole local site is down to only a director working from home. All the social workers are on a contracted basis only. Our nearest social worker assigned to our case is 4 hours away in St. Louis, the central location for CHI. I don’t even know what she looks like. After 3 and a half years of a personal touch, I feel distant and forgotten. I know we aren’t totally forgotten, but if I have a question or concern or interest in something adoption wise now, I turn to my CHI yahoo friends or those families that have been waiting as long as we have. I have truly loved CHI since the beginning because of the sensitive, caring Christian staff, but if I were to adopt again, I am not sure that I would chose them. It sounds harsh, but it lost its appeal to me personally.

It’s also strange when my friend Rachel adopted both of her children in 6 months and her agency was still sending her emails of children who were available and yet all their applicants already had referrals. I know it’s all in God’s timing and if I want things to be perfect then I will wait on Him. So through faith and trust in our Lord, I wait. I wonder how long he waited for me to accept him as my Lord and Savior. I truly can empathize with his longing to adopt me!

Moni and a Bird

Monica is taking her summer school kids on a field trip to the zoo today. Her sister sent me this picture. I really wonder what is going through the birds mind.

Wednesday Night Fun-capades

During Wednesday nights this summer our church is not doing the usual activities. Our ladies are doing a book study, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. I know Monica is really enjoying the interaction with the other ladies. While they're doing that, the guys have a short devotion then get into some ping-pong, pool, Foosball, and air hockey competition. My favorite by far is ping pong. I have yet to attempt the maneuver shown in the above picture.

Moving Day

Today and tomorrow are moving days at my work. Our group is moving to the Sprint Campus. I have mixed feelings about it mostly to the negative since it adds another 10-15 minutes to my drive. I do look forward to the change of scenery, though. The good thing is, I will be be sitting next to a window so I will be able to look at something other than puke green cube walls. It will be a good opportunity to meet new people and possibly see some familiar faces of those who have "gone before" us.

West Platte Preschool Graduation

View last nights video presentation OR download video here

A Special Privilege

Monica was invited to speak to a group at the Platte County Board of Services for the Developmentally Disabled....and Monica invited me. We had a great time. Monica spoke for their monthly educational program; this months theme was cultural diversity so Monica taught them a little about Cinco de Mayo and Mexican culture in general. I think they enjoyed seeing all of the things we brought with us. The sombrero's, maracas, and pesos were all big hits.....the biggest being the sombrero's. Everyone wanted to try them on. One guy even told me, "The next time you're in Mexico find out how much one of those cost and let me know.....I'll pay you back." I knew what he meant. We really wanted to just give him the sombrero, but if we had it might have created a big ruckus, since we didn't have enough for everyone. Each of the people there were incredibly nice and loved to talk. I met a guy who called himself, "Wild Bill" and another guy thought Monica was very pretty and wanted to get himself his own Mexican girl. We had a good laugh about that one. Anyway, we had a great time and are thankful for the opportunity to meet so many great people with great hearts. I want to go back soon to visit them again.

30 Month Wait

Today is our 30 month anniversary in our wait for our little Colombian! It feels like a milestone of sorts. It must mean that our time waiting is coming to an end right?! Well, I like to think is! And it gives us another reason to celebrate and eat out! :) Our social worker once told me that the longest anyone waited for their baby at our agency was 39 months, and that was an unusual circumstance. So Happy Day!

Gotta Get Back in Time

"Walking with Dinosaurs-The Live Experience" is coming to Sprint Center in KC June 3-7. I just got an email from work saying we can get tickets for $10....I assume that's a discount since I work at Sprint, but who knows. If you're interested in going, let me know and I'll try to get you some tickets. I've read some blurbs about it and folks are saying it's really good.

"This is a show that could only fit in arenas - as the creatures are so absolutely immense in size," commented Gerry Ryan, head of The Creature Production Company. "Audiences seated in the lower seats are all but overwhelmed by the dinosaurs, while those seated in higher seats can view the entire spectacle and panorama of the production. It is the closest you'll ever get to experiencing what it was like when they walked and ruled the earth."

Maybe we'll see you there.

Am I Really Speculating???

I should know after 3 years of waiting that speculation of WHEN should not even come out of my mouth. But also with 3 years of waiting, what else do I have to occupy my mind? So, last I heard, there is about a 3 month wait per month of adoption applications. Julie says that it would be longer for months with more requests and shorter for fewer, which makes sense. So my speculation for us is April of 09 since we were approved November 2, 2005. Well, here’s to HOPE! So here is my chart of approximates.

July 05 approvals
April 08
May 08
June 08

August 05 approvals
July 08
August 08
September 08

September 05 approvals
October 08
November 08
December 08

October 05 approvals
Jan 09
February 09
March 09

November 05 approvals
April 09
May09
June 09

A 20 Year Wait

Well, I've had a few hours now to digest the KU victory over Memphis for the NCAA Championship. I think i've listened (at nausea from my wife's perspective) to every sports talk show commentary and every article on line and in the paper that I could today. I'm glad I had the day off to soak it all in. Moni and I got to watch the game on a 65" HD tv with Dennis and Annette....sure beat my 32" with rabbit ears. It was surreal watching the game and remembering exactly where I was 20 years ago almost to the day when KU won their last championship. I remember sitting in the living room on our old gold tweed couch in 1988 watching the game with my mom and dad. We generally didn't have a t.v. in our living room upstairs, but for this night we brought in a 19" color tv and sat it on the old record player. The feelings of that night rushed back to me last night....in 1988 KU and Oklahoma were tied 50-50 at the half and i could barely sit still. Last night, i was literally on the edge of my seat watching as KU tied this game at the end of regulation. I felt like I was 16 all over again. That earlier championship was only a 4 year wait for me since i had only begun to follow KU basketball when i was 12. This wait was longer and sweeter. What a game, what a year!!! Way to go 'Hawks.

Cadyn's Wish

The look on his face just says it all! I just don't know if he is having a good time??? For those readers who don't know, this is my brother-in-law, Ronnie and his wife Roberta and our 5 niece and nephews. Their family got to go to Disneyland through the Make a Wish Foundation. We are so happy they got to enjoy this vacation together! Ride the Hulk Rollercoaster and the Tea Cups for me Cadyn!

Prov 26:11 As a Dog Returns to his Vomit...

.....so a fool returneth to his folly. Well our dog Goldie showed us how accurate this verse is! We were about to go out to visit our friends Chris and Paul, when we noticed G laying right next to a huge brown splotch! That's about the same time I remembered giving her a nice piece of leftover roast beef with gravy. Well apparently it didn't agree with her. As large as the spot was, we didn't figure we would have to deal with anything more . So after cleaning up, we went off to our friend's house. About 4 hours later, we arrive home to 4 splotches about the same size as the first, one of which was partially (mostly) re-eaten. And this time she decided to share the love with our living room, kitchen and bedroom. It was an exciting night for the antibacterial spray! She used to eat piles of leftovers in her youth before we got her, now she is so sensitive! Needless to say, I am sticking to the dog food from now on! Poor old girl!

Our 13th Anniversary

That means we are now working on our 14^th year of married life! So it’s double lucky 7s! We feel very blessed to have had 13 such wonderful years of marriage and growth in our walk together with the Lord! I still look in Darryl’s eyes and melt, although now he is more so my confidant and spiritual leader than ever before. Our relationship is so much deeper and more meaningful than earlier years. I look forward to seeing him as a Papi!

We talked about the day (our anniversary) and thought maybe we would cancel our normal duties this evening and get a bite at McD's and go for a walk. This was a treat in many ways to both of us, so I was as thrilled as could be with our plans. Then my sweet friend Dawn met my hubby at home around 5pm and gave him a GC for Olive Garden and Panera Bread from our very generous and loving Cell Team! I could have cried! It was so nice to go out to Olive Garden and just enjoy the yummy food and relaxing conversation! It really was a nice celebration and surprise! We know we are blessed with wonderful friends! I look forward to our next outing to Panera!!!

In the Clear Concerning the Pending Status

Julie wrote:

Per US State Department/Hague Guidelines, families with I-600a approvals (like yourselves) can continue to be serviced by agencies without Hague accreditation, so to the best of our knowledge, your adoption will continue just as planned.

YEAH! Still continuing to pray for CHI's accreditation to go through for the sake of the agency and others who desire to adopt in the future!

Hague Accreditation Pending for CHI

I am concerned about this pending status for CHI and how it affects those of us who have waited so long for our little ones. I understand that it will affect everyone who signs up now for adoption through CHI, but what about those in waiting? I love CHI and the people who have helped us along in our process to adoption. I have always felt that they were a safe, trustworthy and faithful organization. I am confident they are doing all they can to correct this situation. We are praying for this process of amends to go smoothly and quickly for everyone waiting to adopt and for CHI itself! I am awaiting a response from Julie about what this means specifically for us.

Here is what I think I understand:

1. “The Hague Treaty on Intercountry Adoption establishes international standards to protect orphans and both their birth and adoptive parents. It aims to prevent child trafficking and other abuses. It also assures adoptive families they are working with an adoption agency that meets these ethical standards.” (a quote from the CHI website)

2. It affects all countries who are involved in this Hague Treaty such as China and Colombia.

3. Our agency had an issue in its Russia program with two staff members (in Illinois) who made a bad decision to forge a name in July of 2007. This kind of thing is RARE and CHI was not pleased with this wrongdoing. These employees are no longer working with CHI and now CHI is working tirelessly to right the situation. However, this has made it difficult to complete the application process for Hague Accreditation.

4. What I understand is that it may take up till the end of May to get Illinois’ license renewed. And then a corrective plan to keep incidences like this from happening again must be prepared. This process may take up till early fall to complete. We are praying that comes much sooner.

I-600 Renewal and FBI Fingerprints

We had our appt at 1:30 and by 2:00 we were back in the car. There were 4 ppl in the whole office! Sure is a quick way to get rid of $830. Thank you Lord for making it a smooth and simple trip, providing the money, and for making it our last time to do this particular paper!!!

Noticeria Info about I-600 changing to I-800

Today we got our Noticeria in email form as usual and it had some major changes. First it said that CHI was not yet Hague certified (?). They are on the agenda for March 7th to be reviewed to be certified. We are all praying that we do get accepted, as adoptions from many countries depend on it.

With this change came information about the I-600 form from INS/USCIS being changed to the stricter and more complicated I-800 form. The 600 has only 2 pages and the 800 has 9 pages and the same is to be done in Colombia upon completion of an adoption. However, the good news is that those who are able will be grandfathered in under the old I-600. So what we had to do was to get a hold of Julie Eagleson to see if this would be appropriate for us. It would only work if we could project getting our baby before the next 18 months as that is how long the I-600 remains active. The law goes into affect April 1^s, so we just have to get to USCIS before then.

So I called Julie around 11am on Thursday to ask her. I knew she would be flooded with calls, so she called me back around 6pm. This is the first time I have spoken to Julie in person. I met her at a KC Colombia party about a year ago, but she was surrounded so we didn’t get a chance to talk. So it was REALLY nice to speak to her in person! She was so kind and soft spoken. She said that we are getting close! She told us about how many are going before us with babies, which sounded like less than 10.

I asked her about our wait and if Jan 09 was a good estimate. She said she thought it would be a lot sooner than we think. YEAH!!! She said that last year this time that the Colombian ICBF wasn’t liking how the referrals were taking so long, so they sent out 500 regions all at once to people across the world. They thought that would make things go faster at each agency, but instead it clogged the works and made things come to a halt! Slowly they have taken care of the older waiting children, sibling groups, and the toddlers, and FINALLY they are on the BABIES list!!! So all of us who have waited so long for a referral are now on the top of the list. At least that's how I remembered what she said over the phone. Phone conversations go so fast! Either way it is moving!!!

Julie said she will be most interested in the July babies because it may give us a good idea how long it takes in REAL time to get a baby from the beginning of one month to the end of that same month. I guess both families are exactly 30 days apart. It seems odd that that hasn't ever happened before. Then maybe she could give us a better idea of our wait.

She did say that we should definitely go ahead and get our 1-600 before April 1^st so that we could avoid a complicated new form and stress. And that we would DEFINITELY get our baby before 18 months! That made me very happy!!! So we made our appt for this Friday March 14, 2008! That’s $670 for a piece of paper HA! It is called an Orphan Petition. And $80 each for FBI fingerprints. For a whopping total of $830 gone to a good cause for a second time!

Rescued Lion Hugs His Rescuer

I just thought this was cool because you don't get much attention from Colombia in the national news that is positive or just fun. I have seen several families from our agency get children from Cali. If we travel there for our little one, I sure hope we get to visit the cats at the zoo!

http://www.telestereo.com/Archivos/video.html

Social Worker Change/Fun Date

This was a big shock to get in the mail that we are to get a new social worker. The CHI restructuring happened to make MO separate from KS. So our social worker has to be the MO Social Worker in St. Louis named Nichole Deal. We will no longer have Denise as our SW. I was really bummed because she is the only person we know and talk to if we have a question or concern. She is a wealth of information and she is only 30 minutes away (10 min away from Darryl’s work). After starting to cry, not knowing how this would affect us being 4 hours away from Nichole, Darryl tried to reassure me that it was all in God’s design.

On Sat the 23^rd, we had a really nice date with Paul and Christina Sinclair who are also adopting a baby from Colombia through CHI. They are about 4-5 months behind us in their adoption process. We got even better assurance from them about this change in SW. We all hope the transition will be smooth and not add to our waiting time frame and that Nichole might be even better than we can imagine. Plus we learned that Paul and Chris typically ask Julie herself if they have any questions or concerns as she is the director of the Colombia program and can give us the most current and precise answers. I will definitely talk to her first next time I have a need!

Another Waterglobe

I got another water globe.....gotta kick a field goal in this one. It's much more technically challenging. Jeff almost broke 3 of my fingers trying to kick one today. My fault for trying to point at something on the globe while he was going for a field goal.

Health Warning - Never Swallow Your Chewing Gum

Moni emailed this to me.....couldn't resist posting it. Simply tragic.

B-ball Waterglobe

I got this waterglobe from my manager. You can't call it a snow globe since there isn't any "snow" in it. There is actually a trick to get the ball in the basket. I've gotten better at it, but I still have a pretty low shooting percentage. I like to watch people come into my cube and try it for the first time. It's always a fun show.

Just kool your crackers buddy!

Just kool your crackers buddy!, originally uploaded by jeffisageek.

I happened to put some crackers next to my fan so Jeff took this picture. It just looked funny. I think "Just cool your crackers, Buddy!" will become the next big saying.

Poor New York City

Moni and I went to see Cloverfield this weekend. Jeff just told me it broke the money making record for any movie in January. If you haven't seen the movie yet, New York City (Manhattan) really takes a beating. Last month we went to see "I am Legend". In that movie, Will Smith is the only living human in New York City due to a rabies-type of disease that ran a muck. I got to thinking that New York City is an easy target for catastrophic events in real life and in the movies and it made me feel somewhat bad for disliking the Yankees so much and really wanting the Packers to beat the Giants last night. So, for now, I'm giving the Big Apple a break.....Congrats to the Giants. I hope this helps heal any wounds caused by the movie industry.

I've Created a Blog-ster

I fell asleep last night to the "clackity-clackity" of my wife feverishly typing at the computer. Earlier in the night I had showed her how to post things on this site. Through this whole adoption process she had been blogging sans the web. She has been diligent in putting her thoughts down in Word for the past several years so I think she is the real blogger in family. Now that she knows her way around a little bit, this could be fun. For instance, she and I discussed last night putting more text under the "Wait Ticker". She wanted to FULLY explain that this ticker is just the wait time after we submitted our dossier. So I obliged her and typed a paragraph of info. She was happy with it, but I didn't like it, since it pushed the actual posts further down the page. I wanted the posts to stay higher on the page. So while she went into the kitchen, I chopped the verbiage down to one sentence. My conscious got to me and I told her about it....she wasn't too whoopy about it, but trusted (or so I thought) my judgment on the whole thing. Well, I log in this morning and what do I see? My "blogging-newbie" wife had gone in and added back some verbiage. My first instinct was to say, "Hey, she changed it on me." Then I thought, "Wow, she did that on her own. I'm so proud of her" Don't let her fool you.....she's more computer savvy than she leads on. Way to go Moni!!! Now, I will just go back in and change it back to one sentence, the way I like it. Stay tuned....I see a battle of wills on the horizon.

Jacq

I spoke to a new friend via email, who was approved in Oct 05. That’s only one month before us, so we could travel together. She said that she spoke with Julie (our Colombian program director in Oregon) who said that their wait may be like Nov/Dec. She said of course that they are 4 months away from a gal who just got her referral, but that it is not in real time for the next family, so it’s hard to say when our date will occur. That puts our wait at about 37-38months. Wow that’s long labor! No one can say that we didn’t put in our labor for this baby, it was just mental and spiritual, not so much physical. But at least knowing a general time line is somewhat helpful.

Adoption Update

I've grown leery of posting date-related topics about our adoption. We get asked a lot about how much longer until we go to pick up the baby, and frankly that is completely in God's hands. However, I know that answer doesn't suffice for some people.....they want dates. We recently found out that a couple ahead of us in the Colombian group got a referral for an infant girl. Their wait was 30 months, so we are thinking that if we go at our 30 month mark, it will be May of this year. When I found that out, I was giddy. Still, things can change, so it might still be November just as easily. The cool thing about this whole process is the fact that we know that God has prepared the exact child for us and has prepared US for a specific child. I feel like we might finally be on the downhill side of this wait.

We were at an adoption meeting last night where the topic was "Adopting older children and/or special needs children". I told Monica we're going to stop going to these meetings because they always sway our hearts and minds. After the last meeting we went to, we saw a great sibling group, so we came home considering adopting 3-5 children. Last night we were seriously considering adopting an older child or one with special needs. They always give us a lot to think about every time we go and it's always good to keep options open. However, we've decided that until God puts overwhelming pressure on us both to do that, we are going to stay the course of adopting 1 infant. That's all for now.

FAQ's About Our Adoption

Q: Why are you adopting in the first place?
A: We are adopting due to the fact that Monica has Endometriosis and PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) The combination of these two things has made natural fertility virtually nonexistent. We made some tries at conceiving a child through Artificial Insemination which did not work. We were on the verge of attempting In vitro, however the thought of spending money on less than a 50/50 chance of pregnancy did not seem like a good choice for us. We had actually decided to adopt prior to knowing all of these things in the first place. We believe that God had placed it in our hearts to adopt really before we knew what was happening. He gave us a foreign exchange student in 2002 who became a son to us. We never imagined that we could love someone else's child like we love our Turkish son, Mali. We came to realize that adoption was not only an option but was THE option that God had prepared for us.

Q: Why are you adopting internationally verses domestically?
A: We get this question a lot. The simple fact of the matter is, we didn't want to deal with the possibility of having a child pulled away from us. A biological parent in Missouri has 12 months to fight the relinquishment of their child. This would be devastating not only to us, but to the child we brought into our home. This is not something we considered lightly. We know there are children in this country that need good parents and homes, however, it is not the right choice for us at this point in our lives.

Q: Why are you adopting from Colombia?
A: We get this question a lot too. We knew we wanted to go to Latin America for our adoption because of Monica's Hispanic heritage. Our hope was to go to Mexico first since that is where her family is from, however, after research, we found out that Mexico was not open to adoption through American adoption agencies. We could, if we wanted, hire our own attorney and go to Mexico and try to adopt privately. Frankly, we wouldn't know the first thing about this...we needed an agency to hold our hands through the process. So we found Children's Hope International, a Christian agency, which led us to Colombia. The blessings of Colombia are that the children are in foster homes (not orphanages), typically healthy and it is one of the least expensive countries from which to adopt.

Q: What are the "specifics" of your child?
A: We have asked for either a healthy boy or girl from age 0-2 years old. Statistically, the odds are very high that we will get a boy due to the fact that about 80% of people who adopt, choose a girl. Therefore, since we did not specify gender, most likely we will get a boy. As far as age goes, most of the children coming home from Colombia have been between the ages of 9 and 14 months old. We plan on getting only one child unless twins are presented to us.

New Year's Resolution

I know we are 14 days into the new year, however, I have decided to make a resolution. I, Darryl Bond, resolve to try (to try) harder at posting new stuff on here. I went with a new look and gave Monica some training this weekend on keeping up the site too. She has a lot of good adoption info that she has logged over the past couple of years that we (SHE) will put out here.

Our Adoption Timeline

Nov 18, 04 Walked into CHI to check it out
Jan, 05 Decided on CHI and applied
Jan, 05 Dossier Paperwork begun
Jan 3, 05 Joint Home Study mtg with Denise
Feb 24, 05 Personal Home Study mtg (Monica)
Mar 3, 05 Personal Home Study mtg (Darryl)
Mar 7, 05 Home Study Visit to our Home
Mar 15, 05 INS Orphan Petition and Fingerprints aka I-600A and I71H
Mar 23, 05 Psych Evaluation
Apr 15, 05 Apostilling Day
Apr 20, 05 friend lets us know about baby being offered to us for adoption
Apr 23, 05 Economic Capacity Letter D came from Minnesota
May 2, 05 Dossier, Photo Album, and $750 translation fee given to CHI
May 13, 05 Got Colombia Travel Packet
July 11, 05 1^st CHI mtg at NKC Community Center
July 22, 05 St. Louis CHI Picnic
Sept 7, 05 Dossier Glitch: explain infertility resolution and lost med papers
Nov 2, 05 Approved by Colombia
Dec 15, 05 Suzi offers us her grand baby
Jan 15, 06 Endo discovery
July 9, 06 Surgery without Lupron
Aug 10, 06 Received a Grant from Shaohanna's Hope (Stephen Curtis Chapman)
Oct 9, 06 Surgery with Lupron
May, 07 Polyp discovered
July 10, 07 Polyp surgery
Aug 8, 07 Spanish letter from Colombia about expired I-600A, and found out we are 5^th on the list at our local agency for a baby!
June 07 Zaffts get Miguel excitement!
Nov 07 considering sibling group of 3
Nov 29-Dec 14, 07 another friend offers us her baby
Dec 25, 07 Baby born notice and gone from our hands and in the state system
Also the day we decided on one child from Colombia at a time
Dec 26, 07 Visit with Denise who recommended we update our paperwork
Dec 27, 07 Work on baby room…finish floor, add glider, shelf and baby toys
Jan 2, 08 Home Study papers handed in, next on the baby list at our agency
Jan 5, 08 CHI Yahoo baby database set up
Jan 6, 08 Closets fixed in baby room
Jan 7, 08 Home Study Update Finished by Denise
Feb 18, 08 Social Worker Change to St. Louis
Mar 3, 08 find out the I-600 is changing April 1st to the more difficult 1-800
Mar 14, 08 Renewed our I-600A and I-71H for $830
Mar 19, 08 Hague Accreditation Pending or CHI
Mar 24, 08 Found out we personally are in the clear with Hague
Apr 8, 08 Blog is out to adoption community
June 23, 08 Saw our children in the Noticeria
July 2, 08 Changed our preference to older children
Sept 6, 08 Church Shower
Sept 17, 08 School Shower
Sept 23, 08 Approved for older children
Oct 10, 08 Assignment Official (Kids Officially Ours)
Nov 6, 08 Got our Visas to Travel
Nov 17, 08 Traveling to Colombia
Nov 19, 08 Gotcha Day

Homestudy Updated Officially

Yeah, one more step closer! Now praying for the money for the next paperwork.

Denise said the Homestudy Update was done

It wasn’t, as she got distracted by another family with questions. So he has to go back to get it tomorrow at lunch time. Truly there is no rush as we do not have the $670 for the I600A application along with the $80 each for fingerprints for a new I171H. That’s: $830 needed asap!

New Closets in about an Hour!

Today Darryl set up 2 closets in the baby room with these great shelves and extra rods! The left closet is for hanging clothing and the right is for basket storage of towels, socks, diapers, wipes, toys, lotions, underwear…etc. It looks so awesome and functional and a space maker!!! I am really proud of Darryl! Of course the kit cost $90. But it was well worth it to get the most out of the tiny space available.

CHI Yahoo Group of Waiters for 2008!

I sent an email out asking about details of these people across the US waiting for babies from Colombia this year. We may travel with some of them. This is getting exciting and close! We are less than a year away from our baby!!!

CHI YAHOO GROUP for BABIES 2008 (all around the US)

Mom’s name date approved region home

Kim June 05 (0-2 E) Villavicencio NY, NY

Nicole Arp July 05 (0-1 E) Casa Grande, AZ

Elizabeth Chambers Aug 05 Cudinamarca St. Louis, MO

Julia Aug 05 (0-2 girl)

Aimee Sept 05 (0-2 E) Chicago, IL

Jacquelyn Yelton Oct 05 (0-2 girl)

Monica Bond Nov 05 (0-2 either) KC, MO

Erika Kohn Dec 05 (0-1 E) Portland, OR

Debi Adelman ? (0-3) San Diego, CA

Sheila Derr ? (0-2) Harrisburg, PA

A Letter from Linda..so SWEET!

Monica,

I'm glad 2008 is here! I pray it is a good year for the both of you (and your little one). I've been praying for you two and your soon to be family for a few years now - I can't think of two more perfect people to be parents. I know you are full of Love and the waiting is the hardest part. I know God does things in his own time and my prayers always include an acceptance of his will until that time arrives. "Belief" is an important part of faith, it is more than hope...and I thank him now for the joy you are about to receive!! Well enough of my rambling...Madi has caught my cold and her little voice is barking for some attention. Take care, I'll see you Sunday. Love, Linda

This is our year! Homestudy Update

Today I met with Denise to give her the paperwork we had finished…which is everything except the police record because Parkville said we were not in their district and Platte City only has one lady Sergeant Adamek who is on vacation. So hopefully we could do it on Friday the 4th. Then we will have to have $830 to finish the last 2 papers…I600 and I71H. Ouch!!

Denise also mentioned that the Windslows have pulled out of the running because she is pregnant for the 2^nd time since they started their Colombian adoption. So WE ARE NEXT!! I wonder where the Wagner-Halls are in comparison to us? I will have to find out.

Baby Room Work

Today we decided to put down the transition pieces to the closets that I got for Christmas from Darryl. I was so excited to get the piece…it costs $28 bucks! Anyway, we finished it and thus finished the room flooring after a long time! It looks gorgeous! I was so excited to clean out all the sawdust on the floors and walls so that we could put in the bookshelf, the glider chair, and all the baby stuff from the other room that Darryl’s mom and Rachel gave us. Now I can’t wait to finish the cubby shelf and get the crib and do a few wall decorations and get curtains! Still much to do, but plenty of time. I guess I am just grateful that we didn’t start this 3 years ago. I’ve heard horror stories about parents preparing too soon and having to dust in tears month after month or covering everything with sheets and staring at a ghostly baby room for years. That would be too sad!!!

Updating our Adoption Paperwork

Denise gave us the list of paperwork needed to update our homestudy:

1. Police report saying no record

2. CAN reports saying no child abuse record

3. Self report saying physical/mental health and major life changes (D’s new job)

4. Financial report

5. 1040 copy (2pages)

6. $200 to update

LATER

1. I171H finger prints ($80 each)

2. I-600 A form orphan petition $670

LATER YET

1. medical report from doctor 6 mo prior or less

Darryl and I Look Honestly into Our Future and Choose 1

It was a tough decision night that we needed for a few weeks now. We discussed it and although our hearts say more than one child, we do not feel that we need to rush it and get them all at once. God will provide the money for our family one at a time, in His time! We want to give each child a good chance in life to be provided for…via insurance, health, room, food, and a mom who can afford to stay home. We believe we can do this with ease for one child right now. Darryl seemed so relieved with this decision and I am totally content and satisfied. I want to give this child my full attention and love and provisions. God is good! We want all the glory to go to Him!

Baby Born Notice

I called Mom about the pregnant lady and we found out that she had the baby Dec 10^th ish and it was a boy and that he is in a good home. The state took her baby at the hospital due to her history. The baby then was placed in an adoptive family’s home, the next family on the waiting list domestically. God closed the doors and we are totally at peace. We will move forward with our adoption and not look back.

Found out about Friend of a Friend's Baby

Mom’s friend Felipe is now living with another lady (Dorothy) who has a friend who is 7 and ½ months pregnant. This lady said to mom’s friend that she wants to give the baby away and will sign anything to do this. Mom just gave me the phone number of Dorothy and said to call her. I did call her a day later, as the whole thing was just a surprise to me. She said that the mom was “loose” and that the man who impregnated her was a Mexican and went back to Mexico the first week of December. She said the pregnant mom promised that she was not smoking or doing drugs or alcohol during the pregnancy, but that she did not have a home. She stays with the different guys that she sleeps with. Dorothy said that she would take the baby, but only out of necessity as her adopted children are grown (23yrs old). Dorothy also said that the pregnant lady has 3 other children who all went to her aunt for care, as the state will not allow her to keep her children. I asked for her aunt’s phone number so I could ask her personally if she would be taking the new baby. Dorothy said that she would find the number and that I should call her next week. I tried calling all week but her phone kept saying out of reach or turned off. I figured God was saying that this is not for us. We, Darryl and I decided that we would walk through open doors, but I didn’t want to be amiss from just not pursuing it.

We Teach about Intimacy as a Couple

We get the privilege of teaching at church today about Intimacy and the impact that it has on a marriage. It's not only a challenging subject to talk about, but it is also the first time we have every spoken to the whole congregation like this. I pray for it to be fruitful and well taken and presented with wisdom and understanding. We had a lot of fun putting the message together and tried to make it lighthearted and sincere. We sure got a lot of ribbing about it so far! Thanks Mary Ann and Scott!

Denise Questions

1. How much more to get siblings? ($1500 ea child)

2. How much longer would that make the wait? (6-9mo for 3 children and 12-15 for 2 children if we asked for 6 years old and younger…5yrs old and younger is all 3 years in waiting.)

3. What is the process? (redo some paperwork and a letter explaining this change, and a homestudy update which we need anyway)

There were so many variables emotionally and physically and financially. We both have the heart for multiple children, but not the financial ability. We have to think smart about this. We would need another car, bunk beds, triple everything. We also considered the psychological needs of older children in foster care. We spent days considering this option very heavily.

Darryl's Big Question

We just came from a CHI mtg where the Duewel’s just showed off their 4 beautiful new siblings from Colombia. They are 5,4,3, and 2!!! They were adorable and so tiny for their ages. That struck me the most when I saw them together. None of them were the sizes of my preschoolers! And they seemed enamored with me, which I think was due to my “look” as I look Hispanic. They all kissed me and no one else in the building that night! I think Darryl was in awe. As we got into the car that night to head home from Overland Park, he said, “Moni, what do you think about a sibling group?” The question was a BiG one!!! I wanted more of a family than just one, but I also wanted to do one at a time, but we don’t really have the money to go back and I knew that to be so true! So after some initial shock and lots of talking on the way home, I was still undecided. My initial response was yes. We decided to call Denise Weller and get some questions answered first and maybe that would help our decision making.

Psalm 23

Plague of Beetles

I came home from work yesterday to our annual plague of Pumpkin Beetles. They look like Lady Bugs, but they aren't. I was Googling them last night but couldn't find out much about them in the way of controlling them. The only thing I could find was that they were preparing for winter by seeking the warmth of the indoors. WELL, NO MORE!!!! The vacuum was brought out immediately to thin out their ranks a little, but I was demoralized quickly. As I sucked them up coming through the back door, 5 more would come through the front door. It was a war of attrition that I lost, mainly because I wanted to stop and eat some dinner. If anyone has any info on these little guys, send it my way.