Final Thoughts

Well, here we are back in Wisconsin. It still seems so weird to be home, and I am definitely not used to doing all of our own cooking and cleaning:) Our days are so busy with me taking care of our two beautiful kids and Mark back to work. I decided that I must sit down tonight and try to wrap up our blog (although Mark says we should keep it going, we'll see).
Our final days in Bogota were spent at Hotel Paris. It was a nice place with good food, but we were missing the staff at Las Palmas and actually went back to say our good-byes a couple times. Below is a picture of us with our Danish friends (Allan, Sidsel, and Jonathan) as they were leaving to return to Denmark. Also included in the picture is another couple from Denmark who had just arrived a day earlier, and our dear friend Jeaneth, the manager at Las Palmas along with Maritza and Luciola. We had been through the ritual of standing in front of the guest house waving good-bye so many times and this would be the last time. So many good-byes that were always both happy and sad.

Below is a picture of our room at Hotel Paris. We never really unpacked completely because we would be leaving soon.

Here we are the happy family posing for a picture.

I love this picture of Dana. "Whatever you think I may have done, I didn't do it."

So when we were picked up early Sunday morning by Santiago and Louisa to fly home, we left this city that had been our home for 8 weeks. Someday we know we will return to take Dana to her country of birth, but it was sad to leave. Colombia is now a part of who we are because it is a part of this incredible girl named Dana Valentina. Being Colombian is something we want her to always, always be proud of. We certainly had our set-backs and frustrations during our stay (don't get me wrong), but when it all comes down to it we saw so many beautiful and interesting places, we learned so much, we met some of the nicest people we will ever meet, and we were united with our precious child. God has truly blessed us. And this adoption journey has once again led us to the child that was put on this earth to be with us. I have to share what Andy said one night in all his 4-year-old wisdom: He was explaining to us that there are two heavens. One where people go when they die, and the other where babies wait until they are adopted. Andy has always thought that he came straight from heaven, and I really think that he may be onto something. With adoption, you cannot help but feel certain that God has a hand in it. It is so hard to put into words, but you can feel it in your heart.

So now our job is to live our lives fully and raise our children to be good people. It is really that simple.

One final picture of Dana Valentina McCoy happy in her home with her forever family:

We're home!

Hi everyone,

Sorry it has taken me a day to get this out, but most of you may know that we are home safe and sound.

Our flight on Sunday was delayed by 5 hours, so we learned when we arrived at the Bogota airport at 6:30 a.m. So when we finally got off to Atlanta around 1, we were excited. Once in Atlanta around 7:30, we made the US CIS just fine, and had a funny agent helping us process Dana's paperwork. Delta ended up putting us up for the night at a nearby hotel, after a little convincing that we didn't want to fly further to Milwaukee and rent a car to drive the rest of the way home. Dana was at the end of her rope as we all were. So by the time we got to the hotel and had a snack it was about 11:30 p.m. We were back on the 4:30 a.m. shuttle on Monday morning and our connecting flights were just fine. So back to beautiful Madison at about 9:45 a.m. yesterday!

Here we are at the airport in Madison. Wayne and Connie Weiss met us there and brought our car which was all ready with Dana's car seat.

I can't tell you what a surreal experience it is to be home after all of the time away. We enjoyed our time and experiences in Bogota over the last two months, and being away makes you realize how good we have it in the US, and especially here in the midwest. We are truly blessed with the children that we have and the place that we live in.

We will post some more pictures in the next day or so. We feel a little overwhelmed with laundry, shopping for groceries/baby stuff, etc. It will all come together in the next few days.

Dana is adjusting well to her new home. There have been a couple of times when she has gotten worked up as she isn't used to her bedroom yet, but that will come with time.

Nana Jan and Aunt Cathy came down to meet Dana today. She couldn't wait until the weekend, and I can't blame her. I got the first sight of her on video, and to see Jan's face was priceless. Lots of love and smiles back and forth. Dana is looking forward to meeting her extended family and friends in the next couple of weeks.

Nana Jan finally gets her lips on those sweet baby cheeks after her long wait.

Thanks for all of your prayers and support on our journey to bring Dana home.

Love

It's official...

I picked up Dana's Visa and USCIS paperwork this afternoon. We are all done and just waiting for the flight on Sunday. What a relief!

From what I read on the information that was given by the US Embassy, that Dana will automatically become a US Citizen within 45 days, when we get the letter from the USCIS. I was assuming that we would need to do more paperwork when we return stateside, but the I-600 is it.

So thanks to all for your prayers and support during our stay and waiting period. Get ready to kiss, squeeze, hug, spoil, etc our little Dana when we get home! She is ready to come and meet her family and friends!

Love to all.

Change of hotels, and US Embassy visit

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you know that we are doing fine.

Tuesday night was a challenging night for us. At about 9ish we were upstairs playing Phase 10 with Allan and Sidsel, when we started seeing lights going on and off-flickering for a few minutes, some lights were glowing super bright, and then a very loud boom coming from downstairs and grinding noise. Shortly after, we heard the Belgium family yell their word for fire in French, then thankfully they yelled it in English, as well. We never moved so fast to grab Andy and Dana out of bed. Our hearts were thumping, that is for sure.

It turns out that there was an electrical short/fire, and a power surge into the TV in the main living room that set it on fire. Also the electrical box in the garage was sparking pretty badly as well. Luckily the Belgium husband grabbed the fire extinguisher and put out the TV, and Luciola used a broom handle to shut off the main power. The fire extinguisher dust, as we saw the next morning, coated everything in the whole hotel. One of the Belgium men touched a metal table and received an electric jolt, so the electricity was "loose in the house" which was especially scary.

After a few frantic calls by Luciola to the fire department, the electric company, and the owner of the hotel everything was all situated. Things are so different here, as the fire department said that since the fire was out they didn't need to come. In the US I think we would had had at least a crew come and check it out.

When the owner came he wasn't appologetic at all, and started in on the excuses, and to have us just go back to bed, as he would have one of his employees come over and check it out. As you can imagine, we didn't trust that our safety was in his first interest, as he didn't call in an electrician but had one of his employees come over to make sure the main electric was off. So the husbands took 2 hour shifts to stay awake during the night just in case there was any fires in the walls.

In the morning he had a couple of his other employees over, and we heard every excuse in the book other than he was cheap and didn't have the proper wiring in place. The owner told us it was the electric wires from the street (not anything wrong interally). His wife, the agency rep for the Danish families, told us that it was the TV. They should have gotten their stories straight. One thing for sure that they were straight on though was that it wasn't their fault:) It was readily apparent as the fuse box was pretty shorted and burned out and that the fuses were laying on the floor all burned up, that it was internal.

So after our morning appt at the US Embassy to apply for Dana's Visa, which was approved by the way and I pick it up today at 3:30 (yeah), we decided to move to Hotel Paris. It is about a mile from Las Palmas and so far we have really been impressed. Below is a picture of Dana proudly displaying her American Visa. Below that is a picture of the outside of Hotel Paris where we are now staying.

As far as Las Palmas goes, I could never recommend this to anyone traveling here. The owner has demonstrated again and again that his profits are paramount to the safety and satisfaction of his guests. All 3 of the 4 families moved out (the one remaining flies home today so they didn't want to move for 1 night), which will send a message to Peter the owner. We were sad that we missed the exchange of words between the owner and the Belgium wife. I guess she was agressive and at one point told him that he didn't care about people, that he only cared about money. You go, girl. Anyhow, if you are encouraged to stay at Las Palmas please talk to your representative to stay elsewhere. The staff at Las Palmas are absolutely wonderful and it was very emotional to say good-bye to them. We are already missing them today. But the owner and his "dynasty" are absolutely ridiculous.

Last night we went out for dinner at a revolving restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. We along with Allan, Sidsel, and Jonathan took Jeaneth, the manager at Las Palmas, out for dinner. She is just a doll, and we are going to miss her so much. The food and the view at the restaurant were incredible.

Anyway, we are happy to be at Hotel Paris for our last 4 nights. The food this morning at breakfast was wonderful, and we have met another couple here adopting their daughter. They live in Michigan. So it will be nice to hang out with them for a couple of days. Tiffany, Tim, and Kelsey are pictured below. Such a nice family. Kelsey is just a few weeks older than Dana and was adopted from Los Posingos.

We fly home on Sunday!!!!!!!

New birth certificate and Colombian passport!

Hi all,

Not much to report on the weekend. We just mainly hung around the hotel and took some small walks. On Saturday night we went to Archie's Pizza, where Andy got to make his own pizza again. We went with Jan, Hella, Casper, and Katrine as their trip to Cartegena was delayed by a day. The food was excellent and it was great to get out of the hotel and not eat their food.

Yesterday (Monday) was Andy's adoption day anniversary, and we celebrate every year by getting ice cream. So we walked to Unicentro Mall and went to Crepes and Waffles, and had lunch. Allan, Sidsel, and Johnathan joined us and we had a nice time. It is a really great restaurant, and cool in concept as well, as they only employ single women who have children. Of course in the US this would be discriminatory, but here there isn't any problem employing all women, and women who need good paying jobs to support their children. The food and ice cream is great as well!

Today was a good day, but a long one. We got the call from Cecilia last night that our 5 day waiting period expired at 5 p.m. last night, and that our attorney would be retreiving the Sentencia this morning. I was informed by her to sit tight in the morning and that she would come and pick me up when she got the call from the attorney.

I got that call at about 9:45 and she was at Las Palmas at 10 to pick me up. We didn't have our normal driver Santiago, but a nice older gentleman that she has used in the past. He looked like he was about 90 but when I asked him his age he said 68 (Jodie thinks he is lying about his age). Anyhow after running a red light or two, and praying a few times for our safety we made it to the Notaria downtown safe and sound.

If you read our prior blog about last week and signing the Sentencia at the Court #20, the notaria was just about the same. Kind of a chaotic experience. Anyhow after waiting some time to get to the 1 clerk on duty, she just couldn't understand why Jodie's passport only had her married name, as all the Colombian people use two surnames, fathers first and then mothers second. So Jodie's name would be Jodie Suzanne McCoy Krekowski. Anyhow after about 20 minutes of bantering between Cecilia, the attorney's assistant, and the clerk they printed out a new birth certificate. Yahoo (or so we thought for the moment).

At about 11:45 we picked up Jodie and the kids and went to the passport office, which was only about 6 blocks from the hotel here. With the traffic it would have been easier to walk. Anyhow, we went in and got Dana's passport photo's which turned out great, and I got in line. My number was 400, and they were in the 280's when I got there. I thought that this is going to be a long time to get my number called, but when Cecilia and Jodie joined us, she marched us right up to the next clerk and had them handle the paperwork. Unfortunately, the clerk in the Notaria that was so helpful forgot to put Jodie's maiden name in parenthesis on her line, so we had to go and discuss this with the Manager. She told us that we needed to return to the Notaria and get this fixed.

So off we went. We of course got there when the clerk that helped us was at lunch, and had to wait another 45 minutes to get to the window. Once there, the supervisor on duty didn't know what to do either, so she cut off the official stickers that are part of the birth certificate, and then made the 7 copies of a changed original, and then pasted (literally) the stickers back onto the copies. I don't think this would have flown back at home, as it was obviously not the original and the sticker was tampered with, but she assured us and gave us her phone number if the passport office had questions.

So again off we went back to the passport office. Jodie took Andy back to the hotel since it was about 2 then and he was pretty hungry for lunch (so was I), and I took Dana with Cecila back in. Our driver, while Cecilia was helping Jodie out, moved the car forward as we think he thought we were all out, and rolled over Cecilia's tip of her big toe. Boy was she pissed, and she let him have it when we were in the office waiting. Anyhow the second time was the charm and we walked out of there at about 2:45 with Dana's Colombian passport.

The driver dropped us off back at the hotel at about 3ish, I scrounged some food for lunch, Dana had a bottle, and he was back at 3:30 for the Dr. visit. That went just fine and no issues there. Dana is in great health, per the Dr. Back to the hotel we went and just in time for dinner at 6! A long and productive day!

So tomorrow at 9:30 is our US Embassy trip for the VISA. I believe that we will pick that up on Thursday, and then it is pack up and wait for Sunday's flight! As much as we want to come home on Friday or Saturday, it will be nice to have a down day to get packed up and do some last minute souvenier shopping for Dana's gotcha days in the future. We have a suitcase full of gifts and things already. I think Jodie is secretly hoping that I will donate my clothes to charity so she will have more suitcase room! ;)

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend! We were there in spirit.

Here are some random pictures.

Dana and Moses (pr. Moises in French) making eyes at each other. Moses is 1 and is being adopted by a Belgium couple. They also have a 4 year old adopted son Juan, who is from Colombia.

Bath time. Dana is always on the go with her legs and feet!

When Are We Coming Home?

We sure hope you never tire of looking at cute pictures of our kids. If you think they are adorable in pictures, you should see them in real life.

We just wanted to give you an update of where we are at in the process and when we plan on coming home. We found out from Cecelia on Thursday that our Sentencia has been signed by the two additional people (the Defender of Minors and the Procuradoro) who needed to sign it. (These signatures have been an extra requirement due to the fact that we had a judge working the case who is not too keen on adoption.) You would think that this would mean that we are ready to move along to the next steps in the process, but nope. The Procuradoro has 5 days to sign and apparently signed but has decided that we will wait the full 5 days before our lawyer can pick up the papers. So it will be late in the day on Monday the 7th that our lawyer should pick up our Sentencia. The fact that everything is signed but we still need to wait has been hard for us to understand. Another confusing thing has been that a Danish couple also had a slow court like ours that required these additional signatures but the sequence of who signed first, second, etc. was different from our process. You just really have to shake your head. So, it looks like we should be able to start working on the final requirements needed to take Dana home next Tuesday. As of right now, we have a return flight scheduled for Sunday the 13th. We tried to get a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday flight but the airline didn't have any seats available with adoption fares or they were booked. We would have to pay an additional $5000 if we do not get the adoption fare. If anyone has an extra $5000 to get us home a couple days earlier that would be super. (Just kidding.) So if things go smoothly from here on out, we will be back in Stoughton a week from tomorrow. That will put us at a grand total of 8 weeks here. Longer than we expected, but you know, we have a beautiful daughter now and she is ours no matter where we are. We are fortunate that we have been with Dana and feel sorry for our family and friends who have had to wait so long to get your hands on those cheeks:)

So we have been keeping ourselves busy. A few days ago we went to an Emerald Shop owned by an American guy named Freddie. He sent a driver to pick us up, then we arrived at what appeared to be just a house but it was really a jewelry shop in disguise (sounds mysterious, doesn't it?) Freddie had beautiful emerald pieces that he made himself. Andy picked out a ring for me that was $28,000. My boy has great taste. Maybe he can get it for me when he grows up and gets a job. I told them that we could buy it if we sold our car. We did purchase some beautiful emerald stud earrings for Dana though. We will give them to her when she gets older and gets her ears pierced. Please don't tell her and ruin the surprise:)

Below is a picture of Freddie and his mother. We really enjoyed talking with them and ended up talking politics. A lot of Colombians like to talk politics with us.

Here is a picture of some of the emerald jewelry.

Here is a picture of Daddy looking a little nervous because I tried on the $28,000 ring and liked it, and Dana looking all happy because she thinks we bought her something.

Otherwise, we have been taking walks and hanging out at Las Palmas. Yesterday we walked with Allan, Sidsel, and Jonathan to Zona Rosa where we had lunch at good Mexican restaurant. It sure beats the food here at Las Palmas. Tonight, we, along with Allan, Sidsel, and Jonathan, are taking Jeaneth the manager here at Las Palmas out for dinner at a revolving restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center here in Bogota. We hear that it is a nice restaurant that serves seafood.

This is a picture of our big girl sitting up all nice and proud in a highchair.

As I think we have mentioned before, Colombia is known for their exportation of flowers. You can find flowers for sale right on the streets. We bought Marissa (one of the housekeepers here) a bouquet of flowers when she got out of the hospital. I can't remember the kind of flower but they only cost about $1. A Danish family bought 24 roses that cost them $5. Very inexpensive. The US dollar has not been real good while we have been here and most things are pretty expensive for us, but flowers are very cheap.

Well, hope all is well back in the states. I'm sure you have all heard about the 15 hostages that were rescued from the jungles of Colombia where they were being held by the FARC. 3 of them are Americans. This, of course, is big news down here, and Colombians seem very happy and proud that this has happened. The government has been working hard to weaken the FARC but it has not been easy. They have a lot of money that they make by doing such things such as selling drugs, getting ransoms for hostages, and apparently the nutty leader of Venezuela, Chevez, also contributes money to them. They still have hundreds of prisoners that they are holding, and we hope that they will soon be released too.

Los Posingos Mother's Home

It is definitely time for an update, isn't it?



Yesterday, I went with another Danish family to the Los Posingos Mother's Home here in Bogota, while Mark stayed home with the kids. The Danish family (pictured below) has two teenage children who were adopted through the orphanage called Los Posingos. They were going to visit the mother's home where birthmothers can stay and get support as they prepare to have their babies, and they were nice enough to ask if I would like to come with them. CRAN, the orphanage that we adopted Dana through, also has a home for expecting mothers that we were invited to visit, but I thought it would be nice to go with other people. The mother's home turned out to be not too far from Las Palmas.



Below is a picture of the outside of the home with Jan, Helle, Casper, and Katrine in front.





Going to this mother's home was one of the most worthwhile things that I did while we have been here. It was a very emotional meeting and there was not a dry eye in the place. A lady who works for Los Posingos met us there to be our translator and to answer our questions. There was also a social worker that works for Los Posingos there. Currently there are 10 mothers staying at the house, they told us that it can hold up to 20-25 women. While they are staying at Los Posingos, they receive support through counseling and they can take classes like knitting, using the internet, etc. Many of the women have not told their families that they are pregnant or their families are not in support of their decision to place their baby up for adoption. Needless to say, they are very alone in their situations and Los Posingos offers them the care they need. One of the things that impressed me the most is that they don't try to push them to choose adoption but offer it as an option. The mothers can choose to keep their babies if that is what they decide is best. Some of the mothers we talked with had not decided yet what they would do. I was very happy to see such a caring and safe place for these women.

We all sat in a circle in a room together and asked questions of each other. There is so much I could share about our discussion, but I will only share the things that stick out in my mind the most. One of the birthmoms had her baby about 1 1/2 week earlier; one was actually having labor pains; the rest were pretty far along. All of them were very teary and obviously struggling with their situations. It was really special to be there with a family that had 2 teenage adopted children from Los Posingos. Katrine was especially so articulate and so honest about her feelings. The birthmothers wanted to know if Casper and Katrine were happy and what feelings they had toward their birthmothers. Katrine told them how happy she was with her life and how thankful she was that her birthmom made the decision that she did. Katrine suggested strongly to them that if they decided to choose adoption for their babies that they not stall the process and do things fully right away so that the babies would be placed at a young age. (Katrine was 13 months old when she was adopted.)

I passed around a picture of Dana and Andy for them to see. They were curious as to why we chose to adopt from Colombia. I told them how beautiful we think the children are and that we felt that Colombia had a stable adoption program and we liked that we could adopt a young baby. It was funny because one of the women had to ask again if Dana was Colombian. (Many people have been surprised that she is Colombian. She doesn't look quite as Colombian as most of the babies around here.) They seemed really touched that we decided to keep the name that Dana's birthmom gave her. They wanted to know why. I told them that we really liked the name for one thing and that we thought it would always be a special gift that we could give Dana from her birthmom. Tears really started flowing when I told them how I felt about Andy and Dana's birthmoms. It was hard for me to even get my words out. I told them that there is not a day that goes by that I don't think of my kids' birthmoms and that I thank God for them and ask Him to bless them each night in my prayers. I told them that the words thank you would never be enough to express how grateful I am to them. I said that they are never, ever forgotten. I don't have the opportunity to tell Dana and Andy's birthmoms these things, so it was important to me that I could tell all of them, and in a way it felt like I was telling Dana and Andy's birthmoms. It is so hard to imagine what they are even going through and seeing their pain was enough to break your heart.

It was interesting to hear them say that they prefer that their babies be adopted by foreign families because they felt they would have more opportunities than they would in Colombia. It was so obvious that they really wanted what was best for the child. The women here sometimes cannot afford to keep their babies and sometimes have other children already. Abortion is not legal in Colombia but it is available. These birthmoms cannot afford to have abortions. In a lot of cases, adoption is the only choice. The birthmoms were thankful to us for coming and said it helped them to feel better about their decisions. When we left, I gave each one of them the best hug I could give them.

Las Margaritas restaurant and signing at the courthouse!

Hi everyone,

Yesterday was a Colombian holiday, so everything was closed. We went to Las Margaritas restaurant just North of Bogota, as it was recommended to us by Jeaneth. When we got there, we were seated in the main restaurant and ordered a pitcher of sangria, and an appetizer. The appetizer platter was unique. It had on fried plantacon's (plaintains) which were excellent, chorizo sausage which was pretty good but full of fat, and fried chicken of some sort. When I asked the waiter what the chicken was, he described it as the skin and meat from the back. They were very tasty, but all fat, kind of like pork rinds. A little bit went a long way!






The shows there were pretty good. We started out with a two guitar group that played Colombian music. We bought their CD as they were pretty good. After that was the horse show, and Dana just loved it. There were about 20 horses that came in with their riders and did their trotting, and such. Every time a horse went by Dana, she started kicking her feet and waving her arms in great joy. Her face just beamed as well. I think she will be a horse girl in the future! After that was a flamenco dancing couple, and then another salsa dancing couple on stage. Andy got bored with the dancing, so he and I went out for some mini golf and then a horse ride. Overall it was a good way to enjoy a holiday.





Today was the first day that the court was open since Friday when we received our Sentencia. Cecilia and Santiago picked me up at 9 a.m. and drove us downtown to the courthouse where the family courts were located. It was a pretty old 6 story building. What a crazy experience, as it is nothing like the US Courts, not that I have been to court often other than adopting Andy 4 years ago. ;)

We took the elevator up to the 6th floor. The elevator was about the size of a small bathroom, and there was about 15 people crammed into it. When we arrived at the court 20, it was a little window where one person was manning it. The poor woman who was taking care of business was being peppered with questions from the people and attorneys. There was somewhat of a line, but just like Colombian driving, it didn't amount to much, as people just went up to the window and started shouting questions and asking for things.





Here is the back of the Sentencia paperwork that I signed. We will need the Defender of Minors signature as well as the Procuador (sp?). So this may take another 3-5 business days! Hurry up and wait.

I'm not sure why Cecilia took this picture at a 45 degree angle. Just turn your monitor. ;) As you can see it was about 85 degrees inside the building with all the people and the small hallways.

Waiting on the signatures of the Defender of Minors and Procuador. Upper left is the Judges signature, and mine is on the upper right. We are so excited to be near completion and bring Dana home!

Lastly on Sunday night there were only two couples here at the hotel, us and Sidsel and Allan. Last night 4 other families arrived with their teenage children that they adopted back in 1995. Talk about a change in the dynamics of the hotel. They are all wonderful people, don't get me wrong, but it is nice when they are gone during the day so that the babies can sleep. Tonight is the first night with everyone and the volume level is a lot higher than when it was us and the other adopting parents with their babies. Anyhow just a few more days and we will be going home.

I hope that everyone is well and looking forward to a great 4th of July weekend.