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.