Favorite Pics of Ava!

Favorite Cali Outings

As most of you know, I am mainly just sending email updates because it's far easier for us than uploading photos to our blog...but I will eventually make the blog public again, so I just wanted to put up some pics of our favorite Cali outings:

Of course, nothing beat meeting Ava for the first time, but after that and our second visit to Chiquitines, I'd have to say that the zoo, the waterpark, coffee shops, and our visit to Loma de la Cruz (a local artesan park) top the list. We have such wonderful memories of our two weeks in Cali! And now we're making even more in Sopo while we wait for sentencia. Who knows when that will come? :) In the meantime, I love it here in Colombia! The food, the people, the language, the culture, it's all amazing!

Ok, here are our Cali outings (a few pics)...as always, there are WAY more on our facebook pages. :)

Parque de Agua La Cana


View of Cali from Loma de la Cruz

Juan Valdez Coffee...the BEST! Yummy!

The Cali Zoo


Centro Comercial Chipichape

At Chipichape trying Champus (a Cali specialty)!

Our beautiful, beautiful daughter!

On Monday, July 6th, we were presented with Avalon Manuela. It was one of the very best days of my life. I had no idea that I would feel so overwhelmed with emotions...joy, thankfulness, excitement, nerves. I definitely cried several times...especially when I saw Ava for the first time. It is really amazing. It feels so much like Ava belongs with us! I can't explain it...she's PERFECT. I love her like crazy. Here are a few pictures. Next steps include our integration meeting on Friday, we're assigned to a court sometime either Friday or Monday, and then we have another meeting at the orphanage on next Thursday (the 16th). So...pray that we are assigned a court that moves quickly. :) Meanwhile, we're enjoying our time, adjusting to life with 2 kids, and enjoying Colombia. It's a beautiful country, beautiful people. We have been taken care of very well. I'll post more later. We already have some very fun stories. :)

Visas and Washington, D.C.

Well...we drove to D.C. today to apply for visas, and then found out they cannot process them in one day like all other consulates according to our agency. We have to drive back on Wednesday. Needless to say, it is not what we want to be doing our last few days in the states, but what can we do? We're taking it in stride and we're now thinking of it like a little date for us before we become parents of 2! Craziness.

We're so excited, a little nervous, I'm doing my best to stay calm. We cannot wait to meet our little girl! We will begin our email updates later this week...we're going to send a test one. We figured it would be the easiest way to update everyone, since most of our friends don't seem to "blog" much.

Our to do list is MUCH shorter now:
1. Visas: Our Wednesday drive/date!
2. Pack!
3. Eat and watch some movies these next few nights.
4. Leave SATURDAY!!!!

Why private? and travel updates!

Hello, all! So, I've set the blog to private for the time being because somehow our blog was linked to some Colombian adoption news site in Norway (the adoption community is fairly active online), and they were questioning why it was such a short wait for us. I will make it public again once we can post pictures, and then most people wondering about the speed of our adoption should be able to know why...we specifically requested a child with a certain background in our paperwork that I suspect most people adopting from Colombia are not open to, or at least don't know that if you do not state your openness, the powers that be assume you are not open (maybe?, who knows about all those reasons...I'm just assuming based on reading other blogs, etc...not the greatest scientific research). Anyways...I don't feel up to answering questions at the moment; there are FAR to many other things to do, hence the privacy.

In updates for us:
1. We have an official travel date: We leave July 4th, arrive in Cali July 5th and are presented with our daughter July 6th at 8:30 a.m.!!!! We cannot wait! Please pray for patience and some rest between now and then.
2. We still need to apply for VISAS. Just today we sent our application with our passports to the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C. only to find out they changed where visas are processed to the Colombian Consulate...SO, we recalled our package, thankfully some mail delivery truck never showed at the Post Office, and we were able to get the package back in our hands. Needless to say there were some stressful moments, especially since we're doing all of this through my parents in Norfolk while we're in Boston for a wedding and family vacation with Pete's family. AAAHHHH....craziness.
3. We get back from Pete's family vacation next Sunday (the 28th), drive to D.C. the 29th to do our visas IN PERSON...hopefully the same day...who knows? and then have a few days to pack, prepare, and leave. Haha...our life is such an adventure right now! (P.S. We need to borrow some sturdy luggage...I'll be calling some of you!)
4. Everything else is on backburner: cleaning, cooking, doing anything besides writing a packing list, and semi-preparing our baby's room.
5. We're doing a lot of praising to God for all of his many provisions and I'm repeating the verse: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, with praise and thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the PEACE of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

Thanks for all your prayers. If you want to call and encourage us or celebrate with us, feel free. We love you all!

We have it!

So, the mix up between the Colombian interpretation of the Hague treaty and the US interpretation of the Hague treaty has been solved! Our agency worked very quickly and effectively, and we have our I800 approval!!!! We also got our FBI prints in the mail on Thursday. Amazing. So, on Tuesday I'm going to drive to Richmond to authenticate our documents and then mail them to our agency so that they can mail them to Colombia to be translated. :) We're moving right along. We should have a travel date by early next week. The only thing we're waiting on is approval of our desired travel date from Chiquitines (the orphanage where our daughter is). Yay!!!! We're so thankful for all of your support and prayers. Thank you, thank you! We'll update as we hear things.

Urghhhhh....

Okay...so why has the hold up always seemed to come from USCIS??? I just found out today that our adjudicator (fancy name for the person who reviews our application) thinks our file is missing a document, but it really isn't! Colombia doesn't require the particular document that our adjudicator thinks we need (and neither does the US for that matter apparently, according to the expert at our agency). So, we could have had approval, but we don't. Now we have to wait for more contact to be made, more phone calls, hopefully no more paperwork (until we apply for visas, but that should be more simple than this). Please PRAY that this gets cleared up quickly! Then the only other piece of paper that is out of our control in terms of when it arrives is our FBI prints. You can pray those get to us quickly, too!