Two Weeks Home and Doing GREAT!

We keep being asked how everything is going. In a word--FANTASTIC! The kids have adjusted amazingly well. They have transitioned as flawlessly as we could expect, and we are so proud of the way all three of the kids have adapted to being a family of five. Time has absolutely flown by and I couldn't believe it when I noticed today that we have been home for two weeks. We continue to be blessed by visits from family and friends which has been wonderful. It's been a blast introducing Maria and Andres to all of these special people. They usually win over hearts very quickly as they love to greet people with hugs, kisses and/or huge smiles.

Matt eased back into work which was nice. The kids were able to handle his full-day absences once he got back into the swing of things. I wasn't sure how things were going to go with me parenting solo, but the kids have been great. Luke is a HUGE help, and I have to say that being a mom of three has been a million times easier than I ever expected. I don't know if it's because I prepared myself for utter chaos or what. But when I think back to how difficult it was to parent an infant, I feel so blessed to be in the here and now with a 2, 4, and 8 year old. They are all pretty easy going and I have thoroughly enjoyed every day I have spent with them!

There have been a number of things that make us laugh. For example, for the first few days at home, I kept finding Maria and Andres over by our air vents. They thought it was the neatest thing that cold air came out of them. I guess living in a stable climate of 60 degrees, they've probably never experienced air conditioning to that degree. They also find it fascinating when the garage doors open magically. I'm sure they have electronic garage doors in Colombia, but they clearly haven't seen any. Maria still squeals each day when we pick out a new outfit to wear. Andres--well he could care less. He just wants to get to his cars or the dog toys. Which leads me to our 15 year old dog, Max. He has done very well with the kids. Pretty much ignores them. Poor dog, I wonder how many years I have shaved off of his life by bringing three kids into his life. I have a feeling he'd be vying for the "oldest dog in the world" title had those factors not entered.

Their language continues to get better. They seem to understand quite a bit of what we say, or at least they are indulging us Andres tries to mimic sounds. He still points a lot rather than use word and says a lot of Mama and Papa for pretty much everything, but we have also added "choo choo" "dog" (which sounds nothing like dog but has the same vowel sound and "Dre Dre" which is what we call him sometimes. Unfortunately, with his speaking deficiency, he can't express himself when he gets upset so he likes to hit his brother and sister. If any of you have any ideas of ways to work through this, I would love it. I really am trying to get him to make sounds, even, but he's much more content and comfortable with hitting to express himself. Maria does a good job of repeating words and uses words like "chips," "water," "bubbles," "thank you," "please," and "I love you" whenever she has a chance. But I am most proud to say that I have two Jayhawks to add to the fan base. Maria loves to listen to the Jayhawk fight song and the Rock Chalk chant. Whenever they see a Jayhawk, Andres gives it a strong point of the finger while Maria screams"Jayhawk." It's music to my ears and they both look fantastic in crimson and blue!

People keep asking us what the most difficult part has been since we've been home. Well, as I could only think of two things, there hasn't been much that's led to difficulties. The first one is bedtime. The kids are not real hip on going to bed. I try to remind myself that I, too, was like that as a kid. Then I got married, had kids and, well, the rest is history. Anyway, they love to take baths and play in the water. They are pro tooth brushers (or at least Andres is a pro toothpaste eater) but they hate it when it's time to get into bed. We try to soften the blow by reading them stories. Matt reads to Maria, Luke, mainly, reads to Andres while I lay beside them. But when it's time to turn the lights out, mayhem. It took a few days to get Andres to stay in his bed. But now, he may squawk for 15 seconds and he's done. A real faker, he is! Maria, on the other hand, is a little different. She hates it and screams and cries. At one point, it got pretty bad (especially when I was out of the house--go figure on that one. She couldn't stand the sight of me the first few days we had her and now she can't stand to go to bed without seeing me--that's PROGRESS!) So, I decided to try some consequences. These kids love their fruits. So I promised her lots of fruits if she went to bed without crying. The first night, she cried/screamed. So, the next day, no fruit. The next night, NO CRYING! I was so excited. She's gone back and forth but we have gone two night in a row now with no crying. So, maybe we are making headway. The second part that's been tough is dinner time. You know, when it was the three of us, if Matt was going to be late, or if we were having a busy night (which is frequently) I shoved a Kid Cuisine in the oven for Luke and made myself a sandwich. Easy enough. Well, those days are gone. I have found it quite difficult to plan, prepare and serve a meal for five in a timely manner without it taking up a good portion of our evening and our real "family" time to go outside and play. I may have to look at one of those places that prepares meals ahead for you and then they can be frozen. I don't know. Something is going to have to change. Or maybe I'm just going to have to just give it time so I can adapt and get better at the whole thing. Thank goodness my in-laws stocked our refrigerator and pantry before we got home. Outside of running to Sam's Club for milk ($2.99/gallon which is why I go there since we go through 4+ gallons a week!) and a few other things, I have not had time to go to the store and do some full out shopping. I hoped to tackle that yesterday but it looks like it may be the weekend or later before I get the chance again. We have a pretty full weekend ahead.

Well, if you are wondering what else we have been up to here are some pics to show you:

Enjoying new toys

Playing dress up

Riding a bike

Watching balloons go up into the sky

Celebrating Luke's 8th birthday!

Discovering concrete can be beautiful

Learning what a sprinkler is

Slipping and sliding

Cheering on Big Brother Luke

Loving each other and our family every day

And eating like crazy! (Note for these final two pics: The kids acted like they had never had tacos. Andres decided to stab his with a fork, and Maria ate hers from the top of the shell.)

Last Days

As you can imagine, it is has been pretty hectic since we returned from Colombia. I will try to give a quick blog entry for our last two days in Bogota.

Last Tuesday, our last full day, we woke to some more typical Bogota weather. However, as the day progressed, the rains became more frequent and stronger – even by Bogota standards.

After breakfast, we spoke with Carmen about the possibility of going to Monseratte. As she did each time we asked about Monseratte, she took us outside, pointed in the cloudy direction of the mountain and explained that this would not be a good day to go. So, we opted for plan B, a trip to the Botero Museum, instead. Our cab driver drove us around the narrow, hilly streets of downtown Bogota for a while. Some were closed and we couldn’t tell if he was lost or just having difficulty being routed in different directions. Finally, he stopped and talked to one of the security people watching a closed street and we learned that the Botero Museum is closed on Tuesdays. At that point, although it was cloudy and sprinkling a little in places, we told him to take us to Monseratte.

We arrived at a fairly nondescript looking building and purchased tickets for the “train” to the top. This train basically consists of one car with staggered compartments for people to stand on the 2-3 minute ride to the top of the mountain.

It was kind of misty and overcast at the top of the mountain, but we could still see most of the city below. However, the real beauty of Monseratte isn’t the only in the surrounding views, but also in the church and structures at the top of the mountain. Here is the ride up.

The house where we "landed."

A few views from the mountain.



Of course there were more stations of the cross as we walked up the path to the church. However, I found these a little more interesting than the “salt crosses” of the Cathedral of Salt (the extremely subtle symbolism was kind of lost on me at that place).


A few more views from the mountain top.



The church at the top of the mountain.


I am assuming this was a Catholic church, but I have never been in a Catholic church where Christ was not on the cross and was on the ground like here. I will have to ask around about this (like my family Catholicism expert Aunt Carole) and would welcome answers from anyone.

Luke asking for, and needing, a prayer.


I liked this Jesus statue but it kind of reminded me of "Buddy Jesus from the movie "Dogma."

Looking back out the doors of the church, you can see another mountain peak where they have a big Jesus statue - like the one in Rio De Janeiro except smaller. It was kind of cool.


Los ninos outside of the church.

Although we had to take a "train" up the mountain, we had to take the cable car back down. Here are some views.





After the tour of Monseratte, we arrived back too late for lunch at the compound. So we went to a little restaurant near the compound that had always looked interesting, “Sopas y Postres.” Traci and Luke tried the empanadas (our first in Colombia), but we decided we like the ones from the Colombian restaurant in KC a little better. That really isn’t too fair of a comparison since this place isn’t really known for empanadas.

After naps, we ran out to the kids hair styling salon to get Maria’s hair done again before we returned home. Of course, once we arrived another serious downpour started. On the way home, we put Maria in the stroller usually used by Andres because it could be covered by a big plastic sheet (I wasn’t about to blow $12 on a hairdo only to have it get rained on). Traci tried to keep Andres and herself covered under an umbrella, but the rest of us pretty much arrived back at the compound drenched.

As I recall, dinner was rice and meat balls. Afterwards, I ran out to one of the local coffee shops to get some souvenir Colombian coffee. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to get all of your shopping done. When I arrived back, Oscar, our attorney, and “the dress lady” stopped by the compound. They both needed money for the services they provided during out stay. We were very happy that the dress lady could complete our order before we left. She said she employed 4 additional ladies to help her get things done. I know that the boys got matching sweaters and I think Maria got 2 dresses (I wasn’t too interested at this point. I just knew we were going home the next day).

Night time brought few surprises. I still hadn’t started packing and Traci was pretty much done getting herself and the kids’ stuff put away. We didn’t have any internet access that night, so I had only clothes packing to do that night. I don’t know if it was all of the activity going on in the room or what, but Maria couldn’t sleep. We tried hanging my “ruana” over the bunk beds to sort of shield her from the light. A few minutes later, though, she began to sob and cry. Maybe she was just overtired or maybe it was kind of hitting her that she was leaving – we don’t know. Traci and I sat with her for a while and talked about all of the fun things that the next day had in store (she loves to fly on airplanes and we talked about that for a while). We showed her some videos of the house and her room which got her to calm down to the point where she could finally go to sleep.

The next morning, Traci got up a little before 5 and I got up a little after that. Andres, our escort, was supposed to arrive at 6:00 a.m. to take us to the airport. We got all of the bags arranged in plenty of time for me to have a cup of coffee before we had to leave. Andres went with us into the airport. We were ushered into a line and then he asked for all of our passports and took off somewhere. We didn’t see where he went and pretty soon we would be reaching the end of the line where we needed our passports. We were starting to get a little nervous and let a few people go past us before Andres finally showed back up He wasn’t gone long but we were on guard for that minor catastrophe that would keep us from getting home. I think he must have gone to pay the “exit tax” or whatever it is called. I remember reading that we were supposed to pay one, but I don’t recall doing that ourselves. We got our tickets and into the boarding area without too much of a problem and in plenty of time for our flight. In fact, we even got to have a little breakfast before settling into to the waiting area.
Here are Maria and Andres waiving goodbye to Colombia.


Just a bunch of photos from the plane.




Andres figured out how to mess with the headphones jacks between the seats. The poor lady sitting next to him did not have a good 4+ hour flight to Atlanta. Eventually, Andres fell asleep, but he woke up and pretty much cried and whined the last hour of the flight. Consequently, he sat with me on the second leg from Atlanta to KC.


The trip to Atlanta and, later, through customs were pretty uneventful. In fact, customs went a lot faster than we expected. We did get stuck on the runway in Atlanta and were about an hour late getting off the ground. However, we were able to give plenty of heads up to our families who would be waiting for us at the airport.

We arrived home at 7:15 on Wednesday night. Luke, Andres and I had to sit in the second to the last row of the airplane – so anyone who thinks we were trying to be last off the plane for dramatic effect is wrong. It was great to see our families and friends again. Luke’s buddy, Behr, came to the airport and surprised him. I know he was missing his friend, and I think Behr was a little bored without Luke around too.

That night the kids didn’t get into their beds until around midnight. We had food, people stopping by the house a lot of great stories from both continents. It was kind of like a small party.
There were some gifts.




Apparently, people had been reading our blog and had heard about Andres' diapers.

Maria got a new pair of earrings. . .

and they got lost in the shaggy carpet about as quickly as the box was opened. We never did find it, but Nana Sharon fixed it the next day and got new ones.

And, of course, we had the Maria dance. Papa Denny sang while Papa Bill and Papa Ron took turns dancing with Maria. She loved it.


That is pretty much it from our last couple days in Bogota. I will try to update again in another blog entry about how the kids have been doing in our first week back – and, not to spoil it, but they have been doing great.

Home Safe and Sound

Sorry we didn't get a post in on our last night. We had pretty heavy rains in Bogota yesterday (which seems forever ago right now) and the internet went out in El Refrugio. I don't know if the two are related, but it really hasn't rained all day before like it did yesterday. Long stories made short, on Tuesday we finally got to the top on Montseratte (pictures coming). Despite the poor weather, it was pretty amazing (better than the salt church or anything else we have seen). After much travel and very few hassles, we arrived in Kansas City tonight around 7:15 p.m. and were greeted by much fanfare from the family and friends. Everyone is doing fine and we are very happy to be home.

I will try to get the updates in over the weekend. Just check on Monday to be sure. Thanks to everyone for their comments, emails and support. It was truly a life altering journey and I am glad we could share everything with our family and friends. And if anyone at El Refugio is reading this, we will miss you guys (Hope everyone gets home safe and soon).

Andres Dance II

Here is some more "Andres Dance" from Crepes & Waffles. It was going pretty well until Luke tried to get the camera from Traci to film her. She had to rush around to get ready this monring and was a little camera shy today (she looked fine but didn't get in her full 45 minutes to get ready),

The Andres Dance

It was a little dark out here, but I hope you can see.

U.S. Embassy, the Park and a Night Out

I slept in until about 8:00 this morning – mostly just because that is how long the kids slept. Maria and Luke had some crazy dreams last night. Maria was mumbling stuff in her sleep and tossed & turned quite a bit. Luke, on the other hand sat straight up and told me how sorry he was that he lost something off his wrist. I told him I would but a new one tomorrow (whatever it was) and that he should just lie back down. He was asleep this whole time but woke up a minute or two later kind of shaking. Consequently, neither Traci nor I got much sleep either.

Traci was up at 7:15 to begin working on the papers we needed to fill out for the U.S. Embassy and the ninos’ visas. As we probably should have guessed, Lucia called at about 8:05 to tell us that our ride would be here at 9:00 to take us to the embassy. We went into a flurry of activity getting everyone washed and dressed and fed. Traci still had several forms to complete and worked mostly on those. She said she had a feeling Lucia was going to call early in the morning and do that to us. That is why she couldn’t sleep and started working on the forms.

During breakfast, the three kids all ate French toast. They keep the syrup in these little jars on the shelf in the eating area and I usually just help myself as needed. My French friend, Cathy, asked me this morning what that brown stuff was in the bottles. It took me a minute to grasp what she was asking because syrup seems like such a household item to us in the U.S. I explained what it was and I kind of think she got it. I tried to ask what they put on their pancakes in France, but I am not sure she totally understood. She mentioned something about how all they had was jelly. So, if heading to France for an extended time and if you plan on eating pancakes, waffles or French toast, you might want to cart along some syrup.

David arrived right at about 9:00 to pick us up. When we got downstairs, we met our new neighbors from across the hall. They are a young American couple from Billings, MT. They arrived late last night and we heard them dragging their things up the stairs. However, we were kind of in bed-mode and didn’t pop out to introduce ourselves. They were going to get their three new kids that morning in Bogota and we shared a ride out of the compound.

We arrived at the embassy a little before 10:00 and Andres was there waiting for us. He shuttled us up through the lines to get in and we had our paperwork turned in by about 10:30. Then we waited for a considerable amount of time. Anyone with little kids knows that this can be hard anywhere. However, Luke and the ninos (sounds like the name of a good rock band) were, for the most part, pretty well behaved. We also met another couple from Washington D.C. at the embassy getting their visas prepared too. They were adopting three kids, approximate ages 2-6, and seemed to really have their hands full. Our kiddos (including Luke) looked pretty subdued compared to them. Anyway, they seemed like good people. Traci talked to them much more than I did. I was too busy standing with Andres (the “grande,” not our Andres the “pequeno”) listening for someone to announce the name “Jensen” (or “Hensen” in Spanish) over the intercom.

There was one Andres (the "pequeno") episode that deserves mentioning. While he was well-behaved for the most part, he liked playing this game where he would run between Traci and I as fast as he could. He only fell 3-4 times but there was no crying. Then he started doing this thing where he would walk between Traci’s legs and, later, mine. After a couple times of this, he ran into a total stanger and stood behind him for a minute. Then he lowered his head and pushed between the poor guy’s legs. I don’t think this guy had a clue what was going on, but he was a good sport about it. Everyone who saw shared a laugh.

A few things about the embassy . . . first, you could probably drive right by and never notice it was there. There are no big flags or anything really marking the place (there is lots of security outside, but there is security everywhere in Bogota). Secondly, if you ever wanted to know what a great country we live in, check out the line of people in a foreign land waiting for a visa to come visit the states. There must have been a couple hundred people in the waiting area. I know they do more than just process visas at the embassy, but many of them appeared to be there for that reason. Finally, while it is technically “U.S. soil” there are surprisingly few U.S. natives working at the embassy. It’s mostly people from Bogota and just about anyone you had to talk to spoke very good English.

The wait to get paper work completed took a while but not forever. When I finally got to the second window it was explained that their new computer program wasn’t working this morning and that was causing some delays. The only thing that threw us was that the lady behind the window (window #2) asked to see the verification of our fingerprints. Luckily, my beautiful and highly organized wife kept a copy of everything and brought it all to the embassy with us. They can’t stop this family from going home! In all, we spent about 2.5 hours at the embassy getting everything complete. It was much faster than I had planned on or heard about from other people. Once again, we consider ourselves lucky. We have to go back to the embassy at 3:30 tomorrow to pick up the visas. That will be the last step in our Colombian adoption process and we can go home. It almost doesn’t seem real that we are finally this close. And I am sorry we do not have any pictures of the embassy. They do not allow cameras inside so we didn’t even bother to bring it.

We got back to the compound just in time for lunch. Today’s soup: potato and maize. The “maize” was like a half-popped popcorn. Luke has been boycotting any soups for the last week but we all though it was pretty good. The main course was salchichas with onions and peppers along with mashed potatoes. I liked it, but not everyone thought it was that great. In fact, Luke boycotted the entire lunch. These last few days have been pretty hard on Luke. He is as anxious as anyone to get home and misses his friends. So, when I left during the ninos’ nap to make my daily stop at the ATM, I took him along and we stopped at McDonald’s for an All-American lunch (Yep, I am pretty sure I am not going there again once we get home).

By the time we returned from the embassy the new American couple was back with their new ninos. For first time parents, I think they got a very good fit. Their kids all seem very calm and subdued. Traci and I gave them the low-down on the compound and all of the surrounding places of interest – just like the compound veterans did for us when we arrived (thanks again Mark and Debi).

We had thought about trying to fit in the Botero museum after the kids got up for a nap, but decided that the park might be a better idea. There are a lot of things we would still like to do, but we don’t want to make these last few days miserable by trying to cram it all in. The way we figure it, we traded all of that for a week i Cartagena and it was worth it. When we arrived at the park, we found the two French families from the compound there with their kids – plus the French family that used to live her but is now at a local hotel. It was kind of like an El Refugio day at the park.

Luke has been dying to play a little wiffle ball (be brought a bat and couple balls) and the weather was perfect for it. I pitched, Luke hit and the ninos played outfield shagging balls. I think everyone had a pretty good time. I can also see that several lessons are going to be needed to teach Andres and Maria how to throw.

Here is the park with some of our freinds from France in the background.


Here is Maria and Andres playing outfield. You can kind of see me in the background pitching and Luke would be behind me. I'm kind of bummed we didn't get ant action shots of Luke hitting because he did really well.

Throwing practice. We need a lot of work here. the ninos would basically chace down the ball, run it back to me and throw when they were about 3-4 feet from me.



Luke showing that he is "muy fuerte" on the pull up bar.

One of the great things about staying with all of the adoptive families at El Refugio is that there is always several extra hands to help out when you have kids running all over the place. Here is my good friend, Cathy, riding on the see-saw with Andres. I think I will miss her most of all of the people at the compound.

Now, Cathy i taking Maria for a spin.

Andres crawling out of a tube with Maris not too far behind.

Cathy's son and Luke’s friend, David, took a real interest in what we were doing with the wiffle ball and bat. When we had kind of wrapped up and decided to play on the park equipment, David asked if he couldn’t hit a few balls. I obliged and tossed him a few pitches. He didn’t do too bad and I will have to ask Tony tomorrow if he has ever played baseball before. David later tried to put on my glove and wanted to try catching the ball with it. Unfortunately, he’s a left and my glove was oversized AND backwards on him. He also didn’t quite grasp that you catch with the glove hand and throw with the non-glove hand. He wanted to do everything with the glove.

After the park, we decided to head back up/down to the area where the Hard Rock Café was located. It looked liked a very nice area with lots of restaurants to choose from. The previous time we were down there, we though we saw a Crayola Café (like the one in KC) which might be a fun place to take the kids. Turns out it was a Crayola store – not a restaurant as we previously thought. So, we doubled back, walked around some more and settled on a Mexican place called La Taqueria. By the time we arrived, all of the kids were tired and hungry. Traci and I had had it with all of the griping, complaining and pouting. We were settling in for what looked to be a horrible dinner out. However, something clicked after a little while and, in the end, we all had a pretty good time (a margarita and a beer may have helped the older folks deal with things). And the food was by far the best meal we have had outside of El Refugio. Traci and I each got a plat with a variety of tacos and each one was fantastic. The kids stuck with the quesadillas and their plates were cleaned by the time we left. Anyway, I don’t know what this part of Bogota is called, but anyone coming here should check it out if looking for a place to eat. There were also a lot of very nice upscale bars for those in Colombia without kids. It is all right by the Atlantis Plaza and the Hard Rock Café.

We still can't get over the small amount of chips and salsa given out at these Mexican restaurants. By the time this picture was taken, each of us had had a chip and the bowl was 1/3 gone. i guess these people have a better handle on the term "appetizer" than we do. it would also halp explain which there doesn't seem to be many overweight people in Bogota.

A happy family (after adult beverages were finally served).

Maria feeding papi some quesadilla.

Another Maria pout from today (stage 1). Do I look a litle burned out from it all?

I don’t mean to make this the “Andres blog” but he was in a pretty good mood again at dinner. When he is in a good mood and likes his food, he does this little “Andres dance” in his chair which is hysterical. I tried to capture it on video but it is a little dark. I will post it in a separate post so I don’t screw this one up if something goes wrong.


Maria and papi getting into the act.

After dinner, we stopped off at the Crepes & Waffles joint located in that part of town. Crepes & Waffles is another must do while in Colombia (I saw one in Cartagena too). This is some of the best ice cream we have ever had. And the kids love the sundaes.





After I got our cab driver lost trying to give him instructions in Spanish, we made it home. The kids went down to bed without too much of a fight. Traci began packing for the trip home and I started the blog. We said good-bye to Wilma who is working tonight and will not be here when we leave on Wednesday by the time we leave.

Tomorrow morning we hope to get up and out at a good time. If this weather holds, it will be a perfect morning to visit Monseratte. After that, at least one of us has to visit the embassy to pick up the visas. There are a few more odds and ends that we have to finalize, but we think we are just going to hang out at the compound tomorrow night and relax before the long trip home.

We’ve enjoyed the comments and emails from everyone reading the blog. We are extremely happy that everyone is having fun following along as we travel through Colombia trying to get home. I’m almost certain we will have one more post tomorrow night and then we might need to take a break for a couple days after we get home. I will also say, that once we get home the blogging duties will probably be passed back on to Traci.

Traci here: I just wanted to wish my brother a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY (Tuesday, June 10)! Todd--we’re a day short of getting back for it and I hate that, but know that I love you and can’t wait to see you!

A Rainy Sunday

Here is our short post (it) for the night:

After today we have a mere 2 full days left in Botoga. Luke and I decided that we can’t really count Wednesday as a day since we will probably be leaving the compound at the crack of dawn. We are just dying to get home.

The kids slept well last night and we didn’t get out of bed until about 8:30. Breakfast closes at 9:00 a.m. and we kind of had to hurry down. Breakfast this morning was two giant plates of French toast for the whole family. My bacon craving is back again. But now I have only a few more days to wait.

After breakfast we went to get cleaned up and go through our morning rituals. You already know about Traci’s “at least 45 minutes to get ready” ritual. She made good time this morning and may have been ready in 42-43 minutes. Another ritual now is the administration of the several medicines Maria is taking. She actually likes taking her medicine and her favorite is the breathing treatment for her bronchitis. It’s just your average looking asthma inhaler, but she gets this kiddie tube attachment. She doesn’t mind the treatments but loves putting everything back in the box.

We also took a few moments to catch up on pictures we had been promising. He’s me in my ruana. I know I posted a picture of Clint Eastwood last night, but I swear, if I just had the hat we would be identical. And i wasn't really drinking a beer - that is just how I plan to normally look wearing my ruana.

We also noticed that the Jesus on the crucifix in our room looks a little effeminate (long hair and wearing a dress). Could this be part of the DaVinci Code? Hope I am not being blasphemous. It just struck us as a little odd.

And, we finally got the kids calmed down enough to get pictures of them with their passports.


It was another typical Bogota day (light rain off & on and clouds). Montseratte was one of the things Traci really wanted to see on this trip and it is looking more and more like we may have to go without. Seems like every time we have really good weather, we have to be somewhere indoors.

We left to the Sunday artisan market at the Hotel Fontana at 10:30 and took a different route getting there. We are growing a little tired of always walking past the same buildings. Our first stop in the market was this lady who hand-makes dresses and sweaters. She has some really nice stuff and Traci fell in love with several items the first time we were there. Only problem then was that we didn’t have a little girl to dress up. I spent most of my time herding kids while Traci negotiated with the dress lady and picked out some items. There are a few things we are having made and she had to stop by the compound tonight around dinner to get a few more things sized for Maria. We bought several more items and this place is by far my favorite for local crafts (no ruanas though). If anyone reading this is coming to Bogota, the hotel is on the opposite corner from the Unicentro and the market is on Sundays. We did find one item that was the perfect size for Maria. She didn’t want to take it off and just loves it. Unfortunately, she is going to have to wait several months after we get home before she can break this thing out.

And here are some pics of the hotel where the market is located.


A couple of additional things about the market . . . I think we finally found the keepsake thing we were kind of looking for to get the ninos. Traci really enjoys scrap booking and we found some great handmade scrapbook covers with sort of a Colombian theme. I think this will be the perfect memento from our stay. Additionally, today’s weather was kind of a light rain which came on and off all day. When the sun would break through it would get kind of hot. The market is not covered but the vendors have umbrellas over their tables. Every time it began to rain, they would bring out plastic sheets to cover their merchandise. It started and stopped raining several times while we were there which had to be a complete headache for these poor folks.

After the market, we went to Poblanos for a Mexican food lunch (the compound doesn’t serve lunch on Sundays). It was okay but I had several issues with this place. First of all, they didn’t have any beer or margaritas (and I was needing one this afternoon). Secondly, they brought us out some guacamole (instead of the standard salsa you get in the States) all with about 8 chips. Eight!! Finally, Traci wasn’t all that hungry and just ordered herself some more guacamole and chili con queso. When it arrived, there were no chips. Traci asked the waiter about chips and he looked at her like she was from Mars. When he returned, he gave her a basket with 8 more chips. It was weird. We reluctantly asked for more chips again after this basket quickly ran out. It was an okay lunch but Poblanos isn’t somewhere I would tell people they had to go.

We had a pretty good day as far as development of relationships between Luke and the ninos. Luke and Andres really get along well - almost like brothers. Luke might sometimes play a little rough with him, but you can see that Andres is really starting to trust Luke. In fact, there are times when Luke is the only one that can get him to eat. As for Luke and Maria, it's still a little cold at times and there is some big-time siblig rivalry there, but there was lots of positive interation today. Lately, Maria has been asking to give hugs and kisses to everyone before she goes to sleep and she even includes Luke in the mix. Now, I don't know if this is just a stall tactic to prolong the inevitable, but it is a step in the right direction. Luke has also been better about including Maria in on things - and while he still whines about what Maria is getting/doing, I think it was a little less today. Here's a picture of Traci pushing Andres' stroller and Luke holding his hand.

And Luke and Andres wrestling on the floor (which later led to our bed, Maria's bed, downstairs, etc.)

The kids got in late naps and we didn’t get them up until about 4:30. Consequently, getting them to bed tonight has been difficult. While they were napping, another French family that used to stay here returned from a week in Santa Marta. They had a wonderful time and we exchanged a few stories about our trips. Unfortunately, they just came to pick up some luggage they had stored. They are going to try staying at that Hotel Fontana where the market was this afternoon. Nice people. Tony was just telling me this morning that a lot of the French familes that adopt in Colombia stay at that hotel. It is reasonable and you can get a room with a small kitchen in it. However, you do have to eat out a lot and that kind of raises the price quite a bit (we have found that eating out in Bogota is not too cheap). Traci and I agreed that we would take our small room, nice people and regular meals at El Refugio over a stay in a hotel.

After naps, we had quick baths and got on Skype to chat with the folks. It was fun but the kids grow more and more restless each time we chat online with the abuelos. I think Maria broke down into a pout at least twice during the conversation. We tried to keep track of her pouts today but couldn’t. It had to be in the low 20’s for the day.

Tonight’s “light dinner” (what we get on Sundays) was some kind of pastry, like a flaky biscuit, filled with chicken and covered in some kind of white gravy, and potato chips. On Sunday nights, they break out the Coca-Cola (every other night we are pretty much left with water). Traci and I thought it was a great meal, but the kids didn’t enjoy it at all. Worst yet, we didn’t have a fruit dessert to bribe the ninos with. I’ll be interested to see how hungry they are come breakfast.

Lucia has told us we are going to the embassy tomorrow but didn’t call tonight to give us a time. So, I figure we’ll get a call in the morning and should plan on leaving in the afternoon (I hope!). There are several forms that we are supposed to have filled out ahead of time and we just realized we haven’t started. So, one of us will probably have to skip breakfast tomorrow to get that done.

To finish, here is another flower picture from Traci. This is a poinsettia we saw growing out of the ground. We’d never seen where someone actually stick on of these in the ground before. It looks like it has seen better days but it was pretty big.

Just a Little Shopping

We had another day today that, while fun, doesn’t leave too much to talk about. This will be a short blog tonight with only a couple pictures. We awoke to another major blow-out from Andres. We think we discovered a problem in that his diapers are just a tad too big. We got a different brand last time and while the size is the same, they seem to run a little bigger. So, we awoke with another mess and more dirty laundry.

We had the usual breakfast except that everyone seems to have moved on to French toast. It’s good stuff but after a few weeks here, I don’t think we’ll be having much French toast for a while when we get home. The coffee was good but I am kind of missing my morning interaction with the people at Starbucks. I will probably have to get them all retrained on what I drink (Grande Americano w/ room).

Personally, my biggest adventure this morning was putting Maria’s new ear rings in her ears. She had ear rings when we got her, but they broke on day one or two and we never got her new ones until last night. Not having any extra holes in my own ears, this pierced ears deal is kind of new to me. I don’t know what happened in the couple weeks that she didn’t have ear rings but I had a devil of a time getting those new ones in. After some minor pushing and pulling we finally got them in. I think she was pretty excited and she even posed for a picture.

The weather was typical Bogota (cloudy and cool) and not a good day for Montseratte. So, we decided to get a jump start on our shopping. One thing we knew we had to get was better fitting diapers. Not the type of shopping we had planned on, but a necessity nonetheless. So, we just kind of headed out toward the Exito/Unicentro Mall and looked around at a few of the local shops surrounding that area. Traci and I bought a few things for ourselves, but otherwise the shopping didn’t go all that well. I did get my “ruana” or poncho. Sorry I do not have a picture of me in it to post. As it isn’t exactly poncho weather in Kansas City, it may be a while before any of you get to see me wearing it. I found a picture on the internet that looks pretty close to me in the ruana.

The Unicentro mall has one of those food court areas. In the past, as a family of three, we pretty much just went around these areas and everyone got something they liked. Adding in two more to the mix makes this routine much more difficult. We got Andres some chicken friend rice that took him some getting used to be he seemed to really like it. Maria had chicken fingers from Frisby’s (again!), and Luke got a sandwich from Subway (he was super impressed that his potato chips tasted just like they do in the States). Traci got a ham and cheese crepe from Crepes and Waffles and I ate leftovers. I guess that is something I will have to get used to. I think I had it best though. I got to sample all of the food (Chinese was the best).

After lunch, it was getting close to the ninos nap time. We left the mall and kind of took a long route home to see a few more things. We ran across a cute little church. We would have liked to have seen the inside, but I think they were closed. We didn’t look very hard since we needed to get back and put a couple of little bodies to bed.



Dinner tonight was spaghetti and French bread. Andres walked into the kitchen and saw the baskets of French bread and began to freak out. The kid loves bread and seems to have had all of his cravings immediately gratified in the past. We told him he had to wait until dinner and he began to wail about as hard and as long as he ever has. As for the spaghetti, I believe we have mentioned that the ninos aren’t real fond of pasta. So, we knew we had our work cut out for us. After he ate his piece of bread, Andres pretty much refused to eat anything else. He began to cry again and Traci took him upstairs – threatening him with bed time. After a few minutes, they both came back down and, after a little more coaxing, Andres ate some spaghetti. Maria was reluctant too, but once she realized there would be no fresh fruit for desert without eating her spaghetti, she gave in and ate about half of the glob we put on her plate. Luke, of course, hit the jackpot again and ate everything on his plate. This was probably the best food day for Luke (French toast, Subway sandwich with real potato chips, and Spaghetti).

Tonight was also the last night in Bogota for our new American friend, Kelly, and her daughter, Michelle. They are excited to head back to the States, but they have a long, long trip ahead of them to Spokane. It was nice having another English speaking friend to talk with. The French people are great, but the conversation is just easier with native English speakers. We wish them well and hope they stay in touch.

Tomorrow, we are hoping to go back to the artisan market we visited in our first full day here in Colombia. (I guess you would have to see the post from 5/18). To date, it is some of the nicest stuff we have seen in Colombia. We were a little hesitant to buy much of anything on that first day since we had so many days ahead of us.

We did see Lucia this morning and she said we were definitely going to the US Embassy on Monday but she didn’t know what time yet. We are preparing to spend at least 3-4 hours there. So, that will take up most of our day. On Tuesday, the trip to the embassy to pick up the visa is pretty quick. So, if we want to get in some last minute sightseeing or shopping, it will have to be then.

Traci here: Just a few responses/thoughts that I haven’t yet included. First, I’m amazed at the lack of window security in this country. Many times we have been up at least three stories and there will be windows open. While this normally wouldn’t be a big deal, the windows have no screens and provide large enough holes that children could easily climb out and fall. Our room at El Refugio is no exception. Fortunately, we have bars on our windows but most don’t. Also, there are very few bugs around here. Outside of a few bug bites the first night we were here and the little bitty moth that was flying around our room tonight, I haven’t seen any bugs. I take that back, there were some microscopic ones that crawled around in the Cartegena Hilton rooms but that was it. We’ve received many e-mails asking what we miss the most besides family and friends. Well, I know my dog is my family, but I had to say that anyway. Outside of that, it has to be certain foods like chips, salsa and queso dip, tacos, hamburgers, good hot dogs, COLD milk, good home-style cooking like fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans (as I have had none here), corn, steak, I could go on. You get the picture. I do have to say that it has been so nice to have our meals planned and fixed for us. I’m not sure how well I am going to do with three kids and preparing meals at a reasonable hour each night. That’s one of my anxiety points right now. Isn’t that silly? But I desperately want to try to eat healthier when I get home. Matt and I (and Luke, too) have both lost quite a bit of weight. Sometimes we can’t seem to get our belts tight enough. And that is largely due to the healthy food we have eaten. We’ve also had people ask how big the kids are and if they are “normal” size. Well, according to the doctor, Andres is 25 lbs and Maria is 31 lbs. The charts here indicate that that is in the lower half for their ages; however, they are fitting appropriately into 2T and 4T clothing. You will not look at them and think they are small, I don’t think. Oh yeah, speaking of being small. . . Laura and Wendy, I have found the perfect country for you two to shop. All of the sizes are quite small here as the people are so little. You guys would have a selection like you’ve never seen before. Plus, the fashions here are awesome. I absolutely love the Colombian styles! That’s all I will say for tonight’s post since Matt promised it to be short. I miss everyone but am getting a little sad at the thought of leaving the country that brought us our children. When we went to visit Susa (their birthplace) the other day, I couldn’t help but get sad that we were taking them away from it all. But it’s been a great trip that’s far exceeded my expectations, and I hope their life in the US does the same for them! Anyway, I am SOOOO looking forward to seeing everyone. People outside of the family have asked if it would be ok to come to the airport. Absolutely! You can call Matt’s folks at our house and they can give you the details or you can e-mail me and I will forward them to you. We can’t wait to see everyone whether it’s that night or days to follow. It’s been great sharing this journey with all of you!

Passports and Doctor Visit - and a Date to Come Home

Lucia called this morning during breakfast. She had a busy day scheduled for us. First stop, get the ninos Colombian passports at 11:00 a.m. Next stop, trip to the doctor for the ninos physicals at 3:00 p.m. We were on track for a possible Wednesday departure.

Before we could do any of that, we still had to finish up some business with Maria’s doctor. She explained that Maria might have a parasite in her belly which would be causing some somewhat loose stools. She asked that we collect a stool sample and bring it to their lab for analysis. She gave us a little cup with a lid and a latex glove which I thought was nice. I don’t know if a lot of U.S. doctors would have provided the glove. Well, Traci and I were out for the rest of the afternoon yesterday and it didn’t have a change to "collect" and get back that day. However, Traci “collected the sample” while I was out last night running to the ATM. So, she gets major points for being the good wife last night.

Anyway, after breakfast I set out for the lab with my Spanish-English dictionary in one coat pocket and a sealed vial of “used food” in the other. I kind of wondered what a robber might think if I got mugged and he emptied my pockets. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the doctor's office at a brisk walk and I have become accustomed to wearing a jacket in weather where I don’t need one (trying to blend into the Colombian culture). I only needed the dictionary once today and after some paper work at the doctor’s office, I made it back to the compound just in time to meet Lucia and Andres (her driver, not our Andres). However, I wasn’t able to stay for the lab results.

The passport office was a pretty wild place. I’ve heard and read stories from other people. To be honest, it seemed that Lucia, Andres and my wife were running in several different directions at once for a while. I was kind of watching the kids which was like herding cats. At one point, I was given a piece of paper and told to go pay some money to man behind a window. I don't ask why - I just do as I am told. But pretty soon we turned in some papers to a woman behind another window and were told to go sit down for a while. Maria and I colored while Andres played with his cars. Luke played Nintendo and read his book. Traci snapped pictures and did some people watching.



Finally, after about 30 minutes of waiting, a guy comes to a window with a stack of passports and just starts reading off names. About eveyone in the office crowds around him - and there was about 40 people in the place. We hit him from several different angles with Andres (the driver), Traci and Lucia standing around him in different areas. Maria loved looking at her Colombian passport – to the point where we had to take it away. We wanted to get a picture of the kids with their passports, but Maria was still mad at us. Maybe tomorrow.

The one thing that confused me a little about the passport office was all of the people out front selling touristy garbage. It just didn’t seem to fit. You have mostly Colombian people going in to get Colombian passports so they can, presumably, leave the country for one reason or another. Why would they want a bunch of junky maps, beads and bracelets from their own country?

We returned to the compound in good time for lunch. Today’s soup: cheese (I think – it was really good though). Main course: ham and cheese – no bread, just ham and cheese. Again, it was good. Sides: salad and potatoes. I had to pretty much inhale my meal and get back to Maria’s doctor for the lab results. You get the lab results in one room and then go down to see the doctor in another room. However, this time I didn’t have my normal English speaking doctor. I could tell by looking at the lab results myself that most of the tests came back normal (I'm not a doctor but it said "normal" after just about each test), but the doctor seemed to be indicating that Maria might have some issue that I didn’t fully understand. I did understand enough to know that it wasn't a very big deal and he gave me yet another prescription for something. When I got back to the compound, I went over the lab results with Carmen and showed her the prescription the doctor gave Maria. Apparently, Maria has been drinking some of the local water – from all of the tooth brushing, no doubt – and it isn’t agreeing with her system. So, he gave her something to kind of dry her up. Carmen said it is pretty common for people to come down with whatever this was called (she told me but I forgot) and not to worry.

Again, we had to leave soon after I arrived back at the compound. Previously, Andres drove us to the passport office in his own car but this time showed up in a cab (no Lucia with us this time). I never asked and was never told what happened to his car. Maybe he was sick of driving in downtown Bogota. I can certainly see how that would be the case. Driving down here is just crazy. Just imagine a place where there are no driving laws. While I am sure they have them, I am also pretty sure that in the last 24 hours I have been in a car that has broken every single one of them at one time or another.

The doctor visit went well and was pretty uneventful. He was a very nice man who spoke very good English. Since we got the kids, we have had a couple of folders of medical records that we couldn't really decipher because they were all in Spanish. He went over the ninos medical records with us and that got us to relax about several things. I guess his job is really just to translate the immunizations records for the kids and to give them brief physicals. During the portion of the time where he was explaining their past medical histories to Traci & me, the ninos pretty much wrecked his little collection of kids’ toys. They were all over the office and Andres treated each one like a soccer ball. As for the physical exam itself, Maria was surprisingly cooperative and Andres warmed up to things pretty quickly.



Back at the compound, we decided to go out to eat tonight at someplace very U.S.A. and we chose the Hard Rock Café. I kind of wanted a real cheeseburger, and knew we could find something there for Luke to eat. (Yes, I had a McDonald’s cheeseburger last night but those things are really pretty lousy. I was wondering today why we even eat those things). We also had some good news to celebrate.

After we got home, Traci called Lucia to see if we would be going to the U.S. Embassy for visas on Monday. Lucia said that we would and that we would have them on Tuesday. Right after that call was finished, Traci was on the phone with Delta to change our return flight reservations. We are coming home Wednesday evening. If you want more details on exactly when we will be in town, call my parents at our house or Traci’s folks at their homes. They have all of the info. We didn’t feel like posting it on the internet.

So, we now have a coming home date and our trip is almost over. However, I guess the rest of the journey is just beginning. I worry a little about Maria and Andres in those first few days in the States, but I feel pretty sure they will warm up to all of our family and friends very quickly (Andres probably will in a matter of minutes).

Back to dinner, the Hard Rock Café is in a little mall called the Atlantis Place. We’d never been in this area before and, while it was dark out, it looked very nice. There appeared to be lots of clubs in the area and lots of people out walking the streets. We might have to visit this place in the day (time permitting). I got my bacon cheeseburger, but it left me a little unsatisfied. It was one of those processed, frozen burgers and I was looking forward to a real hamburger. Luke had pizza bread and the ninos had chicken tenders. Traci ate nachos and we got a plate of onion rings for the family. Luke has been whining about getting some onion rings for weeks and ended up only eating one.



That was about it for the day. We have some shopping planned for the next couple of days. If the weather holds up, we’d like to visit Monseratte (the big mountain by the city). The rest of our days will probably be filled with planning what we want to eat and do when we get home.

I'll end with a picture we had taken at the photo shop outside of the passport office. I don't know if I would call it a "professional" portrait, but it turned out pretty good. Personally, I kind of like the saintly glow around my head. I think it is fitting.

Officially a Family of 5

We had kind of a long night last night. Maria was up and down coughing all night and didn’t let the family get too much sleep. After breakfast, we took her to the English speaking doctor a few blocks away. Andres stayed behind with the El Refugio women. Turns out that Maria has a slight case of bronchitis and may have a stomach parasite. We have to return tomorrow with a “sample” for the lab to analyze. Maria got some kind of inhaler and liquid medicine and actually seems to be doing a little better today. On the way back, we stopped at the Nike store and got Luke the soccer ball he has had his eye one almost since we got here. It's pretty neat. It's yellow and purple and has the names and flags of all of the South American and Latin American countries on it. A good souvenir from Colombia.

After our morning adventure to the doctor, it was decided that both Traci and I would go to Zipaquira to get the final adoption decree and then go to Susa to get the new birth certificates. We didn’t want to bring the kids out that way for fear of running into someone or traumatizing them. We were a little on the fence about whether to take Luke, but he decided at the last minute he wanted to stay. We told him it was going to take at least 4 hours, but he had a new Nintendo game so he though he would be alright.

They fed us an early lunch (12:30) which consisted of a potato and rice soup (always soup with the lunch), fried fish and salad. Luke ate none of it, but the ninos did fairly well. Traci and I ate what we could before we left but we were busy making sure the kids were fed and that we weren’t forgetting anything. It would be a real bummer to drive all of the way to Zipaquira or Susa and find out you forgot something. Our ride, a taxi driver who CHI and El Refugio seems to always use, and Oscar showed up at 1:00 p.m. We left the kids in the good hands of the people at El Refugio and left for our first stop, Zipaquira.

We had been here just a couple days before but without kids jumping around the car, it was nice just to kind of sight see along the way. If you ever come to Bogota and don’t take a trip out into the countryside, you are really missing out. Traci and I have been a lot of places, but the countryside around Bogota is some of the most amazing and beautiful scenery we have ever seen. I can't even compare it to anyplace i have seen before - It is that unique. We tried to snap a few pictures in the car along the way, but they really do not do the landscape justice. It’s kind of one of those things you just have to see for yourself.








Here are some people working in one of the fields along the slopes of one of the more modest mountains.

These pictures didn't turn out that great but this is a really pretty church in Ubate which is between Zipaquira and Susa. We saw it again at night on the way home when it was lit up and it was probably even more impressive looking.


Here is a picture of one of the many little brick making factories that line the roads right outside of Ubate. As explained long ago, this region is very good for making bricks because of the clay soil and the coal burried in the ground. You will notice, most of the buildings are made of brick and have clay tile roofs.


What these pictures really miss are the millions of little things we noticed along the way. Like how little shops along the road in Ubate have clay pots for sale outside, but as you get closer to Susa they have straw baskets. There was a little home along the side of the road with a small patch of corn they were growing next door which had a statute of the Virgin Mary in it (patron saint of corn?). There was a small lake near Susa that had a (fake) dinosaur standing along the edge. I could probably spend a couple days driving between Bogota and Susa snapping pictures of interesting little things. We are still tring to figure that one out as we didn't seen any other buildings of note nearby.

About three hours into our trip, Oscar got a call on his cell phone and handed it to Traci. It was Luke back at the compound wondering where we were at and why it was taking so long. We told him that we were just arriving in Susa and that we would be home in a couple more hours. He was already missing us and starting to get a little nervous. I can sort of see why. He's all alone in a foregin country, where nobody speaks his language (including his new brother and sister), and would be pretty freaked out if something were to happen to us. Nevertheless, we were in good hands with Oscar and our taxi driver.

I should also mention at this point that the roads between Zipaquira and Susa are curvy, two-lane, mountain roads that sometimes go up and down. Once in a while, you get a big truck or just some clunker trying to get up the hill in front of you at about 5-10 mph and you have to pass. They do have the "no-passing" stripes in appropriate areas on the roads here like in the U.S., but there are apparently merely a suggestion in Colombia. Our driver was pretty cautious, but others were clearly out of their minds - particularly the guys on motorcycles. It was just a little scary heading to Susa, but coming home in the dark we just about saw 3-4 fatalities. Looking back in my mind, I am kind of surprised we didn't see any wreckage laying along the side of the road. There has to have been quite a few crashes in the last several weeks if tonight's activity was any indication of how things are done around here.

We were initially a little concerned that our 2:00 p.m. appointment with the court would put us in a time crunch. However, the signing of the adoption decree and getting copies made only took about 45 minutes, maybe a little more. Oscar, our attorney, was pretty thorough about making sure everything was right. After that mere formality was completed (what would really have been considered the “sentencia” was our meeting with the judge two days earier), we headed off to Susa where Maria and Andres were born.

I had looked up Susa on Google Maps several times in the past (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=susa%2C%20colombia&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl). It is a mere speck of a town hidden away in the mountains of Colombia. Still, it is hard to get any details about a town of this size from a satellite soaring hundred of miles overhead. We were both anxious to get there.

We arrived in Susa at about 4 p.m. and parked in the main city square in front of this little local radio station.

The radio station sits right next to the "big" church which is also on the square.


In the middle of the square is a garden (also seen above in the foreground of the church) which is surrounded by paved areas where lots of kids were playing basketball and soccer. Looking at these kids, it kind of made me wonder if any of them would have been Maria's and Andres' friends had they been allowed to grow up in Susa.




The office of civil records was on the opposite side (SW corner if looking at the map)of the square from where we parked. It was just a tiny, old three story building that blended in with the rest of the places on the square. Once inside, Oscar got to work with the clerk there to get new birth certificates issued. Either Oscar had been here a few times before or he is just a really nice guy. Everyone seems happy to see him and he greets people like has known them for years. It took about 45 minutes to get all of this comleted. I asked Traci if it wouldn't be easier if they just whited out the old names. It kind of dawned on us that it is a little weird to get new birth certificates issued. I mean, we weren't there at birth. An addendum of some kind seemed more fitting.

Here is the crack staff working away on getting the new certificates issued.

And here we have them. It is now official - Maria and Andres are part of the Jensen family.

While Oscar took a few minutes to straighten some more things away, I leaned out the open window to take a few more pictures of the activity in the square and up and down the road.




This is just some random dog stiffing what someone spilled. I don't know what it was that was spilled but there were quite a few random dogs in the square and they all stopped to have a smell.

A couple of girls in their school uniforms having ice cream with the garden and church in the background.

There were a few old guys on bikes with ponchos that passed by our window. I thought they looked interesting and really liked those ponchos. When I told Traci I wanted one before I leave, she asked what for? Why, grilling out, having a glass of wine on the deck, any time I might get a chill. I think I could turn the poncho thing into a whole new fad in Kansas. Kind of like crocks. They look rediculous at first but when you put one on it feels pretty good.


And a few more random shots as we were walking to our taxi.





Susa may seem a little run down to some, but I thought it was a quaint little village. In fact, surrounded by mountains, I would go so far as to say that it was a beautiful little town. I almost felt a little bad about taking Maria and Andres away from such a beatiful area. But they will both thrive in our home in Kansas and have many more opportunities available to them - not to mention a family that truly loves them. Driving home and looking at all of the little homes and farms, I commented to Traci that I know the people around here live and work hard, but I find the setting here to be a bit relaxing.

It gets dark here in Colombia at around 6:30 and we didn't get to see too much more on the way home. We did see that some people we congregating on the front porches of their homes and it looked like everyone was coming home from work. Not too far out of Susa, we called Luke back at the compound to let him know we were on our way. I think he called us one other time too but I can't remember where that fits in. He was concerned pretty much the whole time we were gone. I guess he even called Papa Bill in the States to express some concern (which I would imagine caused a minor freak-out on Papa Bill's part too).

We also got stopped twice by the police on the drive home. In Colombia, they have these random road blocks where the police (which look like military with green fatigues and lagre caliber weapons) randomly ask cars to pull over to the side of the road. Sometimes they look inside but they usually just ask the driver what he is doing and where he is going. I'm not 100% sure what the point of these is, but I can speculate on a million things.

We also stopped off at Lucia's condo so that Oscar could drop off the papers we gathered today. She lives not too far from El Refugio in a pretty nice little place - at least it looks nice from the outside (it is also real close to the doctor's office). When we arrived home, all of the kids were extremely glad to see us. I guess some of the other El Refugio residents helped out in looking after them. We heard from a couple that Luke and Maria were pretty concerned while Andres was just Andres - smiling and happy.

They saved dinner for us with was like beef stroganoff with rice (naturally). There was also some kind of side which looked like baked tomatoes cut in half with cheese on them. Neither Traci not I are tomato people, but I tried a little and it wasn't bad. Dessert was fresh mango. I shared mine with Maria who can't get enough of that stuff.

I had a feeling that Luke was much too nervous to enjoy his dinner. So, as a reward for being such a good big brother and holding down the fort while we were away, we snuck out and went to McDonald's. I told him about our day and he told me about his. Everything did seem to go just fine and he seemed to relax a little more. He got a chicken nuggets kids meal and I got a cheesebuger. Even though I wasn't hungry, I wanted a little taste of home too.

As for tomorrow and the rest of our schedule, we still haven't heard from Lucia but we are hoping we can go get Colombian passports for Maria and Andres tomorrow. We also need to get them physicals. If we can do that, we are on target for visiting the U.S. embassy on Monday and possibly coming home Wednesday night. We still haven't made arrangments with Delta and probably will not until we have passports in hand. Wish us luck for tomorrow. Whoever out there is doing the praying, it seems to be working so keep it up.

Haircuts and Shopping

I took a nap this afternoon with the ninos and Traci typed some stuff to be placed in the blog. So, this is my wife getting her two cents in:

I thought I'd better respond to a few things on tonight's post. I can't let my husband do all of my talking, right? I didn't want you all to think Colombia had gotten the best of me! Matt seemed to have poked fun at my comment that my hair is “fried.” Well, I couldn’t possibly hope for him to understand being a man of so little hair. But that is exactly what my hair is. Anyone traveling here before ever have this problem? I started noticing a change before we left for Cartegena. Then, it got worse. (Of course the hyper-chlorinated pool probably didn’t help.) Today I even conditioned it twice. It seems to be better, but I have a feeling that the hard water here can’t be helping. Any suggestions out there? Marilyn—you asked where my loyalty is with the Royals. Believe me, I am keeping track of their standings. My in-laws went to the game on Sunday so we knew the horrible streak finally snapped. Plus, Luke gets updates from various people so I get my Royals fix through those avenues as well. Believe me, I am still a fan thousands of miles away and can’t wait to get home for a game! A response to the picture of me and the chicken (pollo) potato chips yesterday. We bought them for Andres and I tasted one. I told Matt I found it funny to be able to say that a potato chip “tastes like chicken.” So, when he was photographing it, I truly believed he was getting a kick out of that with me. The Aguila poster behind me definitely told me otherwise. Unfortunately, looks like I spoiled his fun! Also in response to the pictures of the city yesterday, I was so disappointed when I saw them on the post. I know we have said it more than once, but they just didn’t come close to doing any justice to the beauty that we saw. I had my breath taken away by a few houses up on the mountains. They were amazing and stretched across a large part. Incredible beauty dulled by a mundane camera! On to other things. . . it’s good to be back at El Refugio. I totally miss our two rooms at the Hilton. Matter of fact, I think I hit a wall last night and finally decided that I am 100% ready to come home. Bedtime was a bit of a chore last night, but when five people, all on different “bedtime” schedules, try to blend into a small room, it’s a recipe for disaster at times. The kids (M&A) want someone in the room even though we are trying to gently work past this and we believe it will be much easier at home when everyone has their own bedroom. And if anyone else is in the room with them, you have to have the lights out and there can be no movement because they are both so curious about what you are doing that they will not go to sleep. Last night, I just wanted to lay in bed and read my book (impossible as I have no book light) and Luke wanted to watch a movie in bed (impossible b/c both M&A will want to know what he is watching). So Luke and I had to lay absolutely still until both kids fell asleep which was close to 10pm. Luke finally gave up and went to bed. I sat and dreamed about being in my own bedroom at home. : ) Not only is the bedtime routine an ordeal at times, waking up can be, too. Maria goes through the night without coughing and then starts in a little before 7am almost every day. Matt can sleep through it. It has awakened the rest of us, in particular me, everyday. I have tried to get her to drink water. She won’t. Matt finally forced her to drink it this morning after Luke and I were hopelessly awake and then she began crying. It’s a no-win situation. Again, just another great reason to come home and be in our own rooms. But the best reason to get home to our own bedrooms has to be so that we aren’t all subjected to Andres’ horrible, disgusting, indescribable diaper every morning. It’s absolutely intoxicating. I have already determined that I need to get out the old Diaper Genie. However, does anyone know if they still make the liners for that thing or is there a new product on the market? So with all of these things in addition to a shower that shoots out water like it’s coming from a garden hose and a toilet that we can not put toilet paper down (however, Matt and I are both frequently guilty as old habits die hard), the thought of being home is now on my mind 24/7. The only things making it easier? 1) Knowing that we appear to have a countdown in sight now, 2) I have had two days in a row of warm showers here in El Refugio, 3) I have a beautiful family that I am so happy to be a part of. This situation is obviously temporary and I would do it all again!

Matt again: I’m glad Traci got the opportunity to add a little to the blog while I get to wrap things late at night after everyone is in bed. One of the reasons I enjoy doing the blog is that I get to do it late at night after everyone is in bed and I can finally have some time to myself. We are on top of one another here and it is easy to get on someone’s nerves once in a while. That is one of the biggest day-to-day struggles we deal with here. A few quiet moments on the computer is the salve for my own irritation. That and a couple of beers (Club Colombia or Aguila).

Traci already described Maria’s morning coughing attack. After I made her drink a glass of water and she started crying, I got her up and we went downstairs for breakfast. We were hoping that Andres might sleep a little later, but he joined us after a few minutes. Traci and Luke escaped to the Juan Valdez coffee shop (Colombia’s version of Starbucks – but I hear that is coming soon) for a little away time and to make sure Luke got something besides toast for breakfast. As per usual, Maria had cereal and Andres had French toast. I kind of cut Maria off this morning from ordering a fried egg only to not eat it. I had coffee and a piece of toast. Maria insisted that I put some jelly on it too.

Since the first week, Traci has been “suggesting” (or “complaining” depending upon how you hear it) that Maria needs a hair cut. There is a place not too far from here that kind of specializes in kids’ hair that we decided to give a try. There is a place in KC that is similar but this place is much, much better. The pictures kind of describe it all, so I won’t go into detail about the place.

Even though we had discussed this several times previously with Maria, she was pretty traumatized at first.

Maria saying goodbye to her Repunzel-like mane.

A sucker and a Stawberry Shortcake video later and she was much more subdued (or at least resigned to her fate).

And voila!!

Andres, on the other hand, took everything in stride and seemed to enjoy himself. Of course, as soon as they put him in that car seat, he was in his element. His video of choice was Barney.





Luke even got his hair cut. He didn't really need one, but i think he saw that he could play xbox while they did it. His game of choice, FIFA 2005 Soccer.



Here is our new and improved family. The spray in Andres' hair is purple while Luke opted for the green. At first, Luke's hair was just spiked green, but he wanted it changed to a mohawk style like Andres (which he didn't know was an option). When they combed it together, some of the green washed out but it was still pretty green close up. And is if they didn't look enough like outsiders with thier green and purple hair, they all wore KU shirts (I am sure Traci will again claim this was just coincidence).

After the haircuts, we walked back to the compound. The last few days have been relatively rain free in Colombia. Of course, yesterday was mostly spent in a car and in a hole in the ground. Today, we walked around quite a bit and had a perfect day.


On the way home, I caried Maria for a little bit and she made me stop so she could pick a flower for her mami.

Back at the compound, things were busy. Lucia was here meeting with some folks and he son, David, had just returned with the other U.S. family from the embassy. We met with Lucia for a bit and she said that they were still trying to get sentencia arranged for tomorrow, but hoped we wouldn't be too disappointed if it occurred the following day. We just told her we knew she was doing her best for us. Hopefully, she didn't hear the sounds our out hearts crashing to the floor.

I can't even remember what we did for lunch today. Nevetheless, I am sure that Luke didn't eat much again. We got the kids down for naps, and I fell asleep too (I think the combination of late nights and geting up a little early with Maria got me).

Afterwards, we went to Mimo's for a little ice cream with Kelly and her daughter, Michelle. It was fun sharing more stories about our respective homes with Kelly. After that, we went to the Maku artisan market and Kelly & Michelle went back to the compound. Maku was three floors of different books, crafts and t-shirts. We found some interesting stuff, but didn't go overborad with the buying. Still, it was interesting looking around and we didn't get back until just before dinner.

At dinner time, we hit the jackpot. They were serving the baked chicken dish again that Luke likes. Finally, Luke eats!! We also get a different rice dish with each dinner. Jackpot again as Luke liked that too. He didn't much go for the sauteed zucchini (none of the kids did), but Traci and I really enjoyed it. Desert was grenadilla which only the ninos seem to enjoy. I had some too, but just wanted to try and imprint that taste on my brain. I don't think I will have it again after we leave Colombia.

After dinner, Lucia called back to let us know that the sentencia would be going forward tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. After that, we are going to try to drive out to Susa to get new birth certificates. I previously thought that would be done in Ubate because Susa is so small and Ubate is the place where we got the kids. However, since the births were registered in Susa, we have to go there. I am the only one that has to go and we are trying to decide whether Traci can go too. She really wants to go, and I kind of want her there. However, we will be gone for several hours and Luke isn't ready to watch two little kids yet (and we wouldn't want to place that burden on someone else here). We don't have a solution yet and will talk about it some more tomorrow morning. Meeting at 2:00 p.m. in Zipaquira and then trying to get new birth certificates in Susa afterwards puts some time constraints on us. I just don't know if we can get it all done in time but we will try. Wish us luck!

While we had several different people present at the compound this afternoon, Traci set about to make my job this evening more difficult tonight and took a few pictures of the compound. First of all, here is the picture of Lucia's son, David, that we didn't get yesterday. I think he really liked Andres' haircut.

I guess we start with our new room. As I said before, it is one of the two rooms upstairs. It's cozy, but clean and fairly comfortable. See the pile of laundry in the left back forner of the room? That is where the room essentially ends as there is a closet there. And the window over the master bed overlooks the family room.


Downstairs, is sort of a family room, common area. In this picture it is filled with our French friends. On the right are Anita and Oliver who are adopting Yhan (not pictured here). I think Yhan is about 5-6 years old and he has kind of taken over Luke's role as David's partner in crime. I like Anita and oliver because they drink beer at odd times during the day (my kid of folks). To the left of them are Tony, Cathy and David, our french firneds that we have written so much about in the past. Tony own a home electronics store in France. They plan to be here for about 6-8 weeks adopting Jeremy who is sitting on the lady's lap in the chair further left. That lady is Carmen and she is adopting a 9 year old girl named Anjelica. I think that might be her also sitting in the chair. You can't really see her, but she is just beautiful.

Here is Tony, David and Jeremy. Tony doesn't speak a lot of English, but his wife, Cathy, has been working with me on some easy phrases like "good morning," "good night," and "how are you?" I won't even try to write that in French. I just kind of know how they sound. And that is Yhan in the background.

When you walk into the front door, there is a little office area to the left. This is where I usually do my blog entries. They also have a phone line to the U.S. here. You can see Kelly, the other U.S. mom, sitting at the computer. Carmen, the lady who kind of runs the non-domestic type operations here is seated on the left.

Here is a better picture of Carmen. She is a great translator (speaks 3-4 languages), guide and friend. When our arrangements to Cartagena got a little botched, she went down to the Avianca office with me at the Unicentro mall and helped to try and straighten things out. We'd be pretty lost without her.

This is the eating area where everyone gathers together for meals. I'm kicking myself because i can't remember the name of the lady trying to escape the picture. She is one of the great staff people they have here. For instance, this afternoon Maria fell off the swing (again) today and hit her head. When I carried her inside, I couldn't even get the Spanish word for "ice" out of my mouth before this lady scooped her out of my arms and started calming her down. Anyway, we sit in the table closest to the camera, kind of on the left there. You can see Andres' high chair. Traci usually sits to the right of Andres, then me, Luke and Maria.

And in the kitchen is our friend Wilma. I've already said enough about her.

Next to where Wilma was standing in the kitchen is my favorite part of the compound - the little old fashioned looking coffee maker. This is what keeps me going some days.

And tearing out of the laundry room in the back of the compound is Maria.

It may not be the Cartagena Hilton, but while we are in Bogota there isn't anyplace else we would rather stay. In fact, we kind of begged Carmen to find a way for us to come back here when we returned from Cartagena. The agency we work with uses a couple B&B type places here in Bogota and, as far as we're concerned, we got the best one.

That is it for tonight. Let's hope we have some more good news to give tomorrow night.

Zipaquira and the Salt Cathedral

Gosh, I didn’t realize how much the pictures meant to the blog stalkers. I always thought it was my interesting writing and wry sense of humor that kept people looking at the blog. I have a couple pictures from yesterday I guess I can post.

Here is Traci and the ninos. Maria is currently in a stage 2 pout right here. I figure there are about 5-6 stages of her pouts. So stage 2 can pretty much be ignored. Stages 5 & 6 aren't bad though. I have seen worse.


Driving out to the airport, we passed the old, historic part of town again. Traci took some photos of the wall surrounding the old city. In the first photo, you can see a small, dirt soccer field some people were playing on. Just like in Kansas, any extra flat patch of ground is soon turned into a soccer field.






Traci, Andres and Luke on the plane waiting for lift off. Don't they look like they just got out of a sauna (i.e. Cartagena airport)?


This picture is pretty terrible. Maria was listening to my ipod on the plane and would flip through songs until she found on she liked. Here she stopped on a song by my cousin Ryan's band, The Rinse. Yeah, I bought the album. It was kind of a bargin on iTunes. Anyway, I am posting it as proof that Ryan has a new fan.


Back in Bogota, breakfast at the compound was pretty much the same. Again, Maria insisted on a fried egg and only ate cereal. Andres ate everything and Luke ate two pieces of toast with butter and sugar on them. Traci ate the French toast (again). Anymore, I pretty much just let everyone order and eat whatever nobody else is eating. We tried to eat early because they were going to feed us an early lunch due to the fact that we had to leave a little early for our appointment with the judge. So, the next few hours we kind of spent getting ready to get ready to leave. The kids played a bit and I ironed my clothes which were pretty wrinkled from being in storage here at the compound while we were in Cartagena. Traci worked on her hair which she says is “totally fried” at this point in the trip. Apparently, I am coming home with a bald wife by the end of the trip (which should cut down on the “at least 45 minutes” to get ready routine).

Lunch was a little busier than usual. We had the kids all dressed up to see the judge and didn’t want them to spill anything on themselves. So, we probably spent more time hovering over them than we did eating out own lunch. Our only mishap was that Andres spilled his water on his shirt (thank gawd it wasn’t juice). Today, we had soft tacos and French fries. They were pretty good but way too big to pick up and eat with your hands. Therefore, several hands were required in getting the ninos fed while keeping them clean. Maria ate well, Andres ate everything and Luke ate nothing. I don’t know what we can do to feed Luke. I mean, if he won’t eat tacos, there isn’t much else to be tried. Now he is reverting way back to his “well, it looks different so I don’t want to eat it” stage.

Here are the ninos all dressed up and ready to meet the judge. They don’t look very thrilled in the pictures, but they were actually in good spirits. Traci says the matching yellows was just a coincidence.


Here is the family. We are standing in the living room of the compound. Behind us is the front door. Just past the yellow wall on the left are the stairs up to our room. I don’t know if we have done a very good job of describing the El Refugio compound, but we will try to do better in the future.


David, our driver, translator and tour guide, stopped by a little after one. As I explained before, David is the son of Lucia who is our agency’s point person in Colombia. He speaks great English and seems to know just about everything about the area we are in (and if he was making it up, he did a good job of keeping things interesting). The court where the legal proceedings are taking place is up north a bit in Zipaquira. We rode in David's car and took pretty much the same route that we took on the way to Ubate to get the kids.

We are in the mountains but were on a little highway that kind of runs through a valley between them. Once out of Bogota, there are farms, cows, greenhouse and some very nice homes tucked away in the mountains. I tried to get a few shots from the moving car on the way.




This is some kind of restaurant or banquent hall that looks like a castle. We thought it was neat and sort of out of place.


Zipaquira is a pretty small town, but still much larger than Ubate. I took a few pictures driving into town.



As we were driving through familiar territory, Traci asked David if sometimes when they drove kids back out to these areas they recognized stuff and started to freak out a little. David said he had seen it happen but it was very rare. Sure enough, as we got into Zipaquira, Maria began to cry. Luckily, we quickly arrived at our destination. At least, David parked the car but I couldn't see a courthouse anywhere and assumed we would have to walk a bit. Nope, the courthouse was right next door. I've been in quite a few courthouses in my life and I don't know how I missed this one (insert sarcasm here).


We arrived a few minutes after 1:00 which had me a little worried that we would be in trouble (we would in the States). But there were no problems and the judge was ready to see us right away. We were ushered into a small conference room on the top floor (that little triangluar window at the top of the building in the picture). I think everyone was too anxious to get this over with to be nervous. The judge came in and just had a pleasant discussion with us and the kids. Maria seemed to be having fun and Andres had his "flirt mode" in overdirve. He was sitting on the judge's lap giving her hugs and kisses and she ate it up. I hope for his sake he can keep that action up once he outgrows his "Webster phase." The judge asked Luke a few questions and he gave great honest answers. For instance, she asked if he sometimes fought a little with his new siblings and he said, "yes." She asked which one he fought with the most and after careful thought he said his sister. A toughter question was given to Andres when he was asked to point to his daddy. At first he pointed to David (which I am sure made him a little uncomfortable). Then he pointed to the wall and some objects on the counter. I don't know if he ever got it right, but Maria was shouting the answer in his ear the whole time. It was pretty funny, but I might have to wear a bigger "papi" badge in the future.

The judge was a terrific lady. She was distinguished, classy and provided us with what turned out to be a very nice visit. She even agreed to stand with us all for a picture when we were done.


When it was over, we stopped off at a little minimarket next door for sodas, juice and chips.


These chips were really good. They taste just like chicken (I was actually trying to take a picture of the Aguila girl in the poster behind Traci. She was wearing a heck of a lot less than a bag of chips in the poster).


Traci thinks I am getting everyone's hopes up too much with my talk about sentencia and coming home. I'll just give the facts as best we know them and let everyone else draw their own conclusions. Soon after we left the courthouse, the judge signed the sentencia papers. These papers also require the signature of our attorney, Oscar, and the lady from the children's services that we met with when we got the kids and at integracion. Oscar happened to be in Zipaquira later that day and signed the papers. So, all we are waiting on is children's services and I believe she also works in Zipaquira.

If the papers get done early in the morning, we can drive out to Zipaquira to get them and continue on to Ubate to get the birth certificates changed. We want to do this all in one trip because they are so close together and way up north. If the papers are not signed until the afternoon, we will probably have to wait until Thursday before we do the trip to Zipaquira & Ubate.

After that, we need to get Colombian passports for the ninos and physicals. I think, but I am not sure that these can be taken care of in a day. The physicals are a requirement for U.S. visas and are pretty cursory (I would liken it to getting your medical release form signed to play high school football, but those who know me know that is not a good example).

Running into the end of the week, our problem is with the U.S. Embassy. A visa requires 24 hours to turn around. However, they do not accept new applicaitons on Friday. So, if we can complete all of the other steps before the end of the week, we can probably vist the embassy on Monday and have visas on Tuesday. That would possibly mean coming home on Wednesday. This of course assumes we have no glitches in the Matrix. We still haven't called Delta to make arrangements to come home. When that happens, we will let everyone know and we can pretty much call that a firm coming home date.

On the way to Zipaquira, Traci had expressed interest to David in the Salt Cathedral which is in the mountains next to the town. As we were heading back to the car, he offered to take us there for a quick tour. Even though the kids hadn't had naps, they were in pretty good spirts and we agreed to go.

By way of background, salt has been mined from the mountains surrounding Zipaquira for hundreds of years and is still being mined today. After much of the salt was mined out of a particular area, they made it into a sort of cathedral. Actually, what we toured was the second salt cathedral. The original was closed in the early 1990's because it was unsafe (if you can imagine a cathedral made of salt in an area where it rains practically every day, I'm not surprised - even if it is under ground).

So, here is the entrance. At the entereance we met our English speaking guide named Nixon (yes, like the president). Normally, on weekends and holidays this place is packed. Today, however, we pretty much had the run of the place.


After you walk in, the first section you go through are the stations of the cross. In each station, Jesus is represented by the cross and there are various forms of symbolism used to depict each scene in each station. Here are pictures of a couple of the stations. I've kind of forgotten what the symbolism is in each of these photos or what station they are from. One example (of which I do not have a picture of), is a cross with huge boulders on either side. Each rock represents Mary Madalene and the Virgin Mary. The ground in front was pretty rugged and torn up and is suppsed to represent the rocky ground that women have to walk on. Get the picture? As you can see that it is a pretty subdued sort of symbolism. Honestly, as pretty as it all was, by the 14th station I felt kind of like I just waled past 14 crosses made of salt.



Luke and Andres taking in some heavy symbolism. I don't think either of them got "the calling" the become priests on this tour.


Here is some of the salt build up on the walls of the tunnels we walked through. And Nixon, our guide, pulled some fools gold out of one of the walls and gave it to Luke. He thought that was pretty neat. Personally, I was terrified at how crumbly the walls were.


This is the chapel where they still give mass on Sundays and will even perform weddings if you have a little cash. The relief that Luke and Andres are checking out is actually made of marble - not salt. It is sort of a recreation of Michelangelo's "Creation (?)" painting in the Sistene Chapel with a few modifications (no face of God, God's hand is bigger and the fingers touch).



This is the choir loft in the back of the chapel.


This is an area where they can do baptisms in a separate chamber off to the left of the chapel. And, yes, it is really about as dark in this place and it shows in the photos.


Traci, Luke and Maria emerging from the mine with our guide Nixon. I asked where he learned English so well and he said he taught himself by studying at home and watching TV shows with subtitles. Maybe there is hope for me yet.


In all, it was a worhtwhile trip. They even had a 3-D movie at the end that talked a little about how the mine was made and how the salt was used, but we had to leave right before it ended because we realized that we had been in the place for well over an hour (the time we told David we would be leaving as he waited for us outside). I don't think this place is in Kathy's 1,000 Place You Have to See Before You Die book, but it should be (better than the Sofitel).

David wasn't at all agitated that we were late getting out of the time. On the way back, he even took us on a little bonus driving tour of Zipaquira. I can't recall the name of this Church (I'm not sure David knew either), but it was pretty.




The streets are pretty narrow. At one point, we had oncoming traffic and that was kind of tricky.


Luke's favorite part of the trip through Zipaquira was this sight. This guys drives his truck around town loaded up with kitchen wares trying to sell to people. He even has a bell or something that he rings like the icecream man. I have to admit, the thought of women running out of their homes at the sound of the bell and yelling "cocina! cocina!" (kitchen! kitchen!) at the top of their lungs instead of "ice cream! ice cream!" made me laugh.


Heading back to Bogota was a bit of a bear. We were in rush hour traffic and it took well over and hour to get back to the compound. Nevertheless, David kept it interesting with his stories and just being a tour guide. He is as free of a spirit as I have ever met and I am bummed that we didn't get a picture of him for all of you. One interesting story he touched on was how he went hitchhiking with his girlfriend when he was 15 year old. In Colombia?!?! Although pretty much everyone we have met in Colombia is extremely nice, David has to be one of the nicest people and most interesting characters we have met on our trip. Oh, and to the Kitts family, he said he remembers you in his head and his heart. I could never say things like that without getting punched by somene. But it seems to come from him naturally.

Dinner was a breaded and fried pork (?) and rice. Luke had two bites of pork but no rice. Even the ranch dressing we brought from the States couldn't help him. We were then served bananas for dessert. The ninos are getting much better about finishing their dinners before "demanding" their dessert.

No baths tonight which made things a little easier. Maria has to take a shower and I end up having to stand in the door to make sure she gets all of the soap out of her hair. I'm usually about as wet as she is when it is all done (the bathtub at the Hilton was so much better). For Andres, we have a little tub that we fill with water in the shower. It's a little small for him but does the job.

Bed time reading was 102 Dalmations (in Spanish). Another bed time story the kids really like but i have neglected to mention is "Perro Grande . . . Perro Pequenllo . . ." I like that one too because the Spanish words are pretty easy to read. I kind of fumble through the Lion King and Dalmations. As I told Traci tonight, half of the time i don't even know what I am saying, I am just concentrating on getting my pronunciation right. The kids weren't real ready for bed when I was done, but I put them down anyway. There was a lot of difficulty in getting them to go to sleep tonight, but it's a long story and I am too tired to tell it tonight.

That's about it for day whatever we are on now. Each day we grow more anxious to go home. Even Maria is a little anxious to see her new home. I showed her the video tape of her room again this morning and she just giggles (it was incentive not to screw things up in front of the judge later in the day). There is light at the end of the tunnel and we should know a little more tomorrow on when we can make those changes to our Delta tickets to come home.

Back to Bogota!

We made it out of Cartagena without a hitch (and with my new belt notch intact). We had to wear our “Bogota clothes” to the airport which meant pants for everyone. If the Cartagena airport was air conditioned, I sure couldn’t tell. They had fans going everywhere, but unless you were seated right in front of one it was pretty miserable. The only hiccup came when we arrived in Bogota and our ride wasn’t there to meet us at the airport. We waited around for a while looking for someone carrying a sign with our name on it but pretty soon the baggage area was clear and we were the last ones left. Against advice and better judgment, we snagged a cab. However, everything turned out great. Our cabbie gave us a reasonable rate and got us back to our home-away-from-home in good time. Turns out that I think I gave the incorrect arrival time to our hosts here in Bogota. So, the cab they sent arrived at the airport about the same time we arrived back at El Refugio. My bad. I hope I get a chance to make it up to the guy who drove out to the airport looking for us.

We were greeted at El Refugio by our French friends Cathy and Tony (boys are David and Jeremy). I think Luke was kind of happy to see David since they get along pretty well. We were also surprised to see the U.S. family that made a quick one-night stop here at the compound while we were here last. I can’t recall if I mentioned them before they just stayed a quick night before leaving early the next morning for Florencia – which is pretty much Amazon country. They have two teenaged daughters who came on the trip and adopted a 9 year old girl. She is very sweet and a cute kid. However, the two girls and their dad are heading back to Spokane, WA tomorrow at about 5:30 a.m. It was nice to see them again, however briefly. It’s always nice to converse is clear English with someone. They are sleeping in our old room upstairs and we are across the hall (where the Adelmans stayed). In fact, I accidentally walked in there later in the evening out of habit. It was embarrassing but could have been much worse (everyone was decent).

We were a little disappointed that some of the families were gone. In fact, the only people still here were Cathy, Tony and their boys. During our absence, we lost Natalie and her mom, the other Spanish family that gave us a copy of the “Pincho” song for Maria, and two French families that were also very nice. We did gain another French family, Carmen and her new daughter (Advice to people staying in El Refugio in the future – you might want to pick up a couple French phrases. We’ve had lots of families from France). I was really kind of hoping the Pincho family would stick around a bit longer. They were really fun although their English was worse than my Spanish and speaking was difficult. Wilma, one of the housekeepers/cooks/guides that works here, said it was a pretty sad day last Friday and they had a line of cabs out front taking people away. The place seems much quiter and isn't nearly as full.

Speaking of Wilma, she is clearly my favorite of the housekeepers in the compound. She is always very nice and extremely patient with my Spanish. She is also the one who complimented me on my Spanish in our first couple days here which gave her an immediate leg up on anyone else. She also keeps talking to me and pushing me to speak more Spanish. It kind of hurts my head after a while but I suppose it is good for me. She works here for 24 hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and sleeps in a little room in the back. It takes a special kind of person to put up with all of the kids running around here and people like me for weeks on end (she even has three kids of her own at home). Another sort of funny Wilma story . . . we weren’t in the door more than a couple minutes when she reminded us that the kids need jackets if they are going outside to play. What is it with the Colombians and their “cold” weather? It’s kind of like the people in Bogota are trying to remind us that all of Colombia isn’t the hot, muggy place we see in the movies. Nevertheless, we had Maria’s jacket handy because we knew people in the airport would give us “looks” if our kids ran around with short sleeves.

We arrived too late for lunch and tried putting the ninos down for a naps. We left Luke “in charge” while Traci and I ran out to get diapers and some more cash. When we returned, everyone was up and running around. So much for naps today! The kids were clearly tired, but I think a little excited to be back at the compound. Additionally, some of the kids here were anxious to see them and I think they were going into our room to look at them. So, even though Luke was “in charge,” it really isn’t his fault.

Dinner was fried plantain and some chicken & rice dish with some sliced salchichas mixed in. Desert was fresh oranges. We had a late breakfast this morning and the ninos got a snack (of somewhat dubious nutritional value) on the plane. So, we were all pretty hungry by the time dinner was served at 7:00 p.m. Luke, however, reverted back to his old ways and turned his nose up at the plantain and chicken & rice. He did eat some of the oranges. The poor kid hasn’t eaten much in the last couple days. I may have to take him out for something if he doesn’t get a good breakfast and lunch in tomorrow.

Now, the good news of the day . . . As I predicted, Lucia called tonight with some important information. The judge wants to meet the family tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. Lucia’s son, David (our translator for the day), will be meeting us here at 12:30 to take us all to the court (I still can’t recall where it is, looking at the map, I want to say it is in Zipaquira which isn’t quite as far north as Ubate). From what I understand, this is fairly common in the smaller courts and usually the judge gets the “sentencia,” or final adoption decree, signed by the next day. If that happens, there is a chance that we could be home next Tuesday or Wednesday night of next week (conservatively estimating). So, if you are the praying sort of people, keep them coming.

The kids went to bed tonight with some difficulty. In Cartagena, they did pretty well with us leaving the room to go next door to our room. They were joined rooms and we left the door cracked. Tonight, we tried laying them down and leaving the room, but Maria started screaming for “papi” at the top of her lungs. I will chalk it up to over-tired. We will try again tomorrow night. Otherwise, I may end up sleeping in the hallway between their two rooms when I get home.

I am sorry, but there will be no pictures on this blog entry. I think we took a couple but nothing that would be of interest to anyone. I mean, how many times do you want to see pictures of us on a plane or standing by our luggage? So, I will save you that.

I’ve been lingering over my blog listening to the Pens v. Red Wings game on the internet (still haven't been able to find anything on TV). Depressing! The Wings almost had it won in regulation but the Penguins tied it up with about 30 seconds left. Then I had to sit through almost exactly 2.5 overtimes just to hear my Wings get beat. Maybe the Bob Probert Wings jersey is bad luck. I will have to throw it in the laundry before game 6 to wash out some of the bad karma from this game.

Last Night in Cartagena

The single worst thing about the Hilton is that we have to pay for internet access (oh, and you have to pay for bottled water). And it isn’t a token fee either. It kind of burns me up a little, particularly when I know there are lots of places in the States that I can get online for free. Our time runs out tonight at about 11:45. So, I am hoping we can get this one done before then. We should, since we having done anything except swim and lay around.

When we woke up this morning, Luke wasn’t feeling well. He “gave back dinner” twice this morning. He blamed it on the hot dog with lettuce I brought him for lunch yesterday. Could be. He didn’t eat much at dinner either. Additionally, Andres had about the worst “blow-out” we have ever seen. Traci even had to wash his jammie bottoms. I think we are going to have to watch his fruit and bean intake. Those are two of his favorites and he ate a lot of that yesterday.

So, this morning for breakfast it was just me, Maria and Andres. They were pretty good and I didn’t have too hard of a time managing them. I pretty much stuck with coffee and fruit, but the kids ate a lot of my fruit.

The day was about as perfect out as you could ask for. Maybe a little hot. Maria even asked if we could go to the pool this morning (like we had other plans). Again, I was kind of on my own with Maria and Andres for about the first 20-30 minutes at the pool. They were good and took turns jumping into the pool and onto papi. Luke and Traci finally made it down and Luke swam for a bit. He’s feeling a lot better, but only swam a little bit. He also spent some time in the shade playing game boy.

We had a late breakfast, so I only gave the ninos a quick snack before it was time to take a nap around 1:00 p.m. Traci and Luke got room service and I went on my afternoon trek for money. I believe I mentioned this yesterday, but the nearest ATM is about 1 mile away. I enjoyed my little hike yesterday and was looking forward to today’s stroll. As we are kind of on a peninsula, it is kind of hard to vary my route, but I still I ended up overrunning the bank by about a block. On the way back, I grabbed a chicken empanada from some guy selling them on the street in front of a restaurant. With a bottle of water in one hand and my empanada in the other, I continued walking home. I think it had a lot of jerk seasoning in it as it kind of tasted like that and the innards were yellowish. It was quite tasty and I probably would have had another if I hadn’t walked away. Still, it is probably best that I just risk eating one at this point. We have a lot of traveling tomorrow.

My impressions of Cartagena are that it is kind of touristy, but still not nice enough to spend a bunch of cash to vacation to. I mean, there are some nice resorts (ours, and I hear Las Americas is nice too), but the hotels downtown are kind of “stay at your own risk.” If you are going to stay downtown, there are some smaller places that I have heard are nice. I even walked past a couple places that looked pretty decent. However, these places have no pool and are a bit of a walk to the beach. Oh, and if you like beach vacations, this is definitely not the place. It looks like they have done a lot of work to expand and improve the Hilton beach, but the sand is pretty poor and there always seems to be junk in the water. Cartagena is probably more fun for the young and adventurous – not a couple of old people dragging three kids around. I told Traci the other night that it is a good cruise ship stop, but a day or two in Cartagena is enough. Nevertheless, if coming to Cartagena, I give a strong recommendation for the Hilton where we are staying. Lots of people here speak at least some English. The place is extremely clean and all of the staff have been great. If you don’t feel like venturing out, they pretty much have everything you need right here. If you do want to get out, there are lots of little restaurants within walking distance. Around a mile away, where my ATM is located, there are some pretty nice, higher end shops and boutiques. Traci here: And the Hilton workers come up and tell you when you are getting burnt. One Hilton lady was extremely concerned about Luke today when she saw he had pink skin. I appreciated the fact that she was worried. It’s nice that others here will tell you when you are burning as it’s tough to know. What she didn’t know is that burn was from 4 days ago and his skin takes on that glow all summer long. So as not to offend, Luke put his shirt on and shortly thereafter, we left the pool. I will caution those of you who may come here for adoption purposes. . . you will definitely get a lot of looks here. People seem to be quite fascinated with two, overly white American adults carrying around two clearly Colombian children. We’ve had questions asked directly to us and you can tell others are questioning privately amongst themselves. It makes me go back to my question of how Colombians really feel about us coming in and taking the kids. Bottom line, I’m sure we’ll get similar looks in the U.S. It just feels different here as our children are a part of this culture.

We’ve had some comments asking about a timeline for when we can expect to return. The answer to that is that there really isn’t one. We did luck out in that our legal papers were filed in a smaller court outside of Bogota which means things should progress a little faster. However, nobody can tell us what “faster” means. I’m holding out a happy thought that our “sentencia” will be on Wednesday after we get back. If that happens, there is a slim chance we could be home Saturday/Monday/Tuesday time frame. After “sentencia” (when we get the final adoption decree) we have to get new birth certificates in Ubate and take the kids to get passport photos, passports, physicals and visas. This process takes about 3-4 days depending upon how quickly you can move. Traci: I love Matt’s optimism. I hope he is right. However, I am praying for Sentencia by week’s end. That would put is home before Father’s Day! Regardless, Luke and I have already decided that we can’t wait to come home and have Jose Peppers cheese dip and salsa. My nighttime dreams are starting to be infiltrated by dreams of food we are missing!

Yes, it all sounds like a long time but from talking with some of the families from France and Spain, they usually expect to be in country for 5-8 weeks. I don’t recall the name of the agency most of them use, but it really makes me appreciate the people we are working with at CHI. I was going to come home a little early with Luke if it looked like it was going to go too far into the 4th week. However, now that we are down here and as much as Luke wants to go home, I can see that I had better stay. It’s not the safest place for a blonde lady with two little kids. Also, Traci’s Spanish is barely good enough to get around. In any event, I do not expect it to run that long (fingers crossed and knocking on wood). Traci: Hey. . .I’m working muy hard on mi espanol! I don’t know what Mateo is talking about! So what that I say things in VERY broken sentences and don’t always make my subjects and verbs agree and sometimes mix up my el and la with words. I actually thought I was doing pretty good until I just read that comment from Matt. My bubble has burst!

Dinner tonight – pasta, which the ninos have no taste for. So, we loaded them up on as many side items as we could find to their liking. Andres doesn’t seem to like a lot of meats. He will eat chicken, but doesn’t seem to like red meats or fish. He is supposed to be on a protein heavy diet and so far that is proving difficult.

That’s pretty much it from Cartagena. It was fun but I think we are all kind of glad to be heading back to Bogota. It isn’t really that we enjoy Bogota that much, but leaving Cartagena represents crossing one more hurdle before we can come home. Happy birthday to my Grandma Hazel – I know it is on 6/2, but you will probably read this tomorrow and there is no telling when we will get online.

We didn’t take too many pictures today as they are all starting to look the same. Hopefully, things will be a little more interesting when we get back to Bogota.

The 5 of us at out last dinner at the Hilton:


Matt, Luke & Maria at dinner


The guys in their cool Hawaiian shirts.


This is Maria in a full blown pout. I can't ever remember what this was about. She really hates it when you tell her "no." It can even be a nice "no," like "oh, no thanks" or she will pout and cry like she is being punished. I'm afraid this is something everyone is just going to have to get used to (particularly the grandparents with soft hearts).

Cartagena, Day ??

Not too much to say about today. Sorry to be so boring, but we are on “vacation.” The days are starting to run together. Sometimes it seems like time is flying here in Colombia, and the next moment it seems like we have been here forever.

We had to eat breakfast outside again because the hotel is still fairly crowded. The birds were still there, mooching food off of used plates. They are pretty aggressive too. One even flew up and sat on the empty chair next to me for a bit. I guess i wasn't eating fast enough. We saw Luke II and his family at breakfast. Poor kid can’t get a break. I guess he got out yesterday and was sunburned so badly that he got some pretty bad blisters on his back. You could tell he was walking a little gingerly trying not to move the top portion of his body. He was going to the doctor today to see if he could get some medicine so they wouldn’t become infected. I thought that might seem a little extreme but he does have that fair English complexion.

After breakfast, I checked into the aquarium, but it seems that it is an all-day trip. It’s on an island and the boat leaves at 8:00 a.m., returning at about 4:00 p.m. There is no way the ninos could go that long without a nap. So, we have nixed that idea. Maybe on our next trip to Chicago, we will take them to the Shed Aquarium.

With no aquarium to visit, that pretty much left the pool as far as things to do. When we left KC, we brought with us a pair of inflatable “water wings” in case we did go swimming somewhere. However, in the move from KC to Bogota and Bogota to Cartagena, they got lost somewhere. So, we ended up purchasing a new set. Maria had the first go at them and, once she learned to trust that she wouldn’t go underwater while wearing them, she did great. Then we tried out Andres, who probably adapted even more quickly than Maria. By the end of the afternoon, we had purchased two sets of “water wings” and both kids we jumping into the water without us having to catch them right away. At about the same time their little heads went under, we’d grab them and yank them out. They also like to just float around a bit and were much more confident going into different areas of the pool. They did great and had a blast. Luke, by the way, is a total fish and I think he must be a pretty good swimmer for his age (he’s had lessons every summer since he was in diapers). I am sure that after a summer of going to the pool with him they will both be fine swimmers by fall.

In the pool, we met another family from the States. Jim, and his twin boys were from Boca Raton, FL. His wife was originally from Medellin. While their boys get to speak Spanish in the house, they didn’t speak much anywhere else. Their mom was taking them to Medellin for a month to see family and let them work on their Spanish. I can’t remember the mom’s name (between catching little bodies jumping into the pool from all directions and taking turns down the water slide, I didn't speak to her much), but she came over after a bit and talked to us too. They were real curious about our adoption and have a friend back home that is looking into adoption. Jim is originally from Pittsburg and a pretty big Penguins fan along with his boys. Naturally, we talked a bit about the Stanley Cup and how it was next to impossible to find the games anywhere on TV in Colombia. I guess Jim’s wife mentioned to Traci that they were looking into chartering a boat to take them and their family (they had some cousins there at the hotel with them) out to one of the islands for a day at the beach. She asked if we were interested in joining them. Again, with the required naps, I just don’t know if we could swing it. Plus, it is our last day in Cartagena and we have several arrangements to be made to get back into town (rides to and from airports, packing, etc.). They were really nice people. Too bad we met them on our second to last day here. Also, I am sure Jim’s wife would have been able to answer a lot of questions for us about the country.

We gave the ninos a light lunch and put them down for naps. That accomplished, I set out to find an ATM that would allow me some cash for the return trip. In Bogota, I was visiting the ATM at least every other day because we had to pay for everything, including lodging, in cash. However, in Cartagena, we’ve pretty much just been racking up everything on the credit card. There is an ATM here in the hotel, but it keeps spitting my card back at me with no $$$. It was about a mile hike to the closest ATM and I used it as an opportunity to explore a little. Interestingly, walking alone down the street (sans little kids and wife), I didn’t get mobbed by any of the vendors selling sunglasses and junk. By the way, where do these guys always get “Oakley” sunglasses? It is the same in Mexico. After withdrawing several thousands of pesos from a local ATM (trust me, it isn’t as much as it sounds), I stopped off at “Pollo Rapido” to get a little more sustainable lunch for myself, Luke and Traci. I picked up a couple burgers, fries (papas francescas) and a humongous hot dog for Luke. Traci wasn’t wild about the burger, but I thought it was pretty good. They even put a piece of ham on it, which I felt made it a true ham-burger. Luke’s dog was pretty good too. They hid some lettuce in the bun under the dog which Luke wasn’t too wild about, but he took it in stride.

In the early evening, my folks (who are living in my house while we are away, watching to dog and trying to embarrass me in front of the new neighbors) got together with Traci’s folks over at her dad’s and step-mom’s place on Lake Tapawingo. So, we got to Skype (online video chat) with all of them at once tonight. Maria and Andres love to talk to the “abuelos” on the computer. I think Luke does too as he usually tries to get most of the camera time. Anyway, it was a great time and I hope the weather held up enough so they could get out onto the boat.

Dinner was also fairly uneventful. Poor Maria spilled her Sprite in her chair and all over the floor. She cried a little but I explained it was no big deal – mami has spilled her drink at least twice before. In fact, when one of the workers brought out one of those yellow “Caution – wet floor” signs, I suggested that they just bring that out every night after we sit down. It would save people trouble of having to run and get it after the eventual spill.

We have one more night in Cartagena after this and then it is back to Bogota. Traci said she is going to miss all of the extra space we have here at the Hilton. Personally, I am kind of looking forward to getting back to the nice people at El Refugio (staff and guests). Also, I think there are more things for us to do in Bogota. The pool is fun, but even that gets a little old after a while (particularly when you actually have to be IN the pool the whole time and have small people crawling all over you).

We seem to be having a bit of a rough night in terms of sleeping for the kids. Luke, who fell asleep tonight in our bed right behind me, woke up and the next thing I knew he was standing next to me. He looked as though he had just had a bad dream. Turns out he was having a pretty bad case of homesickness. I laid him back down (in our bed) and we talked a bit. He misses his friends. We then talked about what a great adventure we are on and all of the stories he could tell them when he gets home. I don’t know if it helped but he eventually fell asleep again.

About 20 minutes later, Andres woke up crying for some reason. I flew into his room to find him just sitting in his crib. I gave him a little hug, a pat on the back and he was back asleep. Maria slept through the whole episode, but I have a feeling we are going to be dealing with some tired kids tomorrow. I showed her the picture of her sleeping in the chair last night. Apparently she has no recollection of that and thought it was funny.

Not too many pictures today. We’ll do better once we get back to Bogota.


"Skyping" with the family back home.


Traci and Maria - mami y hija at last. Maria loved her little yellow sweater.



Usually it is Luke making rediculous faces for the camera. It seems that Andres likes to do this too. Between the two of them, I think it is going to be hard to get any nice pictures of the five of us.


Caution - Jensen family eating.



Just the kids goofing around in our bed after dinner.