Here we go.....

to Guatemala!!!! We leave on the 23rd and come home on the 30th! We are so excited and nervous. I keep telling Jenny this time next week we are going to be moms FOREVER!!! How scary is that?

Dude, we're thinking of you. (((HUGS)))

Book the plane tickets....

hotel room and call the kennel because Guatemala here we come!!!

We got the call today our embassy appointment in the 27th and we will arrive home on the 30th!

We leave on the 23rd and can hardly wait!!!

We were submitted to the embassy...

Today!!!! This means that we will hopefully have our appointment by next week. We are thinking that our appointment will be the last week on June. We are very excited and we can't wait to have our daughter in arms forever!

One more step closer....

Well our update from our agency this week was good news! We have the new birth certificate and her new passport too!!! We are in translation and we should be submitted to the embassy next week, which means that we will have a travel date in a few weeks, and should be in Guatemala by the end of the month!!!! We are so excited to have Mia home and be a family!

Waiting on a new Birth Certificate

Well we heard from our agency that we are waiting on our new birth certificate, and we should have it this week. The new birth certificate will have Jenny's name as her mother and Mia's name will be; Delmy Yanira W.! After we get this our attorney has a little more paper work to do, and then we can be submitted to the embassy. Then the embassy should inform us within 7 days of being submitted when our appointment is to pick our daughter up! So at this point we are about 2-3 weeks from leaving to pick her up. Of course things can happen to take longer, but they shouldn't. Also we have set a date for Mia's welcome home party it is Saturday, August 18th and it will be at the Linden Park on Linden Road. We rented a pavillion on the beach and we are hoping to have a big turnout. This is your update Nicole, because you REALLY are the only person reading this!

Visit Trip cancelled because....

we are going to pick her up! We still are waiting for the date, but we will keep you updated.

Sorry to confuse everyone reading this AKA Nicole. : )

We are OUT of PGN!!!!!

We just got the email last night telling us that we are out of PGN. That means that in a few short weeks Mia will officially be our daugher. We were in Pgn for 16 weeks and it is still hard for me to believe that we are OUT of Pgn - I didn't think it would ever happen. I will keep this updated about our travels!

Visit Trip???

What? Why yes we are going to go for another visit! We are so excited. We just decided today out of the blue that we are going in 2 weeks. We are going to be gond May 12-19. We should get Mia on Monday morning and we will give her back Satuday morning. We have been missing her so much and she is growing up so fast without us so why not go!
Anyway we have a lot of things to do before we go so I should get busy!
Gwen

We're still in...

Yes, we are still in PGN! We have been in for 12 weeks or 81 days. The wait is killing us and there isn't anything we can do so we just wait... On a good note though, this weekend was beautiful in Michigan and we got A LOT of things done around the house. I painted the deck, while Jenny washed the screens and windows, put mulch down, weed n seeded the lawn, and some other small things. So as you can see we have been making very good use to our time.

We'll keep you updated.
till then...

Still in Pgn...

Well next week marks 8 weeks in PGN. UGHHHH! I can hardly stand it and I think Jenny is sick of me whinning about it! I want my little girl home. I miss her so much and it is getting harder and harder getting through each day. With everything that is looming in regards to Guatemalan adoptions, and the reports that have been circulating it certainly doesn't put our minds at ease.

On a good note though we finally got Maria's address right so we can send our packages to her. We are sending her clothes, toys, and gifts for Maria eventhough she said that she didn't want anything. I can't help but send her things she is a wonderful woman who is taking excellent care of our daughter. I really hope that she will be a grandma to Mia and we can visit her.

We will keep this updated to let anyone if there is anyone : ) know when we hear some news.

We talked to Maria...

We called Maria (Delmya's foster mother) this week with the help of Carlos at Jenny's work, who speaks fleuent Spanish. First off we absolutely love Maria and she is the best foster mother in the world. She told us that Mia was almost 19 pounds on Feb. 28 and 26 inches long. She is rolling over on her own and eating solids! She loves fruit and veggies. She also said that she was absolutely beautiful, but we already knew that.

Well we are still in Pgn - no news on that front.

Still no word...

Well here it is 4 weeks into Pgn and not a word. I guess I did expect this, but it can be a good thing or a bad thing. We can either get out, and have Mia home shortly, or we could get kicked out and the clock in Pgn starts over. So of course we are hoping not to get kicked out.

We finally got our fist set of update pictures taken (we think) around 1/28/07. Maria had Mia in the red velvet Christmas dress, with the matching shirt, and tights!!!! It was SO cute. She looked the same, and she still doesn't have a neck, but she is still adorable.

Other than that not a lot is going on, but we are working on getting the house clean and ready for the baby.
till then...

PGN and Medicals!

We entered PGN on February 1st we are hoping to be out by April 1st.

We got her medicals yesterday, boy we are going to have a big girl on our hands!
As of 1/28/07 at 4 months and a week old..
she weighed 17 pounds and was 25 inches long.

She is SOO big, but healthy!

We won't be hearing anything while in PGN until we get kicked out or get the OUT we want so I hope my next post will be that we are out of Pgn!!

Also for those who don't know we have a website with all of the pictures from our visit trip it is www.delmya.com

It will explain her name, but for those who don't know we aren't naming her Addisyn. We are naming her Delmya pronounced (Del-me-a) and her nickname will be Mia. We just think that it fits her better. Sorry for the confusion.

We're Back!!!!

Well I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this, but we are back. Here is our story....

Everything went great and we of course had a great time. We were really nervous about the airport and I was nervous about the plane ride because I hate to fly. First of all we upgraded to first class which was great!! We got drinks and great food.

The decend to Guatemala City was beautiful and sad at the same time. There were mountains and volcanoes that were beautiful and like nothing I have ever seen. On the other hand there were shacks - I can't even explain how the conditions were so I won't even try.

When we landed we exited the plane and followed the crowds to the luggage corral and waited for our luggage. When our luggage finally came we got our passports ready to go to customs. We were told by some other pasangers to smile at the man taking the forms so we didn't our bags searched. We did smile, but Jenny dropped her bag and couldn't find her form. She finally found her form and we passed through with no problems. Then we walked about what seemed like 2 miles to immigration, another line. This was the day of never ending lines. We waited in line to give another piece of paper to another person and have our passports stamped. Then we walked near the exit of the airport. Only this isn't like any airport once you exit you cannot go back in so you had better be sure that there is someone waiting for you. We also heard a lot of horror stories about the exit at the airport so we were nervous. To the right of the exit was cattle gates holding Guatemalans begging for money back, and it was heart breaking, but there wasn't anything we could do. So we bravely exited the airport and thankfully there was Juan holding a sign that said Marriott. As soon as we saw him a small boy who couldn't have been more than 10 years old grabbed our 200 pounds of baggage and took it to where Juan was. It was heartbreaking that this little boy was working instead of attending school. We tipped him about $15 and I think that we made his day. Then we were off to the hotel.

The ride to the hotel was uneventful and the architecture was amazing. There were people dressed in business attire walking to where ever they may have been going.

The hotel was beautiful and everyone there was great. Our room was great and we had a view of the volcano and mountains. We unpacked and went to dinner after we were so tired so we just watched some tv, and went to sleep.


The next morning we went to Antigua and went shopping. The drive was very interesting because they really don't have traffic laws. There aren't even lines on the road you just fit as many cars as you can. The drive was beautiful, we drove past mountains and vocanoes. There was also a lot of poverty and seeing how the Guatemalan people live first hand was difficult, but everyone seems happy. When we arrived we first we went to the Jade Factory. Guatemala is one of only 2 places in the world that has purple Jade so we had a tour of the factory, and bought some Jade. Then Miguel our driver took us to the central park to go shopping. We walked around the central market and then went into the shops. We got a lot of really beautiful things for Delmya when she gets older.

We then went back to the hotel and waited for our baby girl to be brought to us. Guillermo, our facillitator, were late so we anxiously waited for Mia. Finally we got the call that we could come down and see her. It was love at first sight! Mia was sleeping and looked like an angel. She woke up and cried a little and then went back to sleep. Guillermo was dropping another baby off so we were alone with Maria, her foster mother, and it was difficult to communicate because we didn't speak Spanish and she didn't speak English. We got through it, and then Guillermo was back so we all went up to the room and Guillermo translated. We found out from Maria when she ate, slept, and everything else.

Our fist night with her was interesting to say the least. As soon as everyone left we tried to feed her, but she was getting used to us and wouldn't eat. Then she started to have as what most parents call a "meltdown" she started crying, crying, and more crying. She was crying so hard and so loud that she could hardly breathe. Finally we got her calmed down and it seemed like an eterninty, but it was only 10 minutes or so. We got her to eat and to bed. She slept through the night, but it was a very restless sleep for all of us because we woke up everytime she made a noise.

Ok I am going to get a lot less detailed because the rest of the trip consisited of the following...
Waking up in the morning and going to breakfast.
Coming back to the room and giving Mia a bath.
She would then sleep for 4 hours. - We were so bored while she was sleeping!
We would go to an early dinner.
Put her to bed.
Order some room service.
In between all of this we would walk around the hotel and outside.

It was very difficult to give her back and we miss her more than words can express. The only thing that makes it worth it is that Maria loves her VERY much, and she only has a little bit of time left with our precious Mia, and we have the rest of our lives. We are very thankful for Maria, and the people who have been supporting us through this process. Most of our support has came from our friends and without them I don't know what we would do. So Thank You and you know who you are!!!

Our Visit Trip is actually going to happen!!!

We have gotten the ok from our agency to go to visit from Jan 11-20. We are so excited to go and we will have a lot of pictures when we get back. We will also have video when we get back.

We have been getting ready to go on our trip and working on our new business. We have been pretty busy.

This was the last New Years without a baby and we were planning on staying home, but Kristen talked us into going out and painting the town red. Jenny was the Designated Driver and I was the drunk!!! We all had a really good time until a fight broke out around 2 am, and we left because as someone once said nothing good happens after 2 am!!

I didn't want to start a new post, but I wanted to say that it is going to be 79 degrees while we are in Guatemala!!!
Here we come land of eternal spring.

Anway I won't be posting until we get back from our trip. (unless something important happens)
till then...

We have it!!!!!!

We have a DNA match!!!!!
It matched 99.99%. Here is the latest picture of her taken at the time of the DNA testing. She is almost 3 months old in the photo. We are glad to see that they are feeding her well!!! We are so excited to finally be able to meet our daughter!!!!!

Changing the date again

Well we are changing our dates again for Guatemala. I think we have it set now. There isn't any chance that the Dna won't be back in time, unless of course the results don't match. Our new dates are Jan. 11-20. It is a Thursday to Sunday.

Our Plans...
Note - these aren't set in stone so they can change!!!
We will get to Guatemala at about 3:00, and go to the hotel eat, shower, unpack, and sleep. Wake up the following morning and go to Antigua for shopping. Then we will go back to the hotel, shower, and eat. The the best part of the whole trip, at about 5:00 on Friday Addisyn will be dropped off to us!!!!
She will stay with us for 7 days. We will have to give her back to her foster mom around 4 or 5 the following Friday.
The next dat at 3:00 we will board the plane back home.

So everyone wants to know when she will be home!!! We are hoping that she will be home by May or June. It could be sooner or later.

The rest of the process goes as follows:

- after receiving the Dna witin 30 days we get the Pre Approval from the embassy - this is called getting PA
We should have this by the first week of February.
- Right now we are in Family Court and our Social Worker interview (between the birth mother and a soical worker) took place
on December 4th. The report should be done by the middle of Februray. - this is called exiting Family Court (FC)
- Then we have to go to PGN this is the tough one. These are the people who make the decision if your baby is 8 months
when she comes home or 2 years old. Some people sail through here within 8 weeks and others have been in PGN for
8 months or longer.

We are hoping to be in PGN by the middle of Feb or begining of March.
Hoping to be out by April

After all of that we have to wait for the embassy to do some MORE paper work. We then get the date that we will be at the
embassy and we pick her up to come home forever.


So that is all we know for now.
till then...

News, News, News...

Well as some may know we have had some problems lately. Our agency, who we are not ver fond of right now, threatened to take away our referral. The whole problem was because after we sent an email asking them a question they sent us a demeaning email back. So we sent then a "witchy" email and apparently they are big chickens, so instead of answering our questions, they threatened to stop our adoption. We decided this battle wasn't worth losing Addisyn, so we backed down eventhough it really bothered us. They can do whatever they want - and when our daughter is home in our arms we will tell them what we think of them.

GOOD NEWS....
Our DNA was received at the lab, which means that our results are coming soon!!!
We are hoping to leave for Guatemala on the 29th or 30th.

We will keep you updated.
till then...

Weight & Length Percentile

11-25-06

Her weight was 11.8 pounds - She is in the 57th percentile
Her height was 22 inches - She is in the 17th percentile for height

Well we are....

We don't know. We don't know when we are going. We could be going the 22nd or waiting and going the 28th. Who knows?
I just hope we get the results back in time to go the 22nd so that we can be with her for Christmas.

So I was just looking at this adoption website and they had this video and it said that there are over 100 million orphaned children in this world. It also said that 15 million children die each year of malnutrition. That is 15 million. It is something I can't even wrap my head around. The video showed children in Africa, and it was heart wrenching. Jenny and I have talked about our next adoption, eventhough this one isn't anywhere near completion, and I am pretty sure we will do an African county. I think that these are the children in the most need and that is all that matters. Plus Guatemala is suppose to be closing adoptions in the end of 2007 so that won't be an option. I want to have a big family if we can afford it comfortably and Jenny agrees. Who know we may be some of those crazy people with 10 kids.

15 million children die of starvation each year.
It puts my problems and maybe everyone else's in perspective.
We will keep you updated.
till then.