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3 days away

We are now counting down the days until we leave for Antigua! What an exciting, anxious, nervous and relieving feeling all at the same time. It's still a little surreal to know that we will finally have that sweet little boy in our arms on Monday morning. What a joyful feeling that will be! We are almost all packed at this point with our 3 suitcases, our Graco Pack-n-Play bed, toys, books, video camera, etc. We will have our hands full! We have borrowed our neighbor's lap top to post to our blog and communicate via email while on our trip so please check the blog often! We will have pictures galore :) Tonight, Chris and I spent some time on the Internet looking at pictures of Antigua. It is beautiful. Antigua means "old/antique" in Spanish and this is exactly what it is. It is one of the oldest Latin American countries in the world. With beautiful cathedrals, streets and active volcanoes, it will be quite a sight. We are so fortunate to be making this trip. We plan to take as many souveniers back as possible to share with Blake as he grows. We have promised to each other to never let him forget his heritage. Although Chris will return on Friday, July 6th, I won't until the first of August. Hopefully by then Blake will be a little bonded to his new mommy! We love you all!

Blake is almost 5 months old!

Well it's been awhile since we've posted anything, but now we have reason to because we received 15 of the cutest pictures yet! Blake is now 4 1/2 months old and 15 pounds. He will be 5 months on July 7th so we will be able to celebrate his birthday with him this time as we leave for Guatemala on Sunday, July 1! We are beyond excited to meet our beautiful little boy and are finding it difficult to sleep at this point because all we do is think about meeting him. His pictures this month were so reassuring because we know from that beautiful smile that he is happy and healthy. The doctor says he is giggling now and in the pictures seems to be sitting up almost on his own!

Chris and are beginning to pack now for our trip and with the help of Rebecca, a friend adopting through the same agency, we now know what to bring. Chris will stay in Antigua (an hour away from the airport in Guatemala City) until Friday, July 6th, but then have to return for work (his only employee is in Ecuador for his own wedding). My mom and mother-in-law will arrive to visit Blake on the 4th of July and will stay at a bed and breakfast close to the house where we'll be staying at (www.casabella112.com). I plan to stay through August 1 so I can be with Blake as long as possible. At this point, we are still waiting for pre-approval to go into PGN (the last and longest step of the adoption) so it looks like we won't be able to bring Blake home until October. There's a chance it will be September if all goes well, but things don't always go so smoothly once you're in PGN (as many families get kicked out for minor errors on their paperwork). The kickouts cause weeks delay. We are prepared for at least one kick out though and will continue to do our best to be patient with this lengthy process. Soon, I will post a timeline to better help our friends understand where we are in the process. Once we're out of PGN, then things tend to move more quickly. So, please thinki positively that we get our pre-approval from the US Embassy soon!

Not too much else to say at this point, but that we will try to post as many pictures of us together during our trip to Guatemala. We have heard so many good things and seen so many pictures of this beautiful city, we can hardly wait to see it for ourselves with Blake right next to us! Melaine has been planning a baby shower for me for about the last 2 months or longer and is working her rear off to make it special. We are so lucky to have such a supportive family who is just as excited as we are! Enjoy these new pictures!

Waiting for Pre-Approval from the Embassy

Well, after a long time of not posting (probably because we rarely hear much about how things are proceeding), we thought we would keep you updated on what has happened since DNA testing.

About 5 weeks ago, DNA testing was done on Blake and his birth mother. It was a match (hallelujah) and now the results have been submitted to the U.S. Embassy. Once the U.S. Embassy processes the results, an email will be sent to our agency and then the agency will forward us this email. At this point, we will have received our "pre-approval" to go into the last step of our adoption - which is called PGN. Although this is the last step, we have friends whose case has been sitting in PGN for 73+ days. Everyone asks, "Why does this have to take so long?" We don't know the answer exactly, but what we do know is that there is a small staff working with a big load - there are hundreds of cases to go through and several families are ahead of us. They will be looked at first. Also, many families have been getting KO's as they call them (kick outs) from PGN.

When a family is kicked out of this step, it is usually for some silly thing (like a typo on one paper in your file or the facilitator for your case in Guatemala, for example, forgot to include your birth certificate (crucial), etc). Although our agencies are our advocates, we have to make room for human error which occurs all the time. Unfortunately, these errors cause huge setbacks in adoptions. Sometimes it takes 2 weeks to just get the approval to be kicked out and then once you're officially out, it's another 3 weeks to get resubmitted! Anyway, we are expecting to be kicked out at least once (hopefully not more), but are still optimistic that things will continue to go well as they have thus far.

On another note, Chris and I bought our tickets to go meet Blake for the first time!!! We are SO thrilled to finally see our baby. We leave on Sunday, July 1 and Chris will stay until July 6th and then have to return to work. On the 4th of July, my mom and mother-in-law will come to visit and stay through the 9th! If all goes well, I will stay until August 1 (yes, 1 month) to foster Blake! Currently, my ticket's return date is for July 16th, but that can always be changed, right?!!

We should be getting some more pictures of Blake soon to share with you that our facilitator took during his last trip to Guatemala. Take care and thank you for sharing our joy in this process!