FINALLY OUT OF PGN!!!!!!!!!!! SHE IS LEGALLY OURS!!!

We are running out the door to the airplane and our agency called to tell us we are out of PGN!!! Thank God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is huge!! We leave tonight and are running around like crazy!!! I will write more when we are down there. We had a quick change of travel plans and will pick up Maria tomorrow at around lunch time!!!!!!!!! We are staying in the city at the Grand Tikal and off to Antigua on Wednesday. Thanks for checking and for all of your support. It seems very surreal but when she is in our arms tomorrow it will be real!!!!!!!!!!!! Janet

Getting Ready!

We are running around getting things ready, packed and tying up loose ends in preparation for our trip to finally be with Maria Alejandra on May 2nd!! We will arrive early in the morning on Tuesday, make a stop at the Hyper Piaz (sounds similiar to Walmart/grocery) in Guatemala city to pick up essentials that are not found in Antigua where we will being staying; then we will go to our new little home away from home. After unpacking, getting settled, and a good night sleep, we will return to the city to pick up Maria from the Hogar on May 2nd. We are renting an apartment in Antigua (about 40 minutes from the city) that we found out about from other fostering moms. There seems to be an entire community of brave moms going solo from 2 weeks to 12 months waiting with their children through the process. Antigua is a very safe little touristy town which is very popular among europeans and americans visiting Latin America. I will have my computer and internet access and will post much more than I have in the past, hopefully with pictures!! Although it is very stressful getting ready and waiting on pins and needles for our exit from PGN, I am hoping it will all melt away when Maria is in our arms forever!!! Rachael is doing well with the anticipation, she knows we will be gone about a month and is ready to say goodbye to her friends for a brief period. It will take about 4-6 weeks to get Maria's visa once we exit PGN. Usually it is 3-4 weeks but the embassy has been backed up. Hopefully that is improving and we will get lucky and be home before June 1st (although we have learned to expect the longest wait and then wait longer!). Ok, back to the craziness. More to come soon! Thank you all for your calls and support!!

No news but we are going to make some!

We have decided we can wait no longer and we are going down to be with Maria for the month of May and so on until we can bring her home. This is called fostering and I have been researching apartments ect and we are trying to line everything up. We made our flight arrangements tonight (lucky for us they can be changed without a fee). We will be arriving May 1st and hopefully picking up Maria Alejandra on May 2nd. We are hoping and praying and basically going out on a limb to think that we will exit PGN in the next 15 days. It will be four months in PGN this Friday and 8 weeks since our last kickout/resubmit. Soooooooooooo, even though we are well aware anything can happen and believe me in this process anything and everything can happen but we are taking a leap of faith and going for it. I am tired of being conservative, tired of being patient, tired of waiting. Once again, compared to many families we are very very fortunate and godwilling we will hear something in the next two weeks. I have just emailed our agency and hope they will be on board with our plans. We want Maria's transition to be as smooth as possible. With adopting an older child there is so much more to consider. They are old enough to understand what is going on and yet not mature enough to truly process it. We think the time together fostering will be priceless. We will be away from all of our distractions of home and we can just concentrate on being a family. There is a large network/community of fostering families in Antigua (a small town near Guatemala City). So this is our plan!!! More to come this week!! Thanks for thinking of us and all the families waiting for their precious children.

The Waiting Game

For those of you checking in, no new news today. However, I did have a wonderful dream about Maria Alejandra last night. She was finally with us forever, she was laughing and smiling. It was so obvious she was with her forever family and we were all incredibly joyous. So mabe that is a good sign that the news is coming soon. For those of you not personally on this journey but along for the ride, it is a strange place to be. I almost live in this surreal world sometimes of a cross between time flying by and time not moving at all. Life is still going and I am very conscience of not letting my stress about the adoption affect Rachael. Although the stress is like a heavy weight that never leaves, it is always there. It is funny how I feel "guilty" when people ask me what is going on with the adoption. "Guilty" as if I can do nothing to speed it up!! In that way, time stands completely still. I give them the same answer everytime, "we are just waiting....", I wish for me and for them there was more news. It seems like an eternity for all of us, for all waiting parents. I continue to feel fortunate that Maria is our child and that we have only had one Kick Out with our case. There are many others with horrific stories, still waiting. I pray for those families and for us that our case continues to move through, slowly but surely. I woke up today a little down, and while I was working through my feelings I knew just the cure...My favorite all time CD...Joni Mitchell's Greatest Hits!!! Very soothing for me and puts me right back on track!!! Once again, we are very blessed. Thanks for thinking of us!!

Easter Week

This is Holy Week in Guatemala, therefore everything shuts down for a week. In Antigua it is very beautiful as they do many processions, flower art/displays that line the entire street ect. If you google it or look on other blogs there are alot of great pictures. So we are hoping all the overworked folks at PGN are resting up and ready to do ALOT of signing off in the next couple of weeks. We are getting very anxious and hope to travel some time in May to be with Maria. As I have explained before, we are waiting until she is legally ours and we need the exit paperwork from PGN to have that. After that, it is about a 4-6 week wait (yes, another wait) to get the US visa and passport to bring her back home. I know we can't wait longer, so we will plan to go and be with her at that time. More on that later!! So I know we have said it before but keep your fingers crossed this is the LAST holiday we will have without Maria Alejandra. Our 16 yr anniversary is June 1st, mabe we could all come home that day!!! Have a wonderful Easter and thank you for checking on us!! Janet