Hasta Luego Colombia!

Today was our last full day in Colombia. Nothing bittersweet about it! We are ready to go home and the boys are ready to go to casa nueva. The day started off a little slow because all I wanted to do was pack, so it took us a while to get out the door. All I can say is once we got out the door, WOW! what an adventure.

We wanted to do something American to celebrate our trip to America - so we set off to find the Hard Rock Café. Well, it wasn't where we thought it was, and we ended up walking about thirty blocks to this mall only to defeatedly catch a taxi and have the driver take us in the completely opposite direction, far past our hotel. Once we were there though, it was worth it. Troy, Samuel and I had burgers, and the twins had chicken fingers. Everyone was happy to be filling up on fries and greasy food. Troy and I bought t-shirts. We then caught a cab back to our hotel because Troy had to meet Jaime to go pick up the translated paperwork. I thought I could finish packing while the boys went down for a nap after their epic walk. Apparently they cannot nap after drinking Coca-Cola. This was the first soda we let them have, and it was a great lesson for us. After our missed naps, we caught another cab and went back to the aforementioned mall for ice cream with the Uhlenbrock family (see Brian and Penny's story under our "Other Adoptions" section). Catching a cab back to the hotel was a little tricky, but we made it just in time for dinner!

The sweetest part of the day was getting ready for bed. We had Q&A about mañana and let the boys ask whatever they wanted to ask (the big question is what color will the planes be). We looked at pictures of the house, the dogs, their room, the Western Hemisphere, etc. We talked about being "una familia siempre" (a family always) and that seemed to really make them happy. This was followed by mucho besos! Daniel is so cute because he grabs your cheeks when he kisses you. I don't know how much they truly understand, but they did ask a lot of really good questions. Tomorrow is the big day!


Walking to the mall, the boys decided that Papa was way cooler than Mama and everyone wanted to hold his hand. He is working on ordering a prosthetic third arm so that no one feels left out.




Yummy! All I wanted was some comfort food!


Note to self: Coke + Child = Lack of Nap = No Down Time for Padrés


I think the twins both ended up with more ice cream on them than in them. That is pretty typical for most of their food.


When Samuel walked out of the ice cream shop with this cone, I immediately shot Troy a look like "That was the worst idea ever!", but he did really well and none of the scoops fell off.


Uhlenbrocks + Eisenbergers = Awesomeness!!!! Back row: Penny, Brian, Andrea and Troy; Front row: Laura (3), Rosita (2), Daniel, Angela (3), Luis, and Samuel. It was wonderful to meet other Americans in process, and to meet the parents of another sibling group.


Troy's treat to himself and farewell to Colombia was to enjoy a Cuban cigar and a good Dutch beer. It was a tribute to the international flair of Hotel Halifax!

Adios Colombia!!! Charlotte, we can't wait to be home!

Ever Get That Sinking Feeling

***UPDATE: No Delta Representatives were harmed during the creation of this post.***

You know we couldn't get out of here without one more glitch, right? Well, we have the boys visas and that went smoothly. Troy goes back to the embassy tomorrow to pick up the translation of the birth certificates, sentencia and abandonment decree which is a new requirement for citizenship that we don't totally understand (except it is more pesos out of our pockets), but whatever...While Troy went to the embassy to pick up the visas and the boys were napping, I was busy packing away. However, I just couldn't seem to get rid of that nagging "we only have two days left, this is too good to be true" feeling that I have in the pit of my stomach. Turns out, my woman's intuition is right...again.

I am on the phone with Delta right now. I just found out that when Troy called to switch the tickets last weekend, the incompetent person that he spoke to put our four and six year olds on the flight all by themselves and did not change our tickets! So in Delta's eyes we have missed our Sunday flight and they are telling me that we may have to pay a change fee. [insert string of American obscenities] They are the ones who made the mistake. I am not paying them anything. If DirecTV thinks it heard an earful when they incorrectly installed our DVR twice, I feel sorry for the next pseudo-English speaking South American Delta rep that gets on the line with me. Sorry, but we cannot miss that flight on Thursday!

***REAL TIME UPDATE: The woman just came on the line to tell me that I am moments away from receiving my confirmation number. Does this mean I don't have to pay anything else? Stay tuned...***

Divercity (a.k.a. Disaster City)

***SPOILER ALERT: For anyone looking for a post on the bright, sunny joys of adopting and parenting and parenting adopted kids, you might want to skip this post! There won't be any sugar coating today!***

Oh and this is going to be a long one because it has been a long (and I stress long) couple of days!

So, we are in Bogotá and we are definitely feeling in between homes. We miss Charlotte of course, but we miss the comfort and friendly faces of Pereira too. Don't get me wrong, we are glad to be on the last leg of our trip, it would just be great if we could have accomplished everything in the comfort of our El Cortijo home with our familiar friends and food (yes, this one will involve my weird food issues). I spent most of yesterday crying, I think from exhaustion and hunger. The food here at Halifax is just plain different, and if you like everything just plain (like me), then you are simply out of luck. Troy has had a splitting headache today due in part to the fact that his brain is about to explode from constantly having to think in two languages. So this trip is starting to take its toll on us.

Friday
Yesterday morning (pre-crying spells) we went exploring. There is a parque just a few blocks from the hotel that is surrounded by restaurants, so we took the boys for a walk to get out some of their energy and let them play on the playground. It is such a treat to have a park so close by. We also have this at home and I now know how valuable it is going to be.

The day ended horribly though with the worst bath night in the history of bath nights. We don't have a bath tub here, so we had to shower the boys with a hand-held nozzle which they are not used to. I made Daniel go first, which was so stupid on my part because he freaks out easily, but I thought Luis would be far worse. He screamed the entire time and since I was already pretty much on edge I ended up getting really upset with him which upset him more. He wouldn't let me get the shampoo out of his hair and after much commotion, constant screaming on his part, I finally just covered his eyes and turned the nozzle on his head. Needless to say, the poor boy was completely panicked, freaked out, upset, confused, etc... He was still crying hysterically ten minutes later when I put Luis Angel in the shower who was also crying by this point. However, within two minutes Luis was splashing around having a grand old time. Samuel even asked Troy if he could take another "bath" when he was done. The whole time I felt completely horrible because I was not only mad at my child for being afraid and crying, but then I made him more afraid than he already was. To add salt to my wounds (and this is why I don't deserve to be a mom) when I sat down on the bed near Daniel after Luis' bath, he got up and gave me a big hug!

Saturday
This morning the boys woke up at the crack of dawn and we could hear them just giggling away in the other room. They clearly think that being able to wake up without Mama and Papa is a hoot. I would think so too if their ruckus didn't wake me up!

After breakfast, Jaime came to get us to take us to Divercity. What is Divercity, you ask? Well, it is this really brilliant concept where kids can go and "work" and earn "money". There are something like 60 types of jobs they can try out - including firefighter, construction worker, cashier, detective, and more. They get costumes at each station and when they have completed their task, they get paid, then they can take that money and buy prizes with what they have earned. Sounds awesome, right? I thought so when I read about it on the Boyachek's blog. Well, we got there around 11:00 AM only to find out that they were having a special party for the newspaper (who is a sponsor) and that they wouldn't be open to the public until 1:30 PM. So we decided that we would return to the hotel, get some lunch and come back.

For lunch we went to Archie's (sorry Brian and Penny, I have been dying to go to an Archie's for weeks now). The kids got to make their own pizzas which was so adorable. They got chef hats and aprons and were covered in flour. It was just too cute! The service wasn't great, but the pizza tasted divine! We made it back to the hotel just in time to meet Jaime again for the second time to go back to Divercity. Troy asked "Are you sure you want to skip naptime?" Of course, it's Divercity, it is going to be awesome!

So, we get to Divercity and the line doesn't look too bad until a man in a "construction outfit" points out that it is broken in half and wraps all the way around the little glass wall in the mall...Well, we waited for about 45 minutes just to get to the cashier. Then we were directed to another line that was about 4 times the length of the pay line (how is that possible!?) to get into the actual park. Luckily, that line moved very quickly, and Daniel only threw one fit in which he refused to move and I had to carry him kicking and screaming ("no big deal, he'll be fine once we are inside"). Once inside though, it was full on chaos! Kids running everywhere, some scary looking wolf thing nearly made the twins cry, and for the first time I started to admit maybe this isn't going to be awesome...

I could go on and on, but to make a long story short, I will say this: Divercity is really a place where you go and stand in line for hours on end...well your kids stand in line and parents aren't allowed to stand with them even if they are four, are criers, and are terrified of everything - which we didn't know until we had already paid. It is a place that is really cool in concept, but a little off in execution. There is nothing to do for the smaller kids. Samuel had a blast, but he only got to be a fireman because the line was so long we didn't have time for anything else. The twins were just too afraid to even try anything and they were exhausted from all the walking. At one point, they were laying on the astroturf in this fake park across from the fire station. I knew someone would probably step on them, but I didn't feel like fighting them on it so I just let them lay there for a while. In short, Divercity was a bit of a disaster for us.

That being said, I take every single day here as learning experience, from baths where my son is begging me to bathe his brothers first to family outings that fall way short of fun. Our children have not been exposed to a whole lot of stuff, including having to stand in line by themselves for an hour in order to be firefighters for five minutes. Every day brings mini-victories and to me that's what counts, that is what I take with me.


When we first got to the park the boys were more excited about the sand than anything else. What will they do when they get to go to the beach for the first time?


Playing with the kids has been the biggest treat. I think I like pushing Luis on the swing more than he likes swinging.


Me and Daniel looking at each other through this bubbly thing. He makes some pretty funny faces, but mostly he just needs to know you are there.


Samuel is so brave. He will try any of the equipment just to see what it does. That means one of us needs to be nearby!


In order to get Daniel out of the sand and up onto the playground equipment, we had to tell him that this tunnel was a cave. He immediately started yelling for his brothers, "Carlito, Luis Angel! Venga! Una cueva! Una cueva! Venga aqui!" I told Troy that it is all about how you market it!


The hermanos enjoying the cueva! Isn't my spanglish awesome opposum!


Yay! Comfort food! We treated the boys to ice cream and the twins didn't really eat theirs. Very weird! Maybe they have weird food issues too!


At Archie's making pizza! It is just so fun to watch the little chefs.








At Divercity, Troy was actually able to get Daniel to pose in one of those head cut-out things. How cute is he?!


Samuel makes a very handsome firefighter!


This picture pretty much sums up Divercity. Here Samuel and I are waiting in line to take "money" out of the ATM to go spend it on little prizes.

Hola de Bogotá

We are finally on the last leg of our journey in Colombia! Hooray! We made it to Bogotá around lunchtime. Just before boarding the plane in Pereira, we received an excellent email letting us know that our reservation at Hotel Halifax had been confirmed. The flight went well. The twins cried a little on take-off, turbulence and landing, but overall they were extremely brave and did very well for their first flight. Samuel was so excited and just beaming the whole time. I think the biggest surprise for all of them was that they got "jugo" (juice) just for being on the plane! I didn't get a picture, but I have to say to all those who thought we were nuts for adopting three, it definitely has its benefits - all three boys helped push/pull/carry luggage and most of it is bigger than they are. I will try to remember to take a picture on our way to Charlotte. It is pretty funny!

Hotel Halifax is definitely an answer to prayer, so thank you to all who have been holding vigil for us. Not only is it close to what we need (and now we won't need to pay to go sightseeing everyday), but there are other families here, we are in two rooms (no more closet!), and there is a swingset, toys and DVD player on-site. Oh, and Inés, one of the innkeepers, has even shown Troy a route that he can go running in the mornings! The only drawback is right now (approx. 10:15 PM Colombia time) they are doing some street work and jackhammering - I hope I can sleep through it soon. In fact, it started about 9:00 PM and when I went to check on the boys Daniel said "Mama, un avion, un avion" which is doubly funny because I had just said to Troy I bet Daniel is telling his brother's "A plane, a plane". This isn't quite El Cortijo, but it is a real blessing nonetheless and we are thankful for God's grace and to those who recommended it.

Lastly, before I post pictures, I have to mention our final moments in Pereira. OK, I admit when we were saying our good-byes to our friends at El Cortijo, I really teared up and almost started to bawl. In fact, I was teary eyed the whole way to the airport (and at the airport as we bid José and Mauricio "chua"). As the boys chatted endlessly to José about "un avion rojo" (for some reason it was very important that the plane be red), I just tried to take in the sights one last time. I kept reminding myself we will be back one day (only to visit), after all that is one of the main reasons we chose Colombia.


The boys were super excited at the airport as we waited to board. All of them kept shouting "Oooo, un avion!" And Daniel kept saying "Mama venga!" (Mama come here!), like "Mom why aren't you at the window looking at these awesome planes!" Here they are looking at our plane, and just like José promised, it was red indeed!


All of the boys looking at another much smaller (thank goodness it wasn't ours) plane.


Luis swinging here at Hotel Halifax. He was so very excited to swing, but not too high. And Troy and I learned a new word today - columpiar. We were trying to explain to the boys that at the new hotel there are new rules (namely you can't just run off without asking) when Samuel just burst into tears. It took a while to get him to tell us what was wrong when all of the sudden he says "quiero columpiar" (I want to swing) which sent us scurrying for the Spanish/English Dictionary. That little book is a lifesaver!


Daniel sort of climbing, but not really. If you look closely you can see his other foot is through the ropes and firmly on the ground. He gets an A for effort though!


Papa took Samuel to the store during naptime and he got a new hat from a street vendor! Muy guapo (very handsome!)


We had our appointment with the embassy doctor this evening, and while we were waiting, the boys collected all of the Bibles and were using them as building blocks. We would love to say that they just love The Word, but really they are just creative!

The appointment with the doctor was easy breezy. Aside from a few disciplinary issues (only because they basically put the boys in one room and us in another), the boys did well. The doctor simply had to fill out a form for each of them, and it turns out that he has adopted four-year-old twins of his own and used to work at a hospital in New Orleans. We are up-to-date on all shots, so the next step is to go to the embassy at 7:30 AM on Monday morning. I am not sure how that is going to work, our boys don't get up that early.

To everyone who has followed us this far, please keep checking in and keep posting! We definitely need the love and support more than ever to get us through this next week. It is going to be a long one!

Last Post From Pereira

Well, we are finally headed back to Bogotá! Our flight leaves at 11:20 AM (Colombia time). Our agency is still trying to strong arm us into staying where we don't want to stay, so please pray that this issue will resolve itself quickly. I, especially, have no desire to stay one place for one night and them move all of our stuff to our place of choice for another. The challenge has been contacting places in Bogotá from here and we have had several "lost in translation" moments and our in-country contacts in Bogotá have been of no help since we decided that Zuetana was not the place for us. Hopefully, once we either get to the airport or get to Bogotá we can really stand up for ourselves and let them know how important it is that we find a place that is going to work for us, especially since we will be here through August 7 now.

More pressing prayer issues: Samuel was asking Troy yesterday if their foster mother would be coming to Bogotá and then living with us in the U.S. I think that he may go through a bigger bought of homesickness than we anticipated. Daniel has been saying all morning that his stomach hurts and has been really, really crying. Poor baby. He seems to be OK now, he even ate breakfast, but I think that seeing all of the suitcases and not really understanding what is going on might be freaking him out a little. Also, he has been retreating a little more this morning. He might just be tired, but he seems to be back in his own "Daniel Place" where he has been more vibrant and interactive over the past week to ten days. Luis is just afraid of everything so there is no telling how the plane ride will go. And, in the continuing Andrea-health-saga, I woke up with another sore throat that I think is due to drainage because I had an allergy attack last night and couldn't find where I packed the Benadryl, but my chest is starting to feel congested too.

Troy ran to the ATM (for the second time today - the first time it was closed, of course) to get more cash. He may have more thoughts to add to this post, but the next time you hear from us we will be at a higher elevation, in cooler weather and by the grace of God in a hotel near a parque and a supermercado!

P.S. I hate to fly too, so pray that I will be able to comfort my children through my fear!

This Is How The Boys Are Dealing With The Stress

It's all fun and games until Luis Angel falls off the bed. Don't be too concerned though, he only cried for like a second until he was ready to get right back in the rumpus. About one second later there was an incident involving Daniel's glasses. And then another incident involving Luis, and then another one, and then another one...and so on.

P.S. The boys' favorite saying has become "Es un accidente."

Uggghhhh!!!

So, the news is not getting any better. The embassy is closed on Friday which means that we definitely won't be able to get the boys' visas until next week (Hector thought we might be able to plead our case if we got in front of the embassy today). Delta cannot issue us new return tickets until next Thursday because of our "special adoption fare". And we aren't sure what we are going to do about keeping the boys entertained in Bogotá for a week because our driver there is ridiculously expensive and at this point we are needing to conserve money. Ahhh, the joys of international adoption.

Thank you to everyone who has posted/emailed with ideas on places to stay in Bogotá. Troy will be looking into those later today! Oh and as a side note, when Troy and Mauricio contacted our Bogotá rep last night her solution was that we could just drive around to the different lodging options until we found one that we like. With three boys in tow? I don't think so...

We are still headed to Bogotá tomorrow so we can make our doctor's appointment, provided we can purchase tickets. Avianca's website is having some issues and when Troy called they wanted $350/ticket over the phone. Yeah right! It is a half an hour flight!

Still Trapped

The news is not good. Although we do have the boys passports (which I will recount at another time), we found out this evening that we cannot get doctor's appointments at the embassy until Thursday evening due to more vacations. Needless to say, we are not coming home on Sunday and Troy and I are pretty much devastated. We have decided to stay in Pereira until Thursday because we are far more comfortable here and aren't really that excited about going back to Bogotá except to go home.

Other challenges: We also don't have a place to stay in Bogotá. We didn't want to go back to Zuetana, and our agency (though they assured us in the beginning we could switch) doesn't have any other options for us so we are trying to find a place on our own that will be more accommodating to our expanded family. Also, I am terribly sick again. This time it seems to be the stomach virus that Troy had. I won't go into details about all the symptoms, but it does include a splitting headache, chills and aches (again!). Daniel also threw up twice this morning, but he seems to have recovered (so have I...it was kind of funny because he would burp real loud, then spew, then burst into tears. I wasn't quite sure of what to do at first - laugh or comfort him, I went for the latter and then clean up.)

We will keep all of you posted on what our plan of action is. Please pray that every detail would fall into place, that Troy and I would not let our sadness affect our parenting or take it out on the boys, and that Delta will be merciful and give us return flights sooner rather than later.

. . . - - - . . .

Help! We are trapped in Pereira. Literally trapped!

Mauricio called this morning to deliver the disappointing news that Hector was unable to get a copy of Daniel's birth certificate from the town of Alcala today because the only person who can sign it is on vacation. He is going to try again tomorrow. Hopefully we will be on a plane Wednesday morning, as early as possible. We have been told that we can still take the boys to the embassy doctor in the afternoon on Wednesday. Hopefully we will be able to stay on track to come home on Sunday. If we have to shift any of our embassy dates it, we will have to change our flight and since we have special tickets with Delta who knows when we will be able to get a return flight.

Please pray that Hector will be able to get the birth certificate tomorrow morning and we will be able to get the passports in the afternoon.

Low-Key Weekend

This post will probably be short and sweet which will probably be a relief to most of you since the last one ran a little long. Our weekend was pretty low key. Troy hasn't been feeling well, so we took it easy yesterday. That gave me a chance to start organizing and packing our stuff. Today, José stopped by with his six-month-old son Juan José and then came back in the afternoon to get us and take us out to the mall for a bit. The boys got to expend some of their energy at the arcade/play-place which was great for all of us.

The highlight of my afternoon was watching Samuel in the play-place (the twins are too young to go in alone and we couldn't accompany them). We had to pay for him to go in and he only got 15 minutes which he spent most of on the trampoline (surprise, surprise). But then he discovered he could climb the towers to the slides. They had two towers, one that went to the wavy slides which he did twice and then a much taller tower that went to a spiral slide. The look of pure joy and excitement when he came out of that spiral slide is indescribable. He was so happy. It is really neat to watch our kids experience these things for the first time that most of the other kids in there were taking for granted. The real highlight though is when the 15 minutes were up, the staff working the play-place wouldn’t let the kids exit until their parent claimed them, and Samuel and I were pointing at each other, claiming each other. That was really cool. Oh, and now is a good time to mention that when we first got there, I lost Luis. I went to throw something away and, without realizing it, he followed me. We looked all around only to find him in a sea of people, bawling his eyes out. As Troy ran towards him and scooped him up, he was still crying, but you could see the look of relief on his face - the best part, he wasn't looking to just anyone for help, he was looking for us. Troy's highlight was playing air hockey with Daniel. He didn't want to ride on any of the little cars or do anything else, but he really seemed to want to play air hockey. Guess we are going to have to get an air hockey table...Isn't that terrible?

Tomorrow will hopefully be packing and passports!


When I started packing the boys decided they wanted to wear their raincoats...inside...all day. The irony, it rains here everyday, but we have never actually worn our raincoats outside in the rain. I am not sure how that happened.


These are the gifts that "Tia" Rosario and the staff of El Cortijo gave the boys at their fiesta the other night. These are carros they are not allowed to play with.


Don't let our boys fool you. They don't actually read their books, but they do love to look at them. They also won't sit still long enough to let us read to them. I think they have never really been read to.


José and his son Juan José. What a cutie! The boys were so curious and weren't really sure of what to do with him. When José came back to get us later in the afternoon, Luis looked all over the car for the baby and was genuinely upset that José didn't bring him back.


Samuel will occasionally hold the twins hands when they walk down the stairs. He is very helpful when he wants to be which is great. We really want him to understand that he is the older brother and not four. We suspect that he was treated like a four year old, and we hope to help him feel more like an older brother.


OK, so Luis didn't cry on any of the little rides and actually wanted to go on everything that Samuel did. I guess that little push car at Parque del Café was a great jump start in getting him over whatever fears he had about amusement rides. Very weird, but encouraging.


Troy and I's public debut of Dance Dance Revolution. We thought that an international tour would be best. As you can see by the looks on our faces we pretty much sucked, and of course we not only had an audience but help from the twins. I guess we will have to keep practicing at home.

We're Still Celebrating!

***WARNING: This one is going to be a long one, so you might want to grab a cup of café (Colombian brew of course) or té before you settle down to read this post.***

I am adding a ton of pictures to this post because really whatever I say can't do our adventures justice. The past 30 or so hours have just been fun. Plain and simple. Oh except for the fact that Troy now has a fever. He has taken some medicine, so hopefully it won't develop into anything more serious. It seems to be the same virus I had prior to my bronchitis and what Samuel developed earlier this week.

Last night we celebrated our familia with this incredible chocolate cake that we bought at a bakery downtown. It was "que rica" as the boys like to say. I know they don't know why we are celebrating, but they appreciated the cake all the same. We also learned the hard way that giving them chocolate cake about an hour before bed time is not really that great of an idea, especially when they have missed their naps. Daniel + Chocolate Cake - naptime = one crazy kid. It took a while to wind them down and stop the giggling.

Today we went on a walking tour of downtown Pereira with José. He took us to Bolívar Square (almost every city in Colombia has a Bolívar Square), a beautiful cathedral, one of the oldest buildings in Pereira where we stopped for beverages, souvenir shops, and another plaza. It was good to get out and see the city (without running errands). While we were out the most bizarre thing happened. This woman came up to Luis and was trying to talk to him and he was shying away from her. I didn't think much of it because people are always asking if they are twins or patting the boys on the heads and such. Normally the boys walk around saying "Hola!" to everyone they meet. Then as she passed José, Troy and the other boys she greeted them and got into a brief conversation with José. It turns out she is the sister of their foster mother. According to Wikipedia, there are nearly 600,000 people in Pereira and we just happened to run into someone who knows the boys. How crazy is that? And Samuel was like "Oh yeah, that was Jenny." Weird! And then Luis kind of bolted up the street like he was going to follow her. Fortunately, it didn't seem to upset them, negatively effect them or make them homesick in anyway that I could see. We went back to normal within minutes. It just struck us as odd that we would run into someone who knows them. José seemed to think it was good that she got to see the boys out and about and happy so she could let her sister know that they are doing well. I think he is right.

OK, enough blabbering. On to the photos, including photos of this evening's fiesta!


We had pasta last night for dinner. Troy and I could do an entire post just on mealtime with the boys. It is the funniest, most frustrating time. No meal passes in a timely, stress-free manner. It is always long and there is a lot of pleading. The best though is when the boys tell each other to "EAT!" and they still have food on their own plates.


This is the cake we bought. Yummy!


"This cake is so yummy it requires a fork and a spoon!"


"More cake please!"


The fam at the "Bolívar Desnudo" statue.


I just love this picture! I can't tell you how long it took me to get this shot!


The building where we stopped to get something to drink is one of the few buildings that is original to the city. The building itself was very beautiful. Here José is helping Daniel with his Pineapple juice. Poor boy does not really understand how to drink from a straw.


Luis is trying to mimic José, but he doesn't understand that you have to create a vacuum on the one end so all he is getting is foam.


Samuel is of course brilliant...and the oldest!


Throwing leaves into the fountain at the Lake Plaza. Boy was Daniel mad when we had to leave. Although, I am still not sure if he was really mad or if it was a genius ploy to get me to carry him...Regardless, Hannah, if you are reading this, I need to go to Pilates or Yoga or something, my core is too weak to carry these four year olds around!


Our last stop was a restaurant at the top of this mountain where you can see the whole city. It was so beautiful.


The best part of any trip is when the kids fall asleep in the car!


Rosario threw us a fiesta to celebrate our Sentencia, and let me tell you, she knows how to throw a party. The entire downstairs was decorated. We had appetizers, drinks, the whole nine yards. She even gave each of the boys these adorable traditional Colombian bus sculptures (I will take a pic and upload) with their names painted on front. Here the boys are admiring the decorations, mostly just ooohing and aaahing over the balloons.


We ate Mexican tacos and nachos. And I cannot say it enough - I wish that I could take Alba and Betty home with us to cook for us every day! The food here is so delicious. And they even make stuff plain just for me! Mauricio is the guy at the far end of the table and Hector's wife, I am pretty sure her name is Alba too, is in the middle.


Our lawyer Hector and his daughter Pilar (who is Mauricio's girlfriend). The kids love her and she says fun stuff like "super-bueno!"


Troy and Hector Fabio. I think that Hector looks just how I would picture our lawyer. I don't know why, but he looks like a lawyer to me!