Family of 5: There's a first time for everything...

Yesterday was Samuel's first time in an airplane, first time in Bogota and his first time wearing a jacket (the weather is cool in Bogota and Monteria is warm year round). He is used to running around without socks and shoes, let alone wearing a jacket. He didn't like it either, but he finally decided to keep it on. It's still a struggle to keep his shoes and socks on too, so today we compromised and he just wore socks (Jeff pretty much carried him around when we went somewhere anyway).

When we got to Casa Lanthana yesterday we were happy to see the French family we met back in Monteria at Hotel Sinu. They were celebrating there daughter's 3rd birthday and they shared her cake with us which was nice. Samuel was so excited to have two little friends to play with! The mother speaks some English so we are able to speak some with her. They adopted their 3 year old daughter and 5 year old son in Monteria and it is their first time being parents. They seem to be wonderful with them and the kids seem so happy. They said they waited 6 years! Can't figure out why the wait is longer for French families, but she said they wanted two children, so they wouldn't have the long wait again and do the whole process again. I can totally understand that and we are very happy for them. Casa Lanthana is a nice bed and breakfast for families adopting in Colombia and the people are very friendly and love the kids.

Today we got Samuel's picture for his passport and we pick his passport up in the morning. This afternoon he had his TB test and Thursday we go back for the results. Please pray for the results to be accurate, because it is common for the tests to come back as false positives and then they have a chest x-ray done. Basically if it comes back good we should be able to get his Visa Friday and Travel Saturday. If he needs the chest x-ray that means we will have to wait until Monday to get his Visa and will travel on Tuesday. We can't complain much though because the French family has a longer waiting period for their Visas for their children and they have been in Colombia for 6 weeks now and another family we saw today with their 10 year old daughter have been here for 7 weeks. They were effected by the judicial strike, so we are very fortunate things have gone so smoothly for us! So far we really like Bogota, it's much better here than Monteria. We have been busy and it's more comfortable here with the common area and the other family. Everyone is very nice and I actually think this week will go by fast, especially if we come home Saturday!