Gotcha!

This is the 2 year anniversary of our "gotcha day". Two years ago I traveled to Guatemala to finally bring my sweetie home. I actually flew to Guatemala City on April 20 and toured for a few days first, which was something I didn't do at all on my visit trips. I had three tourist goals: the Mayan ruins at Tikal; Antigua, Guatemala's first capitol and UNESCO World Heritage Site; and Lake Atitlan. I was able to accomplish the first two of the three. Then, finally, on April 26, 2007, Maya was placed in my arms as my daughter officially. We stayed in Guatemala at the Marriott for several more days for our Embassy appointment and to receive the papers needed to travel home, and also one of the days we were there was a Guatemalan holiday so we had to wait one extra day to travel home. May 1, 2007 I began the journey home with my daughter. It is hard now to remember back to a time when Maya was not in my life. I truly believe that we were always meant to be each other's family.
Beautiful Antigua and probably one of its most recognized landmarks, Arco de Santa Catalina.
I would have loved to make it to one of Guatemala's big markets like the one in Chichicastenengo. This one in Antigua was small but nice.

The grounds of the Hotel Museo Casa Santo Domingo

One of the temples in Tikal
This was the stairway up to the tallest of the temples in Tikal. I am very scared of heights (i get shaking and dizzy) but I knew I'd regret it if I didn't go up.

Here is the view from the top. Trivia: This is a view in the movie Return of the Jedi
Lake Peten-we drove around this lake from the airport in Flores to get to Tikal.

The volcanoes we could see from our room at the Marriott hotel. Guatemala had 33 active volcanoes.

One of my favorite photos of Maya from my pick up trip. I don't have a photo of just me and Maya from our gotcha day so this has to do. an aside: Guatemala is an incredibly beautiful country. It reminds me a lot of Hawaii in it's terrain and vegetation. I definitely want to spend more time there in the future!

Pretty in Peeps

This was our creation for the second annual Peep show. What I learned from this: Marshmallow Peeps are really heavy in this quanity. This was supposed to be our "test" photo shoot, but ended up being the finaly product. I entered a poster size version of this in the actual Peep show.

Bento #3

Bacon, marshmallow teeth, cheese and green onion eyes, grape tomato nose, all on top of scrambled eggs. Okay the marshmallows are a little strange with everything else, but they made good teeth.

Bento #2

Another bento: octopus hot dogs, cheesy broccoli and cheese star, popcorn, grapes and fruit treat mix. This one was for lunch at daycare.

Bento #1

During one of my favorite past times, reading adoption blogs, I came across this blog: Do They Have Salsa In China? The author of this blog introduced me to bentos. I was not aware of this Japanese phenomena until reading her blog. If you go to the main page, and click on Bentos you will see some her photos of her incredible bentos. I thought Maya might enjoy bentos as well. You can read a definition of bentos here. The bento above includes fishsticks, penguin container with ketchup inside, rice and veggies, apple, grape, and mandarin orange skewers, and cheese hearts.

PGN Out Date - 2 years later

Two years ago today, I found out I was out of PGN. In the world of Guatemalan adoption, that was the biggest deal! PGN (Procuraduria General de la Nacion) was the attorney general/court system that Guatemalan adoptions had to go through. (I will talk about this in the past tense because the Guatemala adoption process is changing. Guatemala is currently shut down to the US for adoptions, and when/if it ever reopens the process will be different from what it was in the past).

Anyway, you could be in PGN for months, and kicked out for various reasons and then had to go in again and wait for more time. I was kicked out three times. Each time you had to redo a document and then be resubmitted. Depending on how long it took you to redo the document, get it notarized, authenticated, state certified, stamped by the Guatemalan Embassy in DC, translated to Spanish, and resubmitted, months or more could be added to your wait. Here is an example of a kick out reason: I was once kicked out because the person assigned my case said the police clearance letter was not in my file. The thing was: it was in the file! So I was kicked out just because they did not "see" the document that was in there! Some times the kick outs were for crazy things! And this is typical of the process at the time. This was one of the reasons I got so paranoid about my documents as I explained in this post.



March 13, 2007 I got the email stating that I was out of PGN. My adoption was out of court. There were a few more steps before it was final. (For example: The birth mom had to sign off for the final time. In Guatemala, the birth moms had to sign off on the process 4 times, and could change their mind up until the last time!) But the PGN out was most important because that was what was holding up the whole process and that was the step that could be 4 months for some people and years for others. After your PGN out, everything else happened in a more step by step order.

I have to say that I did lose faith during my long wait. At one point, my agency had assured me that Maya would be home before Christmas (something they had no way of knowing, I realized later). That fact was what got me through a lot of the wait. Once it was clear that was not going to happen, and then January, February, her first birthday, March started to go by, I started to worry it was never going to happen. Buzz on the Internet was that Guatemala was close to closing to adoptions and who knows what would happened to people in the process. You can believe that the email telling me I was out, was the best email I ever got! I jumped around the room, cried, said prayers of thanks, and blared Richard Smallwood's song "Thank You" so loud I am sure the neighbors had to have heard. Below is this incredible praise song. It is perfect for moments in life when your heart is just so full of thanks there is no better way than to express it through song (and loudly too) It's also inspirational for every morning. I'm thankful each day that I was given the gift of my beautiful daughter! All those parents out there know what I am talking about, especially those touched by the incredible gift of adoption!

The song is divided into two parts. This video is from You Tube. I am not the videographer, and I have no connection to the person who posted it.

The Best Kind of Hugs

You know those hugs that are full body hugs? Ones where little ones wrap their arms and legs around you and hold on tight. I swear those are the best kind of hugs!