Assignment to Medellin

I got a call from LSS (Lutheran Social Services) yesterday.  Every time the caller id says "LSS of MN", I sort of hold my breath before I answer the phone and try to remain composed while my mind starts flying at 100 mph...  No need to fret though, as yesterday was not "the call", but a reminder from our social worker that it is time for us to update some of our paperwork.  Certain documents only have a shelf life of 6 months, and it's all ready time for us to do a little more paper chasing to keep things current.  Aaaah, the good old game of paper chasing! 

While I had our social worker on the phone, I asked her whether our paperwork had been assigned to a regional ICBF office yet.  Actually, I think I babbled on and on about how we hadn't heard from her and that if she had had any updates, I was just sure she would have called us...but maybe, just maybe, she had heard something from Colombia about our progress???  Maybe????  Please????  Open mouth, insert foot, because YES, we have been assigned to the ICBF office in Medellin! Yay!!!

This means that when we travel to Colombia to meet our children, we will be headed to Medellin.  It also means that our time in Colombia will be anywhere from 3-5 weeks, rather than the 6-8+ weeks that it could have been if we had been assigned to Bogota, due to the quicker courts in Medellin.  We will still need to travel to Bogota for about 1 week at the end of our stay to get passports and visas for the kids, but will spend the majority of our stay in Medellin.  We are very happy to get the information, and feel like every day we are getting one step closer to the reality of meeting our children.

The social worker and I also talked about pre-determining how we (Jason and I) want to be contacted when we get our referral (i.e. how does she get both Jason and I on the phone together to present the information to both of us at the same time).  Obviously, we'll have her call me, and then I will try to catch Jason at work.  So now Jason and I are trying to think of a secret clever message that I can text or page him with so that he will know that I am calling him with news of a referral.  See, if he's scrubbed into a surgery when his pager goes off, the circulating nurse will read the page message out loud in the operating room, and we want an inconspicuous way to communicate the message without blatantly announcing "Hear ye, hear ye!" and all that jazz.  We could have some fun with this one...suggestions are welcome, but the final decision will be a secret for just the two of us!

That's all the adoption news we have for now.  As to sweet little Sadie, she continues to be doing pretty well, and is still happy and comfortable.  Who wouldn't be happy with a belly full of treats???

Thanks for checking in with us!

Sadie

Not adoption-related, but just wanted to share an update.

We got some sad news yesterday about our 11.5 year old black lab, Sadie.  She had developed a cough over the last couple of weeks, so we took her in to the veterinarian to see what was going on.  A chest x-ray revealed that Sadie has a large tumor in her lung...sigh.  She is home with us now and is still doing well.  She has coughing spells here and there, but still has a good apetite and seems to be happy and comfortable.  The vet did not think that she will last too long with such a large tumor though, so we are bracing for some difficult days ahead.

Sadie has been blind for about the last 7 years (due to a genetic disease), but she has been such a trooper and always a sweet and loving girl.  Even after she was totally blind, she still came camping with us in the Boundary Waters and would walk down the trail by staying close behind us and following our scent and our sounds...it was pretty amazing to watch.

We pray that Sadie will not suffer and that we will have the grace to help her in whatever ways we can.  I forsee a lot of extra treats in Sadie's future, and a lot of spoiling and loving while we still have the chance!

Sadie in the canoe with all of our camping gear

Sadie following Jason down the trail in the BWCA

The Beginning

Welcome to our blog!  We wanted to start this blog as a way for our family and friends to follow along with us as on our adoption journey in Colombia, and also as a diary to share with our kids one day, about the story of how we came to be a family.  We are embarking on the biggest adventure of our lives...and are ready to hang on for the ride!

For those of you that know us, you know that we almost never post on Facebook, we are generally pretty private people, and that one of us has a sort of inherent suspicious reluctance to embrace most forms of technology in general (I'm not naming names, but I think you all know who I mean...).  So here we are, opening up our lives, sharing the inner workings of our minds and our hearts with our friends and our family.  Can I be frank in saying that it makes us feel sort of "naked"?  Hopefully blogging will come to feel a little bit more natural in time, and until then, please be gentle with us!

There are a couple of questions that seem to come up frequently, so we'd like to take a chance to cover some of the basics here.

1. Why Colombia?  -  When we mention adopting from Colombia, sometimes people look at us with a raised eyebrow.  Will we be safe?  Is it ok to travel to Colombia, or we be kidnapped and ransomed?  We are working with Lutheran Social Services as our adoption agency, and they have been helping families complete adoptions in Colombia for over 20 years.  When you look at international adoption programs, Colombia's is one of the longest-running and most stable programs out there.  They have been doing this for a long time, and have a lot of experience in bringing families together.  Some other things that helped us choose Colombia were its relatively close proximity, our ability to speak Spanish at some level, and the fact that they tend to have a significant number of sibling groups available for adoption.  Which brings us to the next question...
2. Are you really going to adopt 3 kid at once?!?!  -  Yes!  We have always wanted a family, and although this may be baptism by fire, we have thought long and hard on this, and are so excited to be adopting a sibling group and expanding our family by 3.  We are approved to adopt 3 siblings under the age of 6.  We have not specified any gender preferences, and figure that God will send us what He sends us!  I can almost guarantee that our house will become a chaotic circus at times, but we will do our best to have a loving, fun, and supportive home.  I can't promise anything about clean dishes, or a tidy house though...so be forewarned!! 
3.  So what's the process, and where are we at?  -  While we have been thinking and praying about adoption for a long time, we actually started the ball rolling in February 2010.  We have completed all of our application paperwork, it has been sent to Colombia, has been translated, sent to the ICBF (which is the Colombian Family Welfare Institute), and we have been given approval and are officially on the ICBF waiting list.  For families adopting sibling groups of 3 children, wait times tend to go very quickly.  Right now, our documents are all at the ICBF national office level.  We have to be assigned to a regional office and then officially matched with kids in that region.  Our social worker tells us that it's very likely that the kids are all ready available for adoption (meaning they are currently either in a foster home or an orphanage), and are just waiting to be matched with a family.  So what does it all boil down to...it means we could receive a call any day...it could be a few weeks, or it could be a few months, but our social worker thinks it will likely be within the next 3 months or less!  So we have come to a point of anxiously diving for the phone every time it rings (during business hours only!) so that we don't miss "the call"!  
4. What happens then?  -  Once we have our referral, it will be approximately 8 weeks until we can travel to Colombia to meet our children.  Why the lag time?  We have to file paperwork/receive approval from the US Citizineship and Immigration Services office before we can travel.  Once we travel to Colombia, we will likely meet our kids within about 2 days of arriving, at which time we receive physical custody of 3 little bambinos!  While in Colombia, we will stay in a hostel that is geared specifically toward adoptive families (meals provided, cribs, car seats available, etc.).  We will need to stay in Colombia anywhere from 4-8 weeks to wait for the paperwork to go through the court system.

So...that's where we're at, and we are so happy to have you follow along with us.  Please feel free to ask us any questions, or to pass along the blog info to anyone that we may have missed.  We are so excited about what lies ahead, and thanks for taking the time to check in with us!

Nicole and Jason