Second Week of Deer Camp

Not too much is happening here this week, we are plugging along, and bracing for some cold weather!  We are still working on miscellaneous projects around the house, and Jason is spending the final days of the Minnesota deer season trying to put some meat in our freezer...with 3 boys, I think we are going to need it!

We are at sort of a resting point with paperwork.  All of the essential documents are submitted, and we are just waiting for their approval before we can move onto the next documents.  We had the opportunity to declare the new legal names for the boys, and they will be:  Juan Manuel Gregory Lenz, Santiago Nicholas Lenz, and Christian Thomas Lenz.  It is an honor for us to pass on the names of some of the most important and loved men in our lives...and the Nicholas thing goes back to my older sister, Vicki.  She wanted a brother in the worst way...a little boy named Nicholas...and instead she got:  ME!  So, while it may not be the brother she always wanted, and it may be 35 years later, here comes a Christmas present she had hoped for!  :)

We did fill out a brief form that will be used to help introduce/familiarize the kids with us and our extended family.  It looks like they will use that form, along with the stuff we sent down a week ago, to help the boys with the transition.  Based on that, we are kind of assuming that the boys don't know about us yet, but we have no way to find out for sure.  Funny that they may not even know we exist yet, but that we have all ready embraced them in our hearts and lives.

That's one thing about doing an ICBF adoption vs. a private orphanage adoption - it can be more difficult to get information in a real-time setting.  The adoption agency can't exactly call down to the foster parents and bombard them with all of our questions...they have to proceed through a sort of diluted chain of people to try and get information.  So, until we are actually physically present in Colombia with the boys, it may be difficult to get any updates or new information other that what we were presented with in our referral packet.  We sometimes struggle with that because we are so excited and have so many questions about how the boys are doing, how fast they are growing, what they are up to...not really urgent, pressing issues, but just the things that two new parents think and wonder about.

I found out something really cool this week...I was talking to the ESL (Enlish as a Second Language) teacher in our school district, and he told me that there is another family right here in Duluth that recently adopted 3 siblings from Colombia, and that their kids attend the same grade school where our boys would go.  How awesome is that!?  So, he was going to forward that family our information, and hopefully we will be in contact with them soon. 

We are definitely settling in to the idea of being parents to 3 little boys, and are (finally!) able to sleep a little bit better these days.  We feel so relieved to have some sort of sense of what this year may bring...until now, we have felt like we were pretty much in limbo.  It was hard to look ahead and have this knowledge that our lives were going to drastically change, but to have no specific details about that change.  If anyone asked us to make plans even 1-2 months in advance, we would kind of shrug our shoulders and say..."Maybe???  It depends on...?"  And now, even though we have no assurances of what lies ahead, it feels as if the fog is starting to lift, and at the very least we know that it will bring 3 beautiful little boys to a waiting Mommy and Daddy!