A Great Day.............

What a great day! We returned to visit FANA today. The couple from Spain, Marty and Martha, who received their daughter, Carla, two days after we received Luke, so kindly invited us to a birthday party at FANA. They are a really great family whose apartment is actually right next to ours. It was Marty's birthday and Carla was celebrating her 5 month birthday. In all honestly, I think their birthdays were just an excuse to do a really kind thing for the children of FANA. (And what a great birthday gift for them- they received sentencia today!) We arrived to FANA about 10:30 and Marty and Martha had one of the rooms all decorated and lots of cake and different snacks for the children. There were about 20 kids between the ages of about 3 and 7 who were having such a great time. Marty and Martha had even called ahead to get the names of each child who would be attending the party and they had a gift for each and every one of them. How sweet are they. The smiles on each of their faces were priceless. They enjoyed every moment of the party, the attention they received from each of us, and the wonderful presents. They thought the little plastic dolls and jump ropes were the greatest things in the world. It really makes you think how raising your children to appreciate even the smallest of things is so important. Even though Kenny and I have this horrible language barrier between us and these children, we were able to clearly communicate with hugs and kisses. The children were all so sweet and we are so thankful to Marty and Martha for doing this for the children and inviting us to be part of it. While we were at FANA we spoke with Maria Teresa to check on our status with the courts. I'll try to briefly explain how I was told it all works. There are three phases our adoption case needs to go through. The first one the judge has a ten day period to accept/approve our case. Then it goes before the defender of minors who has up to a five day period to sign off on our case. Then finally back to the judge who has another ten day period to give us sentencia. Things can move through each of these three phases in a matter of a day or two or they may take the maximum time of 10-5-10 days allowed. Ours is through the first phase, should be through the second phase either today or first thing on Monday and then we wait to see how quickly it moves through the third phase and we get sentencia. So we may be home in two to three weeks. But who knows if we even understand this correctly. So in the mean time we'll just keep enjoying our time in Colombia. So to keep enjoying ourselves, this afternoon we decided to stop by the Andino mall area. I think this is one of our new favorite places here. The area is full of great restaurants, cafes and shops and is very stroller friendly since a large area around the mall is closed to traffic. So we had lunch outdoors at this little Italian place called Luna. The food and the service were both really great. Then we made our way home and put Luke to bed by about seven since he was exhausted. Oh, and we wanted to tell our nephews, Micheal and Nico, and our niece Morgan (and you too Lisa and Mike) to have a really great time in Disney! Safe travels and have fun!!