I have been tagged- Part 2

I have been tagged by Whitney, but first I wanted to share some new pictures we got this week (thanks Amanda!). It was so bittersweet to get the pictures! I love seeing her sweet little face and see that she is doing ok, but it also makes me so sad that I'm not with her!It has been a very stressful week this past week between birthdays, baby showers, fall nights and pumpkin carving days, but it looks like things are going to settle down a bit now. The good news is that in the middle of all of that I am pretty much done with Shiloh's room! I am still missing a little table to go next to her chair, but I will probably put the pictures of her room up anyways in the next couple of days.

Ok, here it goes...
Jobs I have had
Working in one of those little carts in the middle of the mall (not so fun)
Gymnastics coach
Missionary
Baker (self employed)
Floral designer/Sales
Sales Manager at a wireless company
Part time nanny

Places I have lived
Phoenix, AZ (where I was born)
Flagstaff, AZ
Gainesville, FL (Go Gators)
Denver, CO
Lisbon, Portugal
and now Oklahoma City, OK

Foods I love
Spaghetti (Boring, I know, but I get it at every Italian restaurant I go to in search for the best spaghetti. On a side note, I got some while we were in Guatemala from the hotel San Carlos. Very good!)
My mom's tostadas and chimichangas
Chocolate

Places I'd rather be
In Guatemala picking my little girl up
Portugal (or anywhere in Europe for that matter, but I'd have to go to Portugal first)
Sitting on the couch at Borders drinking a hot tea and reading a book (that may have to be a project for later today)


Books I love
Pride and Prejudice
Harry Potter
Really I am pretty open. I just love to read.

Please pray for us!

I know a lot of you in the adoption world heard about the fight at PGN last week. For those of you who don't, here is how our agency told us what is going on,

"PGN had summoned an underage birth mother and her parents for an interview. This birth mother had already relinquished the child as her parents said that they were unable to support her and a baby. PGN separated the birth mother from her parents and kept her in the "psychological section" of the PGN in an attempt to "change the birth mother's mind about her relinquishment". Her parents were extremely upset that they were detained in another part of the facility.

Susana (our lawyer) was summoned by the foster mother of the baby. When she arrived there was an attempt to detain her by locking her in a room along with the parents of the birth mother.

Unable to summon help, they broke down the door to the room and in an attempt to leave the building (which was locked) Susana kicked a door which broke the glass and severed 2 arteries and her Achilles tendon. It is fortunate that she did not bleed out but she was transported to Centro Medical where repairs were made to the leg.

As of yesterday, Susana remained hospitalized and on morphine. She is due to be released today but faces 2 months of immobilization due to the severed tendon, not to mention months of rehabilitation. Barring unforeseen medical complications, there is a favorable medical prognosis. Only time will tell!"

I know that she is planning on continuing her cases and has already hired a driver to drive her around.
Unfortunately, the latest update on our case is that it still hasn't moved, and unknown to me (I thought we were almost out of Family Court) we are still waiting for the social worker to schedule an interview with the birth mom. We have been in Family court since around Aug 16th and they have just been sitting on in and there is nothing we can do but wait. Many people in the court and PGN are trying to hold up Susana's cases. She is going to file a petition today to have the court change social workers for our case.

So my family and I are devoting today to pray for our case, for Shiloh's protection and for her to come home quickly. I know that God can move mountains and that He is bigger than all of this! I know that He can work and move to bring her home quickly and safely! Please join with us today in praying for Shiloh and our case, for Susana's quick recovery, and that the courts and PGN will stop holding things up and start moving these cases through! Please be praying that we get a new social worker quickly who is pro adoption and who will schedule the birthmother interview as quickly as possible!

Thank you so much!

Waiting

Well, here we are at home. Life should be getting back to normal, and yet somehow it all feels different. I have been pretty down the last couple of days. I miss my daughter so much, my agency is driving me crazy and even though I love the cold and the rain, it is making it very hard to get motivated to get out and accomplish things. In the midst of all of this I have really been trying today to remember to trust in God and hold onto the hope in Him. That he is more powerful than any agency, lawyer or government. That He loves us and Shiloh and that He will be working to bring us together. Please be praying for us that God will be with us and with Shiloh while we are away from each other, and be praying that He will have His hand on our process and that He will be moving it along quickly! Thanks so much! It is so comforting to know that we have support from so many people out there!

Now here are a few more pictures:

We're home

Well, we're home. We are missing our little girl so much! It is amazing how spending five days with someone could change our life so much and how we could miss her so much even though we were only with her for such a short time! Coming home, our house feels emptier, like something is missing, even though she has never been here. But in spite of all of this, God has given us an amazing peace about it and a hope to look forward. That each day we are away from her right now means we are one day closer to being with her forever and that He is working and moving to bring her home! Our time with her was so amazing and so special! I am so thankful that we were able to go and meet her!

We took so many pictures! I think it was like 1500 (we are having trouble fitting them all onto 2 DVD's!) So I have decided that I will just slowly share them with you guys over the weeks to come since there are too many to put them all into one or two posts.

The hotel we stayed at was very family friendly. I think the only people staying there were families either visiting their children or picking them up. We all sat in the sitting areas and talked. We would rock our babies to sleep in the halls and leave the doors to our rooms open during the days. it was great to be surrounded by people going through the same experience as we were. On the last day we took some pictures with a few of the babies. They are a little hard to see, but you should be able to click on them to see the bigger view.



I'll be posting more pictures later, but right now my husband is home sick (I think he got "The Bug") and we are trying to get DVD's and pictures out to different family members who don't live here.

More pics

This little girl is a heartbreaker! Seriously, Filipe and I are so smitten! She is so much fun! She has been a lot more talkative today and has been doing a lot better at sitting up and holding her head up (she was pretty shaky the first day.) Tomorrow there is a photographer coming to the hotel who is going to take our pictures. In the meantime, please be praying for us and Shiloh's process! It seems like things are moving a little more quickly in PGN with other cases. Be praying that our next update has good news that we are already in PGN so that we can catch this wave of quickness. I am so much more anxious to have her home now that we know her I don't know how we are going to be able to leave without her! I am trying not to think about it too much, but it's hard! I don't know if I am going to get the chance to post again before I go home. I don't want to do it while she is awake and by the time she is asleep we are exausted. I'll try, but I make no promises. In the mean time here is a dose of sweetness to hold you over.

We got her!!!

We have her in our arms at last! We went this morning at about 10:30 to the orphanage to pick her up and have been loving every minute of it! She has been so good and such a snuggle bug! She loves to be held all the time! We got back to the hotel and laid her down to change her diaper. She started crying as soon as we put her down, so I picked her up and rocked her, and she was asleep in two seconds. She only slept for about 15 minutes (I think Filipe taking a ton of pictures may have had something to do with it). She was a little fussy during the morning and only wanted to be held really close while we walked around. We got the chance to talk to my brother Andrew and Filipe's sister and brother in law, Diana and Ricardo with the web cams over the internet. It was exciting to be able to show her to other people in our family even though they can't be here. After that she fell asleep again, but the second I would try to lay her down she would wake up and cry. The second I would pick her up again she would be fast asleep all over again. In the evening we webcamed grandma (my mom) and headed downstairs to the restaurant for dinner. She was asleep before we even sat down and I was really worried that we would have to hold her all night to keep her asleep, but we laid her down in the pack n play and she is doing great and is fast asleep. So that was the long version of our day. I'll try not to go into so much detail next time. I don't know how we are going to give her back on Friday! It makes me emotional just thinking about it and makes me that much more anxious for our process to move quickly! Please be praying for us that things will be moving quickly and that our next update will have good news about our progress!

She already has her dad wrapped around her finger

Cutie Patootie in her pj's, but not so happy to be set down

Day 2- Antigua

Today we woke up early and went to Antigua. Antigua is a town about an hour away from Guatemala City. It was fun to drive through the city and a bit of the country side. I love how raw everything is. Not touristy at all. There is a lot of it that reminds me of Portugal, but there are definatly a lot of parts that are poorer. The land is really lush and green! The mountians look like they are carpeted in trees and then the trees are covered in vines so that all you can see is green.

Antigua is a smaller town than Guatemala City and looks a lot older and rustic.

We started at an old monastary that had been converted into a very elegant hotel. It was crazy to see the walls of the hotel built around the old ruins of the monastary. Very beautiful!

We then drove throught the streets a little bit. You could see the huge volcano looming on the horizon behind the city. Our driver and tour guide, Luis, told us that sometimes he takes people up to the volcano where they then ride horses to the top. Filipe asked him how long the volcano has been dormant. Luis said, "Dormant? No, it's an active volcano." Filipe said, "Yes, I know. What I meant was how long has it been since the last time it erupted?" Luis said, "About a month. When we ride up there you can look inside and see the lava flowing. Usually we just go to the base of the volcano and before we get the horses they tell us if it is a dangerous day to go." Crazy! I don't think I could get the nerve up to do that one, but it was an amazing site to see from the city!

We walked around the city a little bit. We saw this beautiful church. Next to the church there was a group of people cooking food and selling it. It smelled so good! We asked Luis if it was safe to eat it. He said, "Well, I would come and eat and bring my family." Sounded good to us. Then he said, "But people say that I probably already have 'The Bug' and that's why it doesn't affect me." We decided to be adventurous and hope we didn't get "The Bug" and got some food (so far so good with The Bug). It was really good.

Then we went to the artisan market to buy a few more things. We spent what felt like our life savings because the currency uses higher numbers (about 8 quetzales to the dollar) and we bought so much. Filipe had fun bartering with the murchants. Our first stop Filipe was bartering with this boy named Edgar who was about 12 years old. Filipe wanted to pay 150 for a couple of little paintings while the boy was holding firm at 160. Filipe finally caved in. Later we realized that they were probably going back and forth over the difference of about a dollar. After that we kept the bartering to a minimum. There was so much to see and buy.

We rounded off the trip with a tour of the Jade factory and bought Shiloh some baby earings. I guess this means we have to get her ears pierced now. On the way home we stopped at the "Walmart", here to buy a couple of things for breakfasts and some rice cereal for Shiloh. The place was packed! It was worse than the mall on Christmas Eve. Then we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest.

It has been fun just relaxing in the evenings. Our hotel is on a main street, and no one really recomends us walking around on it a lot so we sit at the hotel and chill. Actually, Luis said that people go out on the street in the mornings to jog for some exersize. Filipe said, "That sounds good. So we can go for a walk in the mornings?" And Luis said, "Yeah, you can go run in the mornings." This, after he had told us earlier that he is ok walking around because he knows what to look for and if anyone comes after him he can just run away. So we have been avoiding walking around the street, which makes me a little sad because I have been itching to walk around and explore.

This last picture I leave you with is a picture of a bus. All the busses here are individually owned and they all look like school busses that are pimped out. Some of them are on the more normal side, but a lot of them are painted with flames with their name emblazoned on the side, have flasing lights and chrome grills. It's a pretty funny sight.

Tomorrow is the day!! We get our little girl!!! We will be posting new pictures some time tomorrow.

We're here!!!

We got to the airport this morning at 4:45am. Only something crazy like going to Guatemala to see my daughter could get me out of bed that early! The flights were great. We slept through the whole thing. Now we are here in Guatemala. We got to our hotel at about 1:45 had luch and chilled for a while and then took a quick trip to the artisan market. There were so many cute things! Tomorrow we are going to Antigua. We found a great taxi driver who lived in the States for 10 years and speaks great english. He is really friendly and knowledgable about things to go see around here. Now we will probably relax for the rest of the night and try not to spend too much money on dinner.Here we are on the patio of our hotel. I am wearing a new headband I bought at the market. More pictures to come. I'll put some pics from Antigua tomorrow.