Or that’s what it feels like, at least.

These last 2+ weeks apart have been the most difficult yet. And the last days the hardest of that. But the wait is finally almost over (for real this time).

Today Katie successfully filed for Luisa’s visa to come to the US. They have an appointment tomorrow afternoon to go back to the US Embassy to pick it up and we’ll be officially finished with all the requirements in Colombia. It’s been one of the hardest goals so far because we couldn’t book flights home until we knew we had a date for her visa. And now we finally do!

Katie and Luisa fly home on Wednesday!

I’ve waited so long to be able to say those words with confidence. It brings such relief even to see them typed out here! We’re so happy and grateful. Both to the Lord, who surely has carried us faithfully through, and to all of our friends and family who’ve supported us so well and so generously with their finances and their prayers. We’re forever indebted to all of you. Without you this truly would not have been possible and our family would be incomplete.

I hope that soon we can have a ginormous party and celebrate with all of you, but for now you have our deepest thanks and love.

It’s official! Luisa Fernanda is officially a part of the Fox family.

Katie signed the paperwork today at 2:00. There are a few more steps to take with the embassy. It’s still uncertain exactly how long it will take, but it’s likely that they’ll come home around next Tuesday (13th).

Thank you so much to all of you who’ve helped and prayed for us along the way. There’s just a few days left to go!

Look out for details about their arrival.

Last Thursday, we spent the day finally seeing a bit of the city where we have been living for the past five weeks. Bogotá has a population of over eight million people, and we didn’t realize how little we’d seen of it until we got to visit other parts. The picture above is of the city cathedral down in old town, a neighborhood known as La Candelaria. It is the original, oldest part of Bogotá.

A quick update: Shaun and Molly flew back home to Austin on Sunday. Shaun’s vacation time was up, so he needed to get back to work. We had hoped the whole process would be complete before he had to leave so that we could all leave together, but obviously that wasn’t meant to be.

Our agency rep tells me that she expects our case to be finalized this coming Monday, March 5. Once the case is final, there are a few more things to do: getting Luisa’s passport, visa, medical clearance, etc. That could take anywhere from four to eight days, so we could be home at the end of next week, but it might not be until the beginning of the following week. Our wedding anniversary is on March 11, so we’re hoping to make it home by then!

Here are a few more pictures from our day in La Candelaria:

This is a government building facing Bolivar Square, the heart of La Candelaria. Molly is chasing the pigeons.

Here’s Molly at the Botero Museum. Fernando Botero is Colombia’s most famous artist.

Looking down on a typical street scene in La Candelaria.

Armed military guards in the street.

The streets are very narrow and the neighborhood butts right up to the mountains.

Shaun is feeding the pigeons in Bolivar Square – they will eat right from your hand! That’s the cathedral again in the background.

Fancy a llama ride? At Bolivar Square, you’re in luck.

A painting from the Botero Museum. He is known for making his subjects “gordo”.

This pic is not from our day in town but we just had to include it! Someone here at the hotel gave Luisa a light-up bouncy ball and she was excited beyond belief!

Thanks for reading, friends! We continue to covet your prayers and encouragement while we endure this separation in order to bring our daughter home.

Or hopefully more than halfway…we will have to wait and see!

But we finally received some good news today regarding our case: the judge has passed us through our first round of approvals! FINALLY!!! HOORAY!!! We are so thankful! It only took 5 days longer than it was supposed to. :)

Now our case goes to another Defender of Minors for a second approval, and then back to the judge for final approval. Best of all, our lawyer says that she expects our case will be finalized sometime next week. It’s just an educated guess, of course – not a definite – but still! We are hopeful and thankful.

There is other news, too – although it’s not such great news, at least as far as we’re concerned. We have decided that Shaun and Molly will return home to Austin this Sunday, Feb 26, and Katie will stay behind with Luisa to complete the adoption. Shaun’s five weeks of vacation will be over as of this week, and so he needs to get back to work on Monday. And Molly will be very happy to get back to her routines, her friends, her school, and some semblance of normalcy.

This has not been an easy decision – it will be very hard to be separated without knowing what the end date will be, and there is a sadness that we won’t be able to complete this long journey together. But we know it’s for the best, and now that there is some forward progress with our case, we are hopeful that it won’t be more than a week to 10 days before Katie and Luisa can come home, too.

Thanks for all your prayers and words of encouragement! We are choosing to trust God, and believing that He is good and that He will complete the work He has begun here.

So yesterday we had our first “big” outing. We rode with two other families 45 minutes out of town to Parque Jaime Duque. We weren’t exactly sure what to expect (mainly because the website is in Spanish), but I don’t think we could’ve been prepared for it anyways.

We had a great time aside from Katie getting a little carsick on the ride there. Have a look at the craziness that ensued below.

The view outside our hotel room window

OK, tonight we got a little update from our agency rep here regarding our case.  She called after dinner and said that there was no specific news for us, but that our court had just this week fired its secretary and hired a new one, because the old one was “slow and disorganized”.  And she said that this is why there has been no news about our case.  Sigh… :)

So, she said our lawyer was going to find out a specific update about our case by the end of the week and let us know the current status of things.  There is a possibility that this process could still take weeks, especially if there is a backlog due to an inefficient secretary, but there is also every possibility that the judge could decide to expedite our case, if s/he so desires.  Please pray for our judge to decide to make it quick!!!

Thanks, all!  We love you!

I know it’s been awhile since we updated everyone, so I thought I’d write a little post this evening.  First of all, thank you so much for praying for us!  We are grateful.

A few specifics regarding the things we asked you to pray about:

• Luisa’s grieving process seems to have ended, at least for now, and she is bonding well with all of us!  She calls me “mama” now, and she loves playing silly games with her sister – they laugh a lot.  She seems equally attached to both Shaun and I.  She also loves to give kisses to us and charm us with her smiles and giggles.  We are thankful for this!  We love her so much and she seems to be a perfect fit with our family.

• Molly seems to be doing a little better, although there are still ups and downs.  Poor thing – she has not only had to adjust to having a new sister, but she is away from her school, away from her friends, her home, her language, her foods – it’s a lot to ask of a four year old.  She is still under-rested, too.  Please continue to pray for her.

• Luisa’s physical therapy here is done – they gave us a home plan that we are using, and that will suffice until we get home and start physical therapy in Austin (as well as speech therapy).

Other updates:

I (Katie) was sick for about a week with a stomach bug – that knocked me out for awhile, but thankfully it is over now.  I was on an antibiotic because the doctor I saw said it wasn’t just a virus.  Now I have a cough that won’t seem to go away, though I suspect it may be related to the air pollution.  Between these illnesses and the 4-5 days it took to adjust to the altitude, I have not really felt very good the whole time I’ve been here – which has made being here even harder.  You know when you’re sick, you just want to be at your own home in your own bed.

Today marks three weeks in Bogotá.  That means it’s the half-way point for the average length of stay here for an adopting family.  We are in Court 22 – but because the judges all switch courts after the New Year, our representative didn’t know anything about the judge there (whether s/he is fast, slow, etc).  But you can please pray for our case in Court 22! :)  We are still hoping to have a 5 week max stay here, but that would mean our case would have to be finalized sometime during this coming week.

We are starting to go a little stir-crazy.  Just waiting and not knowing when it will end is pretty challenging.  We joke with the other families at the hotel that life here is like the movie Groundhog Day – you just wake up and repeat the same day, everyday, over and over again.  We eat breakfast around 8, we clean up, we go out for a walk and some playground time, we eat lunch at 12:30, we have nap/quiet time, then we have more time to kill (another walk if it’s not raining, or playtime and/or a movie if it is) until dinner at 6:30 , and then we put the girls to bed by 8.   Lather, rinse, repeat.  :)

Well, there’s not much else to say except that we miss all of you very much!  We can’t wait to be home again, but it’s quite possible that it could still be another 3 weeks, or even longer (!).  So please pray for us to be content here and wait well, as long as we are asked to wait.

Also, thank you to all of you that have purchased Valentines!!!!!  It has been so very helpful and we are very grateful.  :)

Oh yes it is. :)

You may notice a new tab up at the top of this page: “Valentines”. Last year we designed and sold Valentines as PDF downloads to help raise money for our adoption. Now we’re doing it again!

You might be thinking: “I thought they were all done fundraising!” Well, we thought so, too.

It turns out that we didn’t raise quite enough money after all. We were just going off of estimates and suggested price ranges, and we hoped for the best. But some things have already cost quite a bit more than we budgeted. For example, our attorney fee was almost $1000 more than we anticipated. And out hotel is about $30 more per night than we thought it would be. That adds up over the course of 4-8 weeks.

Some of this is due to prices changing, but a lot of it is due to a weak US dollar and a strong Colombian peso. The exchange rate isn’t as good as it used to be.

So, that’s the skinny. We’ve put together two new sets of Valentines for sale this year, and we have the same sets available that we sold last year, too. If you’re planning on buying Valentines, please consider buying from us!

And please spread the word, even if you don’t need to buy Valentines yourself. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, whatever your social media drug of choice may be…we’d be forever grateful! :)

We leave you with some more pictures to enjoy! Thanks so much for your love and support.

A lot of people have asked about the adoption process and why exactly we have to be here in Colombia for so long.  (By the way, there are no “U”s in Colombia.  Just wanted to point that out.)  :)

So, here is the deal.  We had a one-week legally required bonding period.  Yesterday a social worker came to evaluate us, and she decided that bonding and attachment are going well, and she approved us for our interview today with a government official who represents the welfare of children in Colombia.  His official title is the Defender of Minors.  Doesn’t it sound like he should ride a horse and carry a sword or something?

So, we had that interview today.  We needed his official approval in order to enter into the legal process in the courts.  He was very kind and the whole meeting was about 5 minutes long.  At the end, he gave us approval, and we all had to sign a paper promising to care for and love Luisa and raise her well  – even Molly signed!

That is a big step behind us.  Now, our lawyer will file our case in the courts for us tomorrow, and from then on we will mostly just be waiting on the legal process to finish up.  It can take anywhere from two to six weeks or (rarely) even longer, depending on how crowded the courts are, whether our judge is a “leisurely” person or a more “get-it-done” kind of person, how favorable s/he is towards adoption, etc.

So, please pray for us to get assigned to a court where the judge LOVES adoption, and is QUITE a business-like, get-it-done person, and that the court would be practically empty except for our case! :)  The longer we have to stay here, the more expensive this trip will be…not to mention that we just would like to get home to family and friends and our own place.

Here’s one example of a challenging thing about being here:  our five minute meeting this afternoon actually took about three hours.  From the time we were picked up at our hotel, fought the traffic on the way there, waited and waited for the meeting once we actually arrived (because on-time is an hour late here), and then fought the traffic on the way home, it was almost three hours.  We hadn’t packed snacks or anything for the girls, and they were going crazy.  And the driver charged about $50 for that trip.  It was a somewhat stressful afternoon, to say the least.

Anyway – there’s the latest.  Now we are pretty much done with meetings and appointments, at least until the final sentencing in court.  So we have weeks ahead to fill with walks, playgrounds, parks, hanging out, and exploring Bogotá, and trying not to spend too much money.  : )

Thanks for your prayers and love!  We appreciate you all soooooo much and miss you tons!

It’s my party and I’ll wear a hat if I want to.

This post will be brief, but we just wanted to first of all thank you for praying for us! The second half of this week was better…our energy levels are higher, Molly is doing better with adjusting, and we are getting the hang of things a bit more.

If we thought we loved Luisa on the day we got her, we sure do love her so much more now. She is really amazing. She is hilarious – she loves to ham it up for the camera and her facial expressions have had us laughing harder than we’ve laughed in months.

We’ve also seen that she has a very fierce stubborn streak – and tonight we got to enjoy her first temper tantrum. :) (It was because we wouldn’t let her eat unlimited amounts of passion fruit.) She is making awesome progress with her walking, though – we can tell she really wants to learn and is more and more motivated. This is exciting!

Here are a few more pictures and a fun video at the bottom!

Luisa’s Birthday Party

Scenes From Around Town

At The Hotel

Here’s a little video featuring a walk around our neighborhood, Shaun making Luisa laugh, and some sizzling salsa street dancing. :) Enjoy!