Chicago!! Our short trip to the Colombian consulate

So Ted and I were able to take the boys to Iowa for my gracious mother to watch them for two days while we took off for our visa interviews at the Colombian Consulate in Chicago.

We flew very early on Wednesday 4/24.. when Ted had about 3 hours of sleep after doing the late shift at the hospital. Flight delays and all, we arrived at Ohare at 10am or so on Wednesday. We were able to head over to the Sheraton to drop off our bags, and then back to the airport to take the train into downtown Chicago! We were both tired enough to be loopy at this point, but we hopped off the train in downtown and went exploring.

First stop was a delightful Crepes Bistro where we stuffed ourselves on said Crepes as well as some beer and nummy wine. We continued to wander for a bit, but truthfully.. it was super windy and cold and we hadn't dressed well! We went back to Monk's Pub where Ted a delightfully good time. By 2pm, we were very tired and felt very old. We trained back to our hotel where we napped and laid there like old people for the rest of the night. We even went down to dinner where we sat with even older people than us.

We were up and much more refreshed the next morning and on the train into downtown at 8:30am for our 10am visa appointment. We didn't navigate downtown as well as we had hoped.. lots of lovely walking but not so much punctuality had us a bit late for our appointment, but nobody seemed to care much.

Once we made it up to the desk we did have something rather concerning issues come up, despite my meticulous planning. They were not impressed by our Fana agency license, and I needed to call Fana directly to have another one sent up pronto, which worked (PRAISE THE LORD). The same thing happened to us last time 5 years ago. They were also concerned by Ted's level of travel in Colombia with MMI, and that he did not technically have a visa for that although he did enter the country legally and report exactly what he was doing and who he was doing it with. We were eventually able to resolve the issue, but we will definitely take notes for next time!!

Finally, Colombian adoption visas in hand, we celebrated.



After a ridiculous amount of really good pork at the Purple Pig as well as some rather fantastic wine, we were off to the Chicago Art Museum. We tracked down the Ethiopian and Colombian exhibits as well



Even though I needed 2 giant lattes to wake up after all of our sleep deprivation and pork, we were able to walk over to a Chicago culture building that had additional exhibits. That evening, we took the train to meet our old friends Gabe and Laura Cook at De Cero, which was another fancy taco joint near their downtown highrise. After fancy tacos, we then went back to their apartment to catch up and enjoy some much needed adult people time before the next part of our adventure begins!

We arrived home early Friday morning and started to wrap up our life here as a family of four for the past few days. Now that we have all of our travel documents and our clearance to enter the country for adoption, we are ready to fly!

Immigration Provisional Approval Received!! Preparing to travel...

Well friends.. we received some news during our time in Minnesota that was earlier than expected! I got a phone call from one of our dear babysitter/stalker of my mail that we received our provisional approval by mail. I had checked with immigration on 4/8 and they had yet to receive our file at that time. Our provisional approval was filed on 4/11, so they must have received it quickly following my email.

This was very exciting, because it actually has us leaving for Colombia BEFORE we had actually planned. With Fana's consent, we were able to bump up our travel plans from 5/7 to 5/1. Ted's hospital graciously allowed him to change it schedule... and that was very much a God thing. He wouldn't have been able to do that if we would have gotten news any later than we did. It was very much a "send Shane an urgent email before he publishes the schedule!!" (that is usually 3 months in advance) kind of thing. We got lucky. Praise God!!

We were also excited to receive back Ben's original adoption documents that came back separately from his new passport. Per our tracking, Lucas' passport is in transit and we hope to receive today or tomorrow.

At this time, we were able to purchase very reasonable airfare for the first 4 Sibleys traveling. I will likely have to add some costs later, as it is unusual for people to come home on their actual flight.. but it has happened twice! We can hope.

So at this time, Ted, Lucas, Ben, and I are departing on 5/1. Ted will return home on 5/14 and I will stay.

Auntie Breann is coming to help me on 5/21 and will be staying until 6/4 when the 3rd wave of reinforcements arrive (my Mom and stepdad Randy). Randy will stay for a week and head home. Mom will remain with me to fly us home.

In the meantime, we are enjoying getting to know our little boy better over Skype!! Here he was spending some more time with Mama..



we got lucky that it actually worked out for Grandma and Grandpa to talk to him for a little bit too and read a story



We were able to talk once while in Minnesota as well as yesterday. We hope to chat with him on Monday and Tuesday of next week, because Ted and I will be in Chicago for our visa interviews for the rest of next week. We get back here on 4/26.. we run around getting this house ready and some last minute work shifts and meetings... and on 5/1 we FLY!!!

These photos were back here yesterday, where Lucas and Ben were excited to tell Sam that they were on their way soon!



Today is actually Ted's last day off before we fly where he and I won't be in Chicago.. so we are aflutter with activity. The crib is going back up this afternoon! EEK!!

May I interest you in an update?

So I greet you from my kitchen table on a Tuesday morning. Lucas is at preschool and I'm helping out a girlfriend with one of her little girls. They are currently assembling PotatoHeads. Aside from Ted looking a little sleep deprived and Ben having me up at 4am, it has been a blessed morning around here. Blessed for many reasons, but here are just a few!


I have two somewhat independent boys around here these days. This is somewhat new, and rather fantastic given the changes that are about to happen. I expect regression of course, but just knowing that the skills are there to begin with is very nice. I have been able to accomplish so much preparation, just because my boys can independently play with each other either in the living room, downstairs, and now outside as the weather is changing for spring. I AM WRITING A BLOG UPDATE RIGHT NOW. WHILE PEOPLE ARE CONSCIOUS. This would have been impossible last year, hence why not a single blog entry happened in 2012.. and the ones that happened in 2011 after Ben were home were written in an emotional and sleep deprived verbal diarrhea coma.

Lucas slept through the night with no accidents and pull-up free the past two nights.

Ben potty trained himself last month, although we have the occasional accident due to not wanting to stop the playing.

BEN'S PASSPORT CAME YESTERDAY!! Lucas' extra evidence documents should make it there today, so we hope to have his passport next week. We will be waiting for both boys original documents to come back, so please continue to keep those in your thoughts.

Our yard is being fenced in before we leave for Colombia.. and I intend to be shoving the older 2 boys out and into it often when we return with Sam.

Now on to the reason you were likely reading this in the first place.. updates on Sam!!

Our I800 application (the big whopper file that the United States looks at for him to approve his citizenship for immigration) landed at the TX lockbox factility on April 1st. Ironically that is just the national holding tank for such things.. and then it is forwarded to our immigration worker who just HAPPENS to be right here.. in my town.. about 2 blocks from Lucas' preschool. All I800 applications come here to Lee Summit, MO to the National Benefits Center. So, any of you adoption people out there in my world.. the next time you have to file an I800, I would be happy to drive to the front of the NBC and pray at it for you.

Anyway, once it lands on her desk, hopefully later this week or next... she will ideally open it and review it and approve it. Once this provisional approval happens we can book our plane tickets for about 2 weeks out from that. During that two weeks our provisional approval has to make it through cyberspace and be uploaded into a special computer in Colombia at the embassy so that they are ready for us. This final portion of the two weeks is actually the same as what we did for Ethiopia (get provisional approval from the embassy to travel and then a lag time while all of it uploads to the US Embassy computer in the foreign country).

As of now, we are hoping that we will be able to travel on or around May 7th. That is 4 weeks from today!

We were able to skype with Sam yesterday! Here are a few of the stills that we look from that.



We planned to skype again today, but he had a surprise speech appointment that his therapist didn't know about previously. We are excited to see his little face tomorrow at 10am and then again on Thursday!

Here are a few more of photos from our side of things in the kitchen. The boys were very excited to show him their "babies" and get a good look at their new brother. Living as far away from family as we do, down here in Missouri, the concept of Skype makes sense to the boys. They understand that new little brother is still far away and in Colombia and that we all need to get special tickets to get on the plane to go be with him. Exciting things ahead!



During our time on video call, we were able to see him walk across the room independently which he just mastered yesterday! Sam has some delays due to his start in life, as well as what comes with the program of a fully institutionalized child. FANA has taken amazing care of him, and he is receiving multiple therapies. He really does love his picture book of us, and it gave me so much joy to see him "connect the dots" between the people in his book and the people on the computer screen. He was able to point to the computer and say "mama" and this makes my heart smile :-)

We also got to watch him play with a Thomas Train (Tren), a shapes ball, a soft soccer ball (pelota), and he seems to have an attachment to a stuffed froggy that I probably need to look into.

Meanwhile, back in Lee Summit, here are some random pictures from Easter Sunday and our family Easter Egg hunt in the backyard from last weekend!



So here are some of the happy.. and the not so happy.. and the egg discoveries.

Tomorrow morning we plan to skype and see our sweet little boy a bit more, and then we are off for a trip to IA and MN to see the family for the last time as a family of 4! Activities will include an overnight and much needed pre-10 year anniversary hotel date for Ted and I, getting to see Audio Adrenaline in Indianola on 4/11, and then a long weekend trip up to MN to see folks from FANA and the extended family. We also plan to celebrate Lucas' 5th Birthday and Ben's 3rd up there. Once we return Ted will put in more work days, and then we are off to Chicago for our visa interviews on 4/24. We hope that we will have some travel news around then!

Exciting times ahead.. and a whole load of things ready to go to Once Upon a Child as well as Goodwill. We need to make some space for another cute little person in this house soon :-)

REFERRAL!!

OFFICIALLY presenting Samuel Alejandro Sibley, currently 18 months old and waiting for us at FANA!






He doesn't look the happiest here, but we know he has a beautiful smile so we will look forward to seeing that face soon!

Ted and I spent yesterday afternoon reading through all of his entire translated file and double checking our I800, I864W, and DS230 documents. Our I800 will be on its way today for a delivery to the lockbox in TX on Monday. At that point, we will wait for a few more weeks for our provisional approval. At that time, we will finalize our travel plans while his information is sent to the US Embassy in Colombia.

We are planning our trip to Chicago for our visa interviews on April 24-26 for the 2 days Ted is off from work.

6 weeks may seem like a long time to wait, but since this little guy is still a bit of an adoption "surprise" to us, we still have a lot of work to do around here for his arrival! I know that it is going to fly by. Eek.

Please pray for us and Lucas and Ben as we move into this time of transition. Now that he is officially officially intended to be ours and all of that dossier work I did has the green light, we can now truly get excited!!! To have 3 BOYS. AGES. 5. AND. UNDER.

It's about to get really real up in here.


I leave you with a snapshots of my daily life, because Ben decided to potty train himself this past month and we dance around in our new underpants to celebrate our new "big boy" lifestyle.



Be blessed everyone!!

Baby Sam's Progress: Waiting for Referral...

So our papers were received on Wednesday, February 28th at Fana. I haven't updated because we had expected to see a referral by now and were just waiting. It has been 3 weeks and some days, and as of now we are still waiting to hear news of our "official" referral from Fana.

So what does this mean, exactly?

Sam's "official" referral is all of his documents translated into English. This involves the original relinquishment documents and his report from Fana, as well as his medical file (which I basically already have). At that time Ted and I will officially write our acceptance of his referral, and use those documents to submit the I800 immigration application, along with a few other things. Once that I800 application is filed, we are able to book plane tickets once we receive the provisional approval. That usually happens about 3-5 weeks after you file it.

As I am sure you could guess, we are anxiously awaiting this next hoop to jump through. This will give us some indicator, give or take a few weeks in either direction, of when we will be flying to meet sweet Sam. Until then, we wait. We have fulfilled everything we are able to do on this end for him.

Please pray in the week to come, that we will receive his referral, or at least some news as to when they plan to formally review our documents and hopefully issue it. We know the folks at Fana work very hard for the kids and that they love Sam very much, so we will trust them that the right timing will come.