Sam Sibley- Party in the Green Room for presentation!

I apologize that this was delayed. I didn't sleep on the red eye flight we took in yesterday, and when the room was quiet and dark and we were getting all three Sibley boys to quietly rest.. Mommy kind of succumbed to it as well.

I'll have more photos from our day yesterday, but here's the goodies most of you want to see :-) We have a YouTube of our entire presentation up. I DID get that to work last night. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPehvF1SoIA&list=HL1367585432&feature=mh_lolz

and here are some pictures!! I'll have much more to say and gush about later during nap time.. where I WON'T fall asleep because I'm now caught up and can think clearly :-)



Following our presentation, a French family opened champagne and everybody did a toast to Sam :-) and then all the kids began epic meltdowns because it was 1:30p and it had been a very big day.

We took more photos yesterday as things progressed, but those will have to wait until later when I have the littles resting :-)

Hanging out in Texas, the night before.

Wednesday May 1st @ 10:20PM at the G Bush Airport in Houston

So here is how we started our travels..



Nothing cool has happened yet, we just fine ourselves with a few hours of “free” time as my sons are sleeping soundly on the ground in preparation for our red eye flight that leaves at midnight.

We left this afternoon from our home in Lee Summit, driven by the lovely Laura Wissel.. her Odyssey handled her kids, our kids, us, and all our junk like a real champ. Lucas and Ben were hyper at the airport and for the first flight. Not gonna lie.. there was a moment while I was trying to feed them when I almost burst into laughing tears at the audacity that we are on a flight to get ANOTHER little boy!! To add to the current insanity at THIS table. Today, we were the reason some people don’t want to have kids. Good thing they are very cute and sociable at Quiznos. “What you eating?” “Why?” “Why you here?” “Who is that? Is that your friend?” “But what YOU eating? Why?” “I don’t want ‘matoes!!” “I don’t want cheese!!” and my favorite “I only toot. It’s okay Mommy”. Ted got the harder end of the deal on the flight, but it wasn’t THAT bad. The pilot started his descent earlier than my calculation and without the normal announcement, so there was about 10 minutes there when I was sure we were going to die. I fly a lot too. I think there is something about actual adoption flights that make me just sure that this is when it is all going to end.

Anyway, I digress.

I must tell you, none of this feels particularly “real”. Here are a few reasons why that is perhaps:

1. We don’t have a lot of time to sit around and day dream about the little babe waiting for us. We just spent the past day trying to keep the 2 children already in our custody from making people not want to have kids anymore.

2. We do a fair amount of traveling to other countries as part of life.

3. We pack little boys for traveling a lot. Yesterday I just happened to pack for 3 of them instead of 2.

4. 6 months ago, we hadn’t even applied yet.

5. There are so many hoops in this process, and so many things that could go wrong either resulting in something failing or significantly delaying your dreams, that one doesn’t want to invest a lot of ones soul until right about.. nowish.

Here are my current 2 little boys camping out.



So now “now” is actually happening. We are waiting for our final flight to Bogota. The papers have come together. The bags are packed. The home is closed up. As far as we know, Sam will be in our arms sometime tomorrow afternoon after we have had a few hours to settle in at El Refugio.

I’m starting to wonder if things won’t feel real until the first morning when we wake up in our room at El Refugio and he pops his little head up out of his crib and looks at me with expectation.


Here is the other side of the story… Even though so much of this is a surprise to me, it’s not a surprise to God. God new that Sam needed a family.. and he gently persuaded me early in November to start our paperwork earlier rather than later in the spring “just in case” so that someone wouldn’t have to wait for ME.. because knowing that a little person was ready to go and had to sit there waiting for me would have been very hard for me to handle during the paperwork process. Luckily, that was only the case for a few months when the papers were well underway and I was waiting for things to come back.

I had LOTS of fun yesterday packing his cute little tshirts and his cute little overalls and his cute little new shoes… with his cute little jacket and his his cute little blue polo that will match his big brothers’ tomorrow. We have actually been diaper free for a few months at our house, and that was fun to pack some little diapers again! And silicone sippy cups.. and little Spanish books.


So I took a walk tonight, final Starbucks coffee in hand, just taking all of this in. How good God is and how He loves Sam. How lucky I am to be able to parent the children that have been gifted to me. How I could possibly look like I’ve been hit with multiple shovels a few months from now when I’m back home and don’t have all of the housework help I get at El Refugio..

It is a big day tomorrow. That is for sure.

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 :-)