Feeling zen

Ever since Sunday when our flights were booked, I have been feeling fairly zen. I believe my body just had enough of my soaring-through-the-roof stress level and decided that whatever happens, happens so I might as well relax a little. It has been a nice change! I think Kerry is relieved my mood swings are calming as well. Its almost like I really am pregnant!

We now have 3 coats of very red paint on Kariana's room and it is looking good. We will hopefully finish that up in the next few days with the boarder and the crib assembly which will be nice. Kerry heads to Chicago tonight for our visa appointments which are at 9 am tomorrow at the Colombian Consulate there. Hopefully everything goes smoothly for him and he comes home with 2 visas in hand!

We have been busy researching where we would like to stay while we are on in Colombia. Since I will be there for almost 2 months, its a fairly important decision. We narrowed it down to 2 and our Lutheran Social Services contact is seeing if our first choice (Hotel Paris) has room for us. All the hotels we would stay at are only open to adopting families, many of them have meal plans that you can choose from, cribs in the rooms, strollers/toys/baby gear you can use while you are there and laundry facilities. I may not want to come home after having them cook, clean, and do laundry for me for 2 months! I'm really looking forward to getting to know some other adopting families and exploring Bogota with them. These family-friendly hotels are the main reason we decided it was safe to take the boys with us. We are so glad they will get to experience this journey from the beginning with Kariana with us instead of them coming into the pictures after I get home with her 2 months later. It really will be a family affair from the beginning and I am already not looking forward to having my guys leave after the first 3 weeks. I'm not going to think about that part now though!

We got our web cam up and running last night and had our first conversation with my sister Carrie in Arkansas. It was fun! We are now on Yahoo Messenger as kmelcherii or Skype as kerryandcresta.melcher although we haven't tried the Skype account yet. Hopefully after tonight I will be an old pro on it. Many families who have travelled have used Skype to keep in touch with family back home and we will too. Kerry and I will also use it after him and the boys come home so we can talk everyday for free if was want too.

That is about it for now. I am still busy gathering things from family and friends that we will be using while we are down there. Thanks everyone for all your contributions! Please keep us in your prayers as we get closer to our travels.