Travel dates!!

We got 'em today! Today I booked our tickets so the count down is on. We all leave 2 weeks from today, July 11, to go down. That means that 2 weeks from right now, we will be in Bogota, hopefully at our hotel by now and through customs. We land at 7:30 pm and there is no time zone difference there so hopefully everything goes smoothly. It was VERY exciting to be actually booking our tickets. We got our apostilled documents back and let Lutheran Social Services know on Friday. Then they worked with the orphanage to verify the dates they would be available for the presentation. They usually only do presentations on Monday or Tuesdays so its fairly important we are down there for one of those days or you might have to wait a week. Presentation is where the baby will be presented to us and we take her from there. Unofficially it is called 'Gotcha Day' because from then on, she is ours! It is summer down there too so they had to make sure with vacations and things which weeks would work for them. 2 weeks is the minimum they like to give so you can get decent plane tickets and to apply and receive your visitors visa. So now that we have plane tickets, we (meaning Kerry) can go to Chicago and apply for our visas. He will go one day this week and will have them in hand when he leaves. At least we don't both have to go. A day trip to Chicago is bad enough! We booked our tickets so that Kerry and the boys are going to stay for 3 weeks and come home on July 31. That means that Kaleb will turn 7 while we are in Colombia. I believe he thinks that is pretty cool but tonight he brought up the idea of having a 'friends' party which we haven't done before so we said we would have to talk about it since I won't be home until much later. He seemed fairly upset at this so his 'friends' party may have to be celebrated a month or two after his birthday.

We have been busy preparing at home too. We had the internet people come a week-ago Friday and run a new internet line for us in the basement where we moved the desk so that left Kariana's room about empty. Tonight we painted the bottom half (very, very red) but I'm sure it is going to look great. Another coat tomorrow night and a boarder after that and then we can finally assemble her crib that has been sitting in a box for the past couple of weeks. I really want to get her room ready before we leave so that Kerry doesn't have to deal with getting that ready while I'm gone.

The boys are getting excited again now that we can actually count down when we are leaving. Its so fun watching them get excited about their new baby sister. They get so animated! I hope they do well on the plane rides. Total travel time is 12 hours that includes a 4 hour stop in Miami so at least its broken up quit a bit. Hopefully we can do a lot of walking around to wear them out for the second half of the trip down. At this point, they are very excited to go on the big plane so hopefully that enthusiasm doesn't wear off about an hour in.

I'll keep you updated as things are happening!