Hello Again! It is amazing what one little person in your life can take up all of your time, but it is sooooo worth it! Kayella wanted to write a little bit of what has been happening the last couple weeks:
We have been busy with appointments and celebrating many Christmases. I definitely had a great Christmas, I got many new toys and outfits and met so much family. It is hard to believe that mom and dad have 1 week until they both go back to work. It has been a great 7 weeks but we are ready to return to work. On Christmas eve we headed to Minneapolis to have Christmas with daddy's side and I was really spoiled. I think I scored almost every light up/musical toy in Target and on Christmas day we headed off to Hutchinson at 7:30am to have Christmas with mommy's side x2. We ended up sleeping over at Grandpa John's because it got to be a really late night. I decided between the few days of craziness I didn't want to sleep anymore so today was our first great nap of 3 hours, mom even snuck a nap in. We also met mommy's boss for lunch and dropped off all of my stuff for school, since I start there on Tuesday. There is a baby there that made me start to pout cause she was upset. I am looking forward to starting there though and meeting all of my new friends. During this crazy time I also even had to get 2 shots and 5 vials of blood drawn. I was not happy at all and mommy had to be tough since daddy had a hard time seeing me cry. I am working so hard on pushing a few teeth through, mom and dad keep saying they are so close. On Friday we go back to Dr. Anderson to see the results of all of my blood work. I hope they are good!
Mom and dad are working hard on getting ready for the Polar Bear Plunge in February. I'm writing to ask for your support. On February 25, 2012, mommy and daddy have committed to grin and "bear" it for the athletes of Special Olympics Minnesota by participating in the South Metro Polar Bear Plunge.
I know — you're probably getting cold just thinking about it! But the cold that I'll feel is only temporary; the positive impact they'll have on the lives of over 7,000 Special Olympics Minnesota athletes with intellectual disabilities will last a lifetime!
They set a personal fundraising goal, and I need your help for them to reach it! So no, I'm not asking you to take the Plunge (although I'd love you to join them!), but I AM asking if you'll make a donation to Special Olympics Minnesota on behalf of me taking the Plunge. Any amount would be appreciated — it all goes to a wonderful cause, and every little bit gets me that much closer to their goal.
Support them at http://www.plungemn.org/plunger/jodiaschoff
If you want to learn more about the Plunge, visit http://www.plungemn.org to find out all the chilly details.
Thank you!
Kayella
P.S. Think warm thoughts for my mom and dad as February 25 approaches. They'll do my best to make my supporters proud!
What a long day of travel...whew! We had to be to the Bogota airport by 9:30pm on Monday night for a 1:10am flight. Seems like a long time, but we needed that much time to get through everything. I think we finally boarded the plane at 1:25 am. We kept busy with Kayella (yes, she decided not to go to sleep like we were hoping).
Can you tell how tired she was at his point?
Once ours bags were hand searched again before boarding we got pulled to the front of the line to board first. I guess in Colombia people with infants always go first. The lady that sat next to us looked at Kayella and rolled her eyes, I am guessing she was thinking, great a baby on an overnight flight. Kayella didn't take her bottle going up cause she was too interested in watching the take off then decided to take it once we were up in the air then fell asleep. Once we landed the lady next to us said, wow, she's a great baby. Come on, we already knew that!
Then we landed in Miami, Kayella still sleeping and went through the immigration process for us and then had to go through a separate process for Kayella. We were prepared to be sitting there for a long time. We got put in the little room and the officer said, give me 5 minutes. Oh, did I mention we were the ONLY ones going through at that time. He was a great person, he was explaining everything to us and what to do. We got to talking about the process and he said that we were lucky to be able to come into immigration this early cause if you are on the 10am landing flight, it takes forever. We ended up being done with her immigration and sent on our way. It felt good to get rid of that super secret envelope! We got to our gate, Kayella still sleeping, and then got a plastic bottle of pop, you know how good that felt after drinking glass bottles of pop. When we got through everything we had to go back through security since we went from International to domestic and of course, I with the baby get pulled aside to get a bomb residue testing done. Ted was so happy to have to handle 3 carry ons, 2 laptops, no belt on, 2 pair of shoes, all the change from his pockets and all the other little stuff. It took about 10 minutes and the officer said, you are good go ahead! DUH!!!
Next flight to Dallas! Another look from the person next to us and then I think he was pleasantly surprised that he could sleep on the plane cause guess what?! Kayella did also. Once we got to Dallas Ted had to get a Starbucks and I got a pretzel. American food, here we come. Then we found out that there was something in Minnesota with the weather, which no one can figure out yet and our airplane was put out of commission. An hour later they decided that we could fly and landed in Minnesota 1 hour late. I was not happy when I found out the flight wasn't moving. It was 2 1/2 hours to landing at home and I was ready. Poor Kayella just wanted out of the Ergo Baby and to roll around. We were lucky to be in the side that only had 2 seats so we enjoyed that with no rude looks. Many people on that flight were just flying into MSP to go shopping at the Mall of America. Wow! They do not know what they are in for, run away and run far!
Once we landed in Minneapolis Ted and I were all smiles and they announced the weather, 37 degrees F. We were so happy to hear that! It has been a month since we have been gone, when we left it was 60 degrees F. We rushed through to get our baggage and when we were coming down the escalator we saw Jan and she was so happy! We were so happy to, it was nice to have a familiar face greet us. We were waiting for our bags to drop into the carousel and Danielle came rushing in. She jumped on the light rail from school to make it to see us. What a cool experience to have. When we got done at the airport, we needed to pick up a few things so we ran to Target & Wal-Mart after we got home, my dad came and saw Kayella.
So now, we have been settling in nicely. We have had lots of visitors and the help has been amazing. It is weird not having to do everything right now, I can make her a bottle and give her to someone to feed. I still look for her when someone is holding her and she still likes to know that one of us is in her sight.
Last night, Wednesday we surprised Ruby with Kayella. Jan told Ruby that she needed to put the gift she bought her in her room and Ruby was excited to go in there cause she had not seen the dresser that Roxanne bought for her. We had the video camera set up so we will put that on later. Ruby walked in the room and went a few feet then turned and had the look like she saw a ghost. She said it took her a minute to realize that we were really there. She was so excited to see us and of course Kayella. She told us before we left that she didn't want to know when we were coming home, just wanted it to be a surprise.
Ruby was excited to feed her a bottle.
Kayella is a pretty dang well behaved baby. She barely makes a peep unless she is babbling, blowing raspberries, smacking her lips or laughing. She is definitely a keeper and we are so lucky to have been chosen for her! This weekend we are heading for a quick trip to Hutch to meet my family. Right now, Grandpa Todd is here to meet her and later we are going to Grandma Jan's work. We were supposed to go to my work today but there is a stomach flu outbreak going on and decided that next week would be better once stuff starts clearing. Tomorrow we are off to daddy's work. Half the state of Minnesota is waiting to meet her!
Grandma Jan and Kayella
Daddy and Kayella, her shirt says "sorry to have kept you all waiting"
Uncle Les holding her sleeping! He was so excited to finally meet her.
It's official! Ted picked up the VISA this afternoon and we are heading to Minnesota! We have her passport all ready to go with her visa attached inside. We also have a very official envelope that we are not allowed to open.
It is a very bittersweet day that we say goodbye to Kayella's birthland and she gets to say hello to her new home. We are excited to bring her home but we have to remember that it will be an adjustment for her as well. We have many people wanting to come and meet her and we are excited to have her get to know everyone that has patiently waited for her. We know we are her parents but sometimes I still get the "pinch me is this really real" feeling. I suppose it'll really sink in once we are home.
Her appointments on Friday went very smooth. First we went and got her passport done (took all of 1 hour from start to passport in hand) and then we went to the visa doctor. He told us (after Kayella peed on his scale) that she is fine, go home. Then we were off to ICBF to fill out a survey on the process and to pick up a Conformity letter to give to the people at the US Embassy. Then we went off to our visa appointment. They used to process adoption visas in the morning but switched them to the afternoon. Helena said that the afternoon process is much smoother, we were in and out within 45 minutes. I suppose when you have 31 windows and process 700+ visas a day there it can back up, she said you would wait 3-4 hours before. The security there is tight though, you put your bag through an x-ray machine, walk through a body scanner and they take your phones/cameras because you are not allowed to take photos in there. It is nice knowing that in Colombia there is a place for US Citizens to have a "safe haven" if something ever goes wrong. It was nice also that the people there all spoke english and were US Citizens themselves. We practiced with a cute smile for Kayella's passport and visa photos but she decided to look at the camera with a "are you kidding me look." When we get home I will scan some of the visa photos so you can see what we are talking about. This is the cute smile we practiced so hard on though.
So now, we are enjoying our last few hours in our daughter's birth land. We are excited to show her a new way of life but also embrace her heritage. She is already one very loved child and cannot wait to show her how many more people love her! Someone said to us the other day, you have half the state of Minnesota waiting to see her! I think we are right!
Congratulations to our friends from Texas that received their Sentencia today! We couldn't more more excited for them to get their family home :)
We already have our American food places that we want to eat, shop and do! We are going to BWW on Wednesday, maybe some IHOP, going to see Santa and shop at Target! The bank is probably thinking, usually they run at least 2-3 trips at Target per week...what is wrong! Oh, we are both excited to drive again. Ted thinks he can try driving like they do in Colombia, anybody want some whiplash?!
We made it to Bogota. Kayella did amazing on the flight! Well, it was only about 25 minutes in the air. It was a sad morning saying goodbye to many friends that we have met. I am glad we all are going to stay in contact. There were 4 children at the hotel that were all together in the same orphanage so I am happy that we will be able to all show our children when they get older that these are your friends.
The weather here is about 55 degrees and drops even colder at night, that is a huge change for Kayella. At dinner there were a ton of families but they give you "assigned seating". Not sure why?!
Tomorrow is a big day:
9:30 Helena picks us up to do passport (takes about 1 hour to complete)
12:00 Doctor Appt. for Kayella's visa
2:30 Visa appt.
If all goes well we will pick up Kayella's visa on Monday at 3:30 and fly out Tuesday morning! We are so ready to go home and our trip will be 1 day shy of 4 weeks. We love Cali, Colombia and would love to come back and visit soon, gotta see our favorite person there---Magnolia!
Jodi is dealing with a little bit of altitude sickness. Pretty much you drink a ton of water and rest to get rid of it. We will see how it all goes tomorrow. On Sunday we are meeting up with 2 families that we met in Cali to go up into the mountains to see a church and the Salt Cathedral. We will see how that goes for Jodi. It will be fun and it takes about 1 week to recoupe from the sickness. Ted is anxious awaiting til Sunday so we can go up on the top of the mountain. Photo ops for him!
We will let everyone know how the weekend goes and will be showing photos along the way!
Getting ready to take off!
Ohhhh! I have my very own TV for a 25 minute flight!
Well actually Hotel Paris in Bogota! We finally got our sentencia which is the legal documents that make Kayella officially Kayella and officially ours. But it wasn't without drama. We were originally told by our lawyer that we would be able to sign on Monday. So Ted got up early and started working so that he could get in as many hours as possible before we signed. 11 o'clock rolled around and still no word, 12, 1, 2 and finally at 3:30 we got word that we would not be signing that day. But then our lawyer was SURE that it'd be Tuesday so Magnolia was going to meet us bright and early at the hotel and wait with us until we got the call. So Tuesday morning we all got up and Ted got dressed in his nicest dress pants and shirt and got prepared for signing. Magnolia showed up at 9 am and we began to wait and wait and wait and wait and wait. Before we knew it, it was 4:30 and we were told we would not be signing that day. So Magnolia headed home but told us she'd back back at 8am on Wednesday. The rest of the day we spent moping around.
This morning Magnolia was here at 8am and once again we began to wait. At 9:30am we heard a family from Italy was going to go and sign which didn't concern us too much cause they had been here longer than us. But then at 11am a family from Germany who had arrived a week after us got the call that they were going to sign today. Magnolia decided to give our lawyer one last check in and still no signature. 5 minutes later, Magnolia's cell rings and it is our lawyer saying that our sentencia was signed. Ted and Magnolia rushed downtown to the Judicial offices (which are walk up windows in the 5th floor of a mall) and received the sentencia. From there it was a mad dash to get to the notaria by 12 to get the birth certificates started. They made it in the nick of time. After that we were able to breath a short sigh of relief while we waited the 3 hours for the birth certificates to be completed since it is done on a typewriter. Ted and Magnolia returned to the notaria only to have to wait another hour and a half for them to be completed. Finally with birth certificates in hand they met up with the lawyer to receive the remaining copies of the sentencia and then they headed to the Avianca office to purchase our plane tickets to Bogota!
With all of this finally done we could now enjoy the party that the hotel was putting on for the lighting of the candles on the eve of the feast of the immaculate conception. It was great to spend one last night enjoying the company of all of the new friends that we had made. However it was bittersweet knowing that we'd be parting ways and also that our new friends from Texas still had to wait til next week to get their sentencia signed. Please send your thoughts and prayers to them, that their judge will sign their papers first thing Monday morning.
So there you have it. Tomorrow we begin the first part of our journey home, if all goes as planned we should be back by the middle of next week and we can't wait to see all of our friends and family again. But before we leave Cali here is a list of things we will miss:
-All of the friends we met along the way
-The amazing people who have made this process just a little easier especially our champion Magnolia, Heinrich and all of the staff at Hotel Stein, Medardo our taxi driver/tour guide and Trudy our lawyer.
-The amazing people at Chiquitines for taking such good care of Kayella before we got here.
-The beautiful city and mountain top views
-The 80 degree weather in December
-The handiwork of the Colombian people
-Laundry washed, dried and pressed for us
-Poker Beer (Ted)
-Lorenzo (the dog)
And of course a few things we wont miss:
-The climb to the tower (our room) even thought it was beautiful
-The mad dashes across the streets
-FISH
Ciao for now, we will try and post once we arrive in Bogota!
Hello again everyone. Once again it has been almost a full week since our last post. We are now in our third week here which we have been told is when the stir crazies start to set in, and boy ain't it the truth. We have been looking for anything to get us out of the hotel for just a little bit. so much so that we have taken to going to the mall's food court for lunch just about everyday for some "American Food". Tuesday was a lazy day, but Wednesday afternoon we went with Magnolia to Iglesia de San Antonio and Loma de la cruz, which is a little area where vendors set up little shops to sell their wares. The great part about these shops is that just about everything in them is made here in Colombia, they aren't cheap imported junk trying to make a buck off of the Colombian people's heritage and culture, so we are glad to spend our money to support these wonderful people. We picked up many souvenirs for our family back home as well as a couple of things for Kayella.
Thursday was yet another lazy day, these are becoming more and more frequent the longer we're here. Friday however, we went out with Magnolia once again to take a little tour of the southern part of the city. We saw a lot of wonderful sights including , the hospital where Kayella was born, the bull fighting ring, and the cycling track, which is currently hosting an event for the World cup of cycling. After that Magnolia took us up into the mountains a short way to see El Rio Pance. This is a river that flows out of the mountains so the waters are cold and refreshing, so on hot days in the dry season, the citizens of Cali come here to "get wet" as Magnolia says, since the river is too shallow and swift moving to really swim. After that we went by Chiquitines to drop off the gifts we brought for them, although we had to leave them with the guards as the staff was at an outing that day.
Yesterday Mom and Kayella stayed back at the hotel to rest, but Dad went to the Museum of Modern Art, there were a number of very beautiful pieces there as well as some very interesting ones. Later that night we Skyped with family and just hung out.
Today we were supposed to out to tour the town with Magnolia, but unfortunately she was not feeling well. After giving her our prayers and well wishes we had the hotel call Medardo to take us out instead. We have to say that Medardo is one of the friendliest people you will ever meet, and although we don't speak Spanish and he doesn't speak any English we somehow understand everything he's telling us. Our first stop was Iglesia de San Fernando, a church with a very beautiful interior, unfortunately mass was going on, since it is Sunday. I did manage one shot of the interior from the outside. Our next stop was high in the mountains to see Cristo Rey. For those unfamiliar this is a large statue of Jesus (similar to the one in Rio de Janero, Brazil). It sits high atop one of the mountains and looks over the city, it is said to protect Cali from harm. It is a very impressive site to see and it is also amazing to see the city of Cali, almost 3 million people strong from that high up.
On the way down from Cristo Rey we made a quick stop at the statue of Sebastian Belalcazar, the founder of Santiago de Cali, before heading on to see more churches and theaters. The first one we saw was el Teatro Municipal, a beautiful theater originally built to stage operas and still putting on shows today. Then we went to Iglesia de San Francisco, Teatro Jorge Isaacs, Iglesia de la Ermita, Iglesia de San Nicolas, and fianlly Iglesia de la Merced. The architecture of the old churches is so amazing and intricate and is really contrasted against the squared off concrete buildings surrounding them.
After we got done with our tour, we went to the mall for celebratory milkshakes, because it is Jodi's birthday today. I know, I know, horrible husband for waiting so long into the post to mention this little fact. The last few of Jodi's birthdays have been accompanied by snow storms, so it was a very different experience to be celebrating in sunshine and 85 degrees. Now we are relaxing back at the hotel and Skyping with family. We are hoping that we will find out tomorrow morning when we can go to sign our sentencia, then it will be off to Bogota. We have been told if everything goes smoothly over the next week, there is an outside chance we could be home by the end of the week. Although we have fallen in love with our daughter's country of birth, we will be very glad to get back home, so all fingers crossed. This week might be busy, but we will try to update as much as possible to keep you all in the loop. Until then... Ciao!
Hey everyone, sorry about the radio silence for the last week, we have been very busy and have not had a chance to blog for a while. Much has happened since our last post on last Monday, but I will try to summarize so that we don't end up with another super long post. Tuesday was a pretty boring day, I worked in the morning and then we just hung out in the afternoon, it was nice to relax a bit. Wednesday was very eventful, in the morning we had our visit with ICBF, which basically started the whole legal process in motion. We expected it to be some big formal meeting, but it ended up being very relaxed and short. Magnolia, our interpreter picked us up and we drove to the ICBF building. There we met up with out lawyer, Gertrudis. We went to the office of the ICBF representative who asked us a few questions and that was basically it. The ICBF rep was very familiar with Kayella and her case and was very happy to know that she was going to such a good home. After the visit we went to the notary next door to sign the power of attorney document which made Kayella legally ours, and then Gertrudis went to file the paperwork with the court. Wednesday afternoon we had our tour of Chiquitines, it was very nice to be able to see what goes on day to day around there and how much the staff and volunteers at Chiquitines truly love the children in their care. At the same time it was very heartbreaking to see all of the children waiting to be adopted, we wanted to bring them all home with us. Of course everyone there was thrilled to see Kayella again, everyone wanted to hold her and give her kisses. We could tell that Kayella recognized all of them, but it was very reassuring that she seemed wary anytime we handed her off to them. We could see in her face that she did not want to be there very much and she would only smile once she was back in our arms. The staff also could not stop saying how much she had changed in less than a week, and how much she had bonded with us. We took a ton of video, but here are a couple of short clips for now.
There are more but we didn't want to overwhelm everyone!
Thursday morning we got to go to the zoo, something we had been looking forward to very much (I think I was more excited about it than Kayella). The zoo here is definitely a very different experience than back home because you can get so much closer to the animals, at one point I was literally a foot away from a Zebra. Kayella's favorite part was the fish, she stared in awe as they swam in front of her face. We are definitely going to have to get a pass to Sea Life when we get home. It was a great experience, although Kayella fell asleep halfway through and missed most of the zoo. That afternoon we Skyped with family, it was great to see everyone, but really made us realize how much we missed home. It was the first Thanksgiving at Roxanne's that Ted missed in 20 years. Kayella loved Skyping, she was especially excited to see her cousins Ruby and Dylan.
Friday morning, Enrique took us all to the local market. It was amazing, think of the Minneapolis farmer's market times 10. It was so cool to see all the variety of produce, from things we recognized to tropical fruits and veggies which we had never heard of before. The colors, smells and tastes were more than I can describe. We got to taste test all sorts of exotic fruits, like cactus fruit, papaya, and one that I can't remember that you could only eat the seed out of, but they were surrounded by this jelly like membrane, very different than anything I've had before.
The other unique thing about the market, is that besides produce it also has a meat market within it. Here I will give a quick warning to anyone who might be squeamish or be a vegetarian, because it's about to get a little graphic...
OK, here we go. Basically the meat market was dozens and dozens of stands where animal carcasses hung from meat hooks and the vendors chopped and hacked the meat right before your eyes. To say the least it was an affront on your senses, because the air was hot a thick and smelled of blood and meat. They also use every part of the animal, so as you can see from the pictures below there were various innards laid out to pick from including eyes, tongues, brains, intestines, kidneys, and testicles. Amid all of this Enrique had us sit down and "enjoy" a soda or beer. So there we are sipping cold beverages while all of this was going on around us. Again if you are squeamish you might want to scroll really fast through the next few photos.
After the market we went to a small souvenir shop of 100% Colombian made products. It wasn't your typical tourist trap souvenir shop, the prices were very reasonable and the products were all well made, no chincy knock offs here. We racked up around $100 worth of gifts and trinkets for folks back home. That afternoon Magnolia picked us up and took us for a mini tour of northern Cali, we didn't get to see a whole lot, as we need to exchange some money and traffic was horrendous, so most of the tour was poor Magnolia trying to weave her tiny manual car up the hills of Cali, it was quite a ride but she kept us all in one piece.
Saturday morning Enrique treated everyone to a trip of a local ecopark. It was a pretty cool place, however we did not see many of the animals that were supposedly there (maybe they were hiding). That being said, there were still plenty of amazing plants, trees, and flowers to take pictures of. I have to admit that compared to the flora here, Minnesota is kind of boring.
That afternoon we decided to go for a walk with our new friends, the Lopezes, another family staying at Stein who adopted from Chiquitines. We were planning on going to the restaurant at a hotel in the area, which we were told had the best pizza in Cali, but when we got there the line was wrapped around the block, so I think that might confirm that it's the best. We however did not want to wait that long so we walked a little more until we found a Tony Roma's. After Lunch we walked a little farther to a place called Ventollini's (think of a cross between a deli, a wine bar, and an ice cream parlor) and had some ice cream. It was delicious and cheap, Jodi and I each got a 2 scoop waffle cone and the total was around $5.
As I mentioned previously, Sunday the Kitchen is closed, so Enrique takes us somewhere nice for lunch. This week was no exception, as we headed up into the mountains to a beautiful hotel called El Faro De 18. The drive up was amazing, but crazy as the driver took hairpin turns going 45-50mph on a 2 lane road with no shoulder...and passing slow drivers. I found it somewhat entertaining, kind of like a roller coaster, but every time I looked back at Jodi, she had a look of terror on her face. Kayella of course slept through the whole experience. Lunch was fantastic and the ground of the hotel had many great photo opportunities. Midway through lunch a fog rolled in and obscured the mountains and valleys around us, it was a very eerie sight, straight out of a Stephen King movie. After lunch we piled back into the van for the wild ride back down the mountain, this time assisted by gravity. Once again I thought it was a blast, Jodi was terrified and Kayella slept. After that experience we decided to relax the rest of the day and Skype with family, including our first visit with Uncle Jeremy.
This afternoon, we are going out with Magnolia to hopefully find Kayella's authentic Colombian baptism gown. Magnolia also has told us that we might find out form our lawyer Gertrudis when our court date will be. We will let you know how everything turns out. Until next time...Ciao!
