And Now the Rest of the Story

Finally, here are some pictures from the rest of our trip to Guatemala. On Thursday we went to breakfast, took some family pictures, spent some time out at the pool, then Jason went to the Embassy to pick up Hannah's visa. On Friday we went to Antigua, Guatemala. It is a beautiful town about 45 minutes from Guatemala City. It is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. We hired some people that we had met on our previous trip to drive us and show us around. It was a great day. We spent the day taking in the sites, taking lots of pictures, and going to the market. Saturday we flew home and arrived in Lubbock about 10:30pm.

Now on to the pictures.

Noah in his crib:

Noah & Hannah in their stroller:

Joel controlled the clicker during family pictures so we never knew when the picture would happen. We had lots of laughs, but we thought the second picture here turned out well.



Antigua:


This is Sandra our tour guide for the day with Joel:











At the market there were many, many booths like this one:

Diapers, Exhaustion, and Sickness

Diapers. That's all we do. Really. That's the post. We do diapers.

...

and then there's the getting up sometimes 9 times a night between the 2 of us and the 3 kids (not counting the times you wake up and remind your spouse it's their turn).

...

and then there's the teething, diarrhea, and general not feeling good shared by some of us. No one is all out sick yet but several us are on the fringes of it.

...

Yet, we're all together as a family and despite it all, we love it. We're so thankful for each one of our 3 kids. We're learning them, they're learning us and each other, and we're sure things will settle down in a week or two (or at least we hope). Last night was actually better...only 1 waking between 12:00am and 7:00am. So, there just hasn't been a lot of time of posting. Once the kids go down, we're exhausted, so we've been watching some of the Olympics. We now call putting Noah down in his bed (with minimal rocking) a Phelpsian feat (you have to keep up with USA Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps to get that). :) We haven't even sat down together to go through all our trip pictures. Hope to do that soon, hope to post more soon, hope the kids sleeps good tonight.

Home Forever!!!

Hannah Faith is finally home forever! We arrived safely late Saturday night in Lubbock. Jason's parents, sister, brother, and sister-in-law were all waiting at the airport to welcome Hannah home. The last few days have been really busy so we've fallen behind on our blogging. We had some "free time" when all the kids were asleep the last couple of evenings in Guatemala and decided to spend the time enjoying dinner together and a movie (all in our room). We'll catch up through the week with more pics from our trip.

Embassy Day

Yesterday was Hannah's Embassy appointment. The day started early as everyone in the room was up at 5:45am. We decided for Jason to stay at the hotel with the boys while Shannon took Hannah to the appointment. It was a long morning for Shannon and Hannah (and not neccessarily short for Jason) as they had to be in the hotel lobby at 6:30am and didn't get back until about 10:30am. There were 6 other families from our adoption agency there. Surprisingly, the US government didn't charge us an additional $670 that we thought we would have to pay for doing a second adoption (paperwork fees). All in all, it went well and Hannah is officially ours in the eyes of the US goverment. We spent most of the rest of the day at the pool. Everyone had a great time. Joel has become quite the little fish (in the shallows - not a deep sea fish). We called it an early night since everyone was tired. The kids all went down and we actually got to enjoy dinner (reheated pizza) and a movie. Here's some pics from the day...







Joel is pointing at an airplane with his chicken finger

Shannon washing baby bottles

Cinco de Hedges

The Five Hedges - probably not proper Spanish grammar but you get the idea - we're all here now! We picked up Hannah Faith this morning at 11:00am. It's hard to believe that we never have to give her back! It's been a wonderful day having all our kids here together.


Joel is asleep on the bed, Hannah is sleeping in her crib, and once again, Noah is wide-eyed, smiling, spitting, laughing, and jumping in his crib. Noah's been asleep, woke up, and we've tried off and on for the last few hours to get him back to sleep. We finally gave up and decided just to let him jump...and spit (as I'm typing this). :)

We just hung around the hotel today. Joel really wanted to swim but it rained off and on this afternoon so we didn't get to go. We just spent the day getting reacquainted with Hannah and enjoyed having the whole family here. She seemed a little cautious at first about coming to us but has warmed up as the day progressed. She stills seems really content and rarely cries. She has sooooo much hair! Shannon spent some time this evening playing with different hair ideas. We ordered in Pizza Hut for dinner (no, we're not very adventurous when it comes to food). That's really about it for today. Now for lots of pics...

Noah in the crib this morning

Joel and Hannah weren't in a real picture taking mood so they have stuff in their mouths - Noah is smiling behind the lid :)



Hannah gave Joel a Thomas the Train toy

Joel has his lion, Peheh, wrapped up in the blanket. He's bouncing him to sleep like we do Hannah and Noah.

Nap time this afternoon. :)

Joel enjoying Pizza Hut pizza

Shannon fixing Hannah's hair

We Beat the Storm

We arrived safely in Guatemala and are in our room at the Westin. Joel is sleeping on the bed and Noah has been wide-eyed, laughing as he turned his bed into a jumperoo. We made all our flights fine however we had a bit of a problem in Lubbock. We've had some intermittent problems with our van's driver side window not rolling up. Probably a short in the switch. So of course today, after rolling down the window to get a parking slip, the window would not roll back up. We didn't have time to do anything but just leave it in the parking lot with the driver's window mostly down. Thankfully, Andy and Alissa (Jason's brother and sister-in-law) were able to come and pick it up this evening. And funny enough, Andy said it rolled right up when he came and got it! Oh well. :) So, we're glad we came early and beat the storm and we're super excited to be picking up Hannah Faith at 11:00am tomorrow. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow! Stay tuned for pics tomorrow.

Tropical Storm and Travel Plans

Our plan was to leave for Guatemala in the morning but after checking the projected path of Tropical Storm Edouard this morning we decided we better leave this afternoon. Needless to say, we've been scrambling around trying to get ready to leave. Thanks to Shannon's foresight, we had alot of packing already done. Please pray that we make our connecting flight in Houston this evening and miss the storm!

Guatemala Here We Come!

We have our travel plans set for next week. Many of you know that we considered Shannon and the boys staying home and just Jason going to pick up Hannah, but we decided that this is too big of a family life changing event for all of us not to go. Joel is very anxious to go get Hannah and make her laugh. We leave our house next Tuesday morning about 6:00am for a flight from Lubbock to Houston and then Houston to Guatemala City. We should be arriving just after 1:00pm and then picking up Hannah at the hotel at 3:00pm. Wednesday morning we leave our hotel at 6:45am to go to her Embassy appointment. One of us and the boys may stay at the hotel for that. Thursday afternoon one of us goes back to the Embassy to pick up Hannah's visa. For Friday we have scheduled a trip to Antigua for the day. There is a couple that drove us to the Embassy appointment and visa pickup for Noah that will be taking us to Antigua. This is where both Hannah and Noah lived while they were being fostered and it is supposed to be beautiful. Then Saturday afternoon we fly home. We do not fly in until about 10:30pm. This will be our first trip that we are allowed to leave the hotel, so we are not sure if we will venture out much or not. We are looking forward to the trip and to finally having Hannah with us forever. We are very busy packing and finishing up things here. If we don't blog again before we leave - Adios!