Hello everyone! How are you? We hope that we are replying to everyone's email in a timely manner... there are just so many! Please be patient with us as we will try to get back to you all in at least two days timeframe. Remember that you can all email us! Well, let's see... what's new with us. Not much to tell today. We had to pay our stay at Hotel Paris today because we arrived last Saturday and hadn't paid... so we will have to pay every Friday. The cost was 1,600,000 pesos. Sounds like a lot huh? Well, it's actually quite affordable. That equates to about 700 US dollars. And that also includes our laundry which the Hotel did for us for about 10 US dollars. Don't forget that this also includes all three meals, sterilized bottles, and a wonderful support system!
Joshua is doing wonderfully. We had a brief outing today to the supermarket, Carulla and I had a delicious sweet treat called, Areqiupe. It's like Dulce de Leche (but better) on a thin wafer. Delicioso! You know, I had to experiment and learn about the different foods here. hee, hee. Don't worry... we're not getting fatter! All of the food is prepared freshly and actually our clothes are fitting looser than they were before. I think it's because there's no snacking between meals, and meals are smaller portions.
Joshua is smiling more. He had another fabulous night... Thank you Lord! We are thinking about going on Sunday with a few other couples to a local Craft Fair where there are authentic Colombian crafts. I think next week we'll plan more outings (with a Hotel Driver of course).
Lots of love to you all. Josh can't wait to meet you! And of course, be praying for Monday as we are going to meet with the ICBF lawyer to start the process. The other couples here are growing desperate... Kelly and Mike just got word that they could be looking at another 3 weeks or so and they've been here 3 weeks. So, just pray that we can be home before Frank has to report back to work on May 8th. Otherwise, I'll have to stay here with Josh by myself to finish out the process. I'm still hoping a miracle will happen and I'll make it home by April 22nd!!! Hey, God's FedExed this whole process already huh? I can tell you, if that were the case, we'd be the envy of all couples here. lots of love to you all! Couldn't post new pics today as we are working to get them into the computer... but, here is one from the archives back on Monday. This was our first family picture at CRAN! xoxo

Hello Everyone! Blessings to you all from the three of us!
Thank you to everyone who has posted such loving, sweet comments. We are so filled with love at this moment, it's hard to describe in words. I can truly testify to all of you who may doubt that an adopted child doesn't "feel" like your own: it's totally untrue! The moment we saw him, he was totally ours! If you or anyone you know are even thinking about adoption, you totally should do it! Any country would do, but we are partial to Colombia... :) I wanted to write the info about our agency as we've had many people ask us: Commonwealth Adoptions International. Their website is: www.commonwealthadoption.org. Any questions anyone has, feel free to blog us!
Today we've had a great day. Josh has been on schedule and we went out with our friends, Mike and Kelly (and their two kids Emily and Matthew) to El Corral, a burger joint. They had great burgers! After that we went to a baby store called Baby Ganga (translated Baby Gang) where we bought more bottles for Josh (we felt bad as the ladies here have been having to sterilize ours constantly because we only had three). Josh is smiling a lot more today and had a great time on our outing. Dont' worry! We walked and this area is totally safe. The weather has been gorgeous here today... hot but not humid like Miami! Josh had a taste of the heat. He was a little fussy when we took him out, but I just took off his sweat pants and left him in his long sleeved onsie and he was a happy camper! He even propped his feet up on the stroller! We took a picture but probably won't post it until tomorrow as we have to ask our friends to upload the pics for us. Here is one we took yesterday of baby Josh asleep in the swing. You can kind of see his Edward Scissorhands fingers... lots of love!

Well everyone.. not too much new to tell. We're trying to get to know baby Josh and he's trying to get to know us. Here are a few things we've learned in the past few days about him.

• He is TOTALLY INFATUATED with his hands. He holds them up and stares at them for hours... no seriously, hours. I think he's amazed at how big there are, but then again, so is everyone else! (We're going to try to get a pic of just his hands so you can all see what we mean) we're thinking... basketball scholarship?
• He seems to be teething so, he chews his hands, entire fist and now likes the pacifier too.
• His poop is unlike any smell ever known to man. Frank says it's right up there with chum.
• He loves to be changed! Never fusses and smiles through the whole thing.
• His first bath was a total disaster... he screamed the whole time! :(
• He's very inquisitive. Like his Dad, he loves to stare at gadgets (like the swivel on the swing) so, I think he's going to be one of those Discovery Channel lovers. Sheesh... I'll really be outnumbered then!
• He sleeps the whole night! Yes... ladies and gentleman, don't Hate as my kids at Leisure City would say. He slept last night from 9pm until 730am straight! God IS good!
• He is very social, so, watch out!

xoxo

Baby Joshua has arrived!

Well everyone today was the day and baby Josh is now staying with us at Hotel Paris in Bogota, Colombia. It was a beautiful experience. We went early this morning with our driver, Julio and our CAI liason here in Colombia, Edith Nieman to CRAN. There we met Ximena Llegas, CRAN's director and after signing a few papers, we were introduced to Joshua Marcos. He's even more beautiful than the picture!!! He's very fair skinned (more than us...we're sure the Miami sun will take care of that!) He has beautiful black eyes and big cheeks and ears. Everyone here at Hotel Paris says he looks like Frank. Today has been awesome! He is such a good baby. His foster mom said that he only cries when he's hungry and we've found that to be somewhat true today. It's alot to expect from him during one day... but we've done a lot today. We hung out here, he napped a few times, ate and we even took an outing with our friends here Kelly and Mike and their kids to Baby Ganga (it's like a small Babies R Us). He slept in the stroller on the way. We've had two poopies and one pee pee, all successful. He's weighing about 16 lbs and he's probably about 24 inches long. He's really LONG and his hands are long too. We're thinking basketball? We're sorry if some of you have tried to call us here at Hotel Paris... it's kind of hard to get ahold of us. Keep trying! I think the best time to call is early in the morning, around 9 or so. We don't have a phone in our room and so, they have to track us down. We're going to do our best to get ahold of everyone to talk at least for a little while as we do have a calling card with limited minutes. So, don't be worried about us as we are also trying to adjust to parenthood too! Lots of love to everyone! xoxo

Greetings from Colombia!!!

We just arrived in the beautiful city of Bogota, Colombia at about 2pm today. The city has gorgeous mountains and we've learned a lot since we've arrived. Our driver, Mario told us much about this booming city. It seems that gas is around the same price as ours. We have McDonalds here (YAY!), Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts and even a Hard Rock Cafe in the city. Isn't that amazing? We are transmitting right now from Hotel Paris. The hotel is very cozy and our room is comfortable. We have our own distilled water in our room and my stomach is grumbling right now as the ladies are preparing the guests' dinner in the kitchen. (I'm praying I won't gain 10 lbs!) So far we've met Edith Nieman, our CAI coordinator here in Hotel paris. She said that at 8:30am on Monday morning we'll leave for CRAN to pick up the baby. Right now there is another lovely couple here from France who adopted a baby girl (around 14 months) named Clara. She is precious. I'm sure we'll discover more families here once they arrive from their outings today. Well, not much else to tell... OH, Mario told us that we don't need to worry about safety. There is not much crime in Bogota (probably more in Miami!) but DON'T WORRY... We promise to be careful and the Lord will definately protect us. Hey, he brought us this far huh? xoxo Sandy

Hello everyone!

Well, it seems that we are all set and ready to travel!

Our baby's room is on its way to actually having a baby!

Praise God our visas arrived yesterday via our trusty FedEx delivery guy. Our flight is scheduled to leave on Saturday at 10:15 am so we should arrive in Colombia by 2pm or so. From there we will check into Hotel Paris in Bogota, Colombia. You can visit their website by logging onto: www.hotelparisbogota.com. Then as far as we know, we'll have one day to adjust to the high altitude and Monday morning one of the hotel drivers will take us to CRAN (you can also visit their website at:
www.cran.org.co ) and there we will tour the facility and pick up Baby Joshua Marcos! I can assure you, we promise to take both video and pictures. It will be a wonderful experience! From there on, I'm sure we'll experience some sleepless nights, possibly a few diaper changing fiascos, and maybe even a "Uh-oh. Now what?" But, overall, we know for each of these, we'll also have beautiful memories of our gorgeous baby boy.

Thank you all for your support, love and prayers.

Colombia, here we come!

Here is our first picture of Baby Joshua Marcos! Isn't he adorable? 

Baby Joshua is Coming Home Soon!!!

Jeremiah 29:11
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

Well, everyone, we've got the news! We've been assigned to a beautiful four month old baby boy in Colombia we've named:

Joshua Marcos Castellon

We cannot wait to go to Colombia to pick him up! As of right now, assuming everything goes well, we will be leaving on Saturday, March 25th, 2006. We will be going to the city of Bogota, Colombia and a few days later we'll pick him up at the CRAN orphanage. He is quite the cutie pie. All of our family and friends have been so supportive and we are truly excited to start our family of three.

We hope to communicating with all of you via this blog while we are in Colombia. Here you will be able to post daily what we're up to, show pictures of the baby and keep everyone informed of the process.

Please continue to pray for us as we embark upon this journey. We know it will be a true blessing from our Lord. We can only give HIM praise and thanks for His precious gift to us.

Thank you so much to all of you who have prayed for us, supported us and given us beautiful gifts to prepare Josh's journey home.