So Happy to be Home!!

Well, after a month of many interesting travels, we are finally home.  It's so good to be here, with our family all together! Wonderful to chat with my big girls in person instead of on Skype...(thank God for Skype!!)...so fun to snuggle with the doggies again...such a blessing to rejoice with our brothers and sisters in church on Sunday. Laura is taking it all in and doing everything she can to learn and understand a new language, a new family, and a new culture.  She is a trooper.  But she is also very tired.  It is exhausting to have so many huge changes all at once. 

Our trip home was supposed to take place all in one very long day, however "man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."  As our kind Lord would have it, one of our flights was canceled due to weather and we were stranded in Miami overnight.  What might have been viewed as a difficulty proved to be such a blessing.  We found a hotel, got a decent night's sleep (so much more comfortable than the floor of the airport!), and ended up getting rerouted straight from Miami to LAX.  It was a 5.5 hour flight, and we had the most comfortable seats of all of our flights because the Lord chose to give us the bulkhead row.  So we had all the room we could ask for and were able to stretch out and relax.  So instead of flying out of one storm in Miami and into another (a snowstorm) in Dallas, we got to get dinner, sleep in beds, and fly a very smooth flight straight to LA in roomy, comfy seats. Pretty amazing.  We did get delayed in LAX for an hour and a half, and we were just starting to feel like we lived in the airport when we finally got to board our plane.  So now we are home...yay!!!

Saying goodbye outside of Hotel Paris, at 3:30 in the morning, which would be 12:30 here in Nevada.

Lots of standing in line! Here we have just arrived at the airport in Bogota and are at the beginning of our long trip home. We had 6 pieces of luggage to manage, so it was a relief to check 5 of them in at the check in. You can see our driver standing right behind Laura. He stayed with us until we made it to the emigration checkpoint. 

We did lots of this...

And this....

And this...!

 

An unexpected sleepover in Miami! So thankful for beds!!

 

Not only thankful for beds, but also for the complimentary toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, razors, shaving cream, combs, lotion, and everything else the hotel gave us....because our luggage was still happily on its way to Reno without us!

Look! Geof can actually stand up in the airplane! He is currently standing directly in front of our row of seats.  Normally, he can't stand once he leaves the aisle and gets into our row.

LOTS of space on this flight! Geof is sitting between our seats and the bulkhead in front of us. This is before takeoff. He really was buckled in before we flew off!

Ready to go home!!!

 

So, thank you again to those of you who read our blog, and especially to those who responded!!  We look forward to communicating with you in more personal ways in the future, now that we are back.  Blessings from our family to yours!

Botanical Gardens in Bogota, and other stuff

Before I post my zillion pictures of the gardens, I meant to tell about our trip to the market on Sunday....or rather, our trip back to the hotel FROM the market.  It is the rainy season here in Bogota, so it rains pretty much every day, but usually in the afternoons.  We left the hotel about 10 or so, knowing it took almost 30 minutes to walk there, and planning to head back in time for lunch, which is served at 12:30.  We really enjoyed the outdoor market and got to try a few new, Colombian treats while we walked around.  Just as it was time to head back, it began to sprinkle.  It does that a lot here and you don't usually give it much thought.  We all just pulled our hoods over our heads and kept sauntering around the market, making our way out, and telling the guy selling umbrellas that we did not need any but thank you anyway.  By the time we reached the end of the market and began the 30 minute walk back, it was pouring rain.  REALLY pouring.  We didn't have much choice but to keep walking, and at first we actually attempted to avoid walking in puddles, but very soon that became a useless gesture.  We were soaked to the skin, raincoats and all, thinking wistfully about the umbrella guy back at the market. At one point, Laura pointed to her hands and made the motion to tell me (Lenna) her hands were "sleeping"--they were going numb. It's not terribly cold here, but when you're wet that changes things. As we walked, the lightening picked up, and it was very close, so the thunder was quite deafening, often making us jump involuntarily.  Would've been scary if it wasn't so tremendously, awesomely incredible.  We finally made it back and shed all our wet stuff, hanging our jackets in the laundry room in the hope they would be dry the next time we headed out and giving thanks that each of us had more than one pair of shoes! We felt as though we'd walked through  a waterfall!  So that is the story of our trip back from the market.  Very memorable!!

Now, here are our pictures from the gardens.

Giant trees, so many textures.

Another, fuzzy headed giant. (I don't mean Geof)

This patch of, yes, dandelions was carefully planted and tended within the medicinal herbals garden. Not everyone thinks of these as weeds! (Labeled "Dientes de Leon")

This tree had curly side branches that hung down.

 

Yamile is posing in front of two different kinds of agave plants.

Do you see that umbrella Laura is holding?  Yes, we learned our lesson!

Apparently someone had an irresistable urge to proclaim undying love to Mauro and chose this as the way to go.

A hut made of palm fronds.  Such an amazing structure!

Many of the trees here have such beautiful flowers.

Yamile wearing a crown of leaves. The leaves really were in the form of a crown.

My favorite place...the rose garden! So many colors.

Many of these roses smelled incredible.  You really just had to "stop" and smell them!

The remaining pictures of flowers (including this yellow one) were taken inside a climate controlled building.  I wasn't even allowed to use the flash on my camera in there.

(no flowers here, just interesting cactus plants)

A true giant!! The trunks of these palm trees feel like cement posts! They're amazing.

Our special outing with Martha before we head back. We took her and her daughter out to the restaurant called "Crepes and Waffles". 

Packing for our trip home!!!

Sobre Amarillo

Annalisa and Rebecca, this one's for you!!!

 

There it is...........THE yellow envelope!!!

 

(Can't get out of the country without it.)

Heading Home!!

We have a driver coming to take us to the airport at 3:30 in the morning, and there is much exitement in the air as we anticipate getting home!! Yesterday, we completed the final task necessary to take Laura out of the country with us...the acquisition of her immigrant visa.  When we hit U.S. soil, Laura will become a U.S. citizen!  Even though it never feels fast when you are here, it has gone very quickly for us.  Most people adopting from Colombia are here for 6 weeks or more.  One of the moms I have posted about, Nicole, was here for 7 1/2 weeks before she got to head home.So we are very thankful that the Lord allowed our time here to be relatively short. 

We are leaving in about 20 minutes to go see the Botanical Gardens here in Bogota.  That is something we had wanted to do the last time we were here but were not able to. So now we have the opportunity, and we are taking it.  We will be going with Marsha and Camila, the mom and adoptive daughter we eat together with everyday.  If there is time, I will post pictures of our little adventure.  In the meantime, here are some I (Lenna) have taken of the last couple of days.

The outdoor market where we went on Sunday.

One of the booths contained some very Colombian types of desserts, some of which were particular favorites of our girls.  So we had to stop and get some.

What we ended up getting for them were the white meringue cookies you see in the center of the picture.  Very yummy.

Handmade jewelry

The table you see above is filled with sweets for sale by the portion, open to the air. A common site.

More market

A band entertaining the shoppers. The woman leaning over to the far right is putting money into their barrel.

This is the back of our hotel.  The large windows at the top are to our room. Note the construction right next door.  That was our wake up call at 7a.m. every single day, including weekends!

More piks from the backyard. Highrises all around.

Have I mentioned their gigantic trees?

Roses from our contact, Martha

Learning English on our say to the Embassy

The two pics above are where Martha lives.  Thought Annalisa and Rebecca might enjoy seeing these. The first one if of the outside of her apartment complex.

At the embassy

Last night's dessert.