We've got the "green light" to travel!!

Hola Amigos/Amigas,

I literally spent the entire day emailing, faxing, and placing phone calls for our adoption. I won't bore you with the numerous amount of items I dealt with, but the bottom line is we're not having to wait for papers to be sent all over the place (as I mentioned in yesterday's post). Apparently Casa de Maria already approved us in June. Today I was emailed all of the documents that we need for our visas, but the orphanage is asking us to wait until the end of September to travel and then pick her up on Monday, October 1st. Due to some commitments Jim has the last weekend of the month, we're asking to travel either October 1st or 2nd. Earlier today I was told that it would be fine, but later today I got a mixed response. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to work out the date and purchase our flight tickets.

Some of you may have noticed that we haven't mentioned her name; that's because we were not sure what we were going to do regarding this issue. Three years ago when we thought about adopting from Guatemala, we had picked out the name Belicia (Bay lee see ah) which means "dedicated to God". While you are in Colombia, you cannot change a child's first name if they are over the age of three (3), so we thought about changing her name when we returned to the US (only if she agreed). Today we found out we could write in our acceptance letter a new middle name, so we decided to do that. As of now, her name will be Windy Belicia Baker. We will call her Windy while in Colombia and hopefully make the transition to Belicia. We'll pray about it because we do not want to upset her.

Chao,
Kathy