He's Ours!!!

Well, 3 years ago today around 4 or 5 in the afternoon we received another call from Lori at Little Miracles. This was the call we had been waiting on! All of Karter's papers had been approved and we were the official parents of Abner Josue (that was his birth name). The problem was that we had to be at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City by 8 am on January 31! That was only 40 hours away! Lori told us she understood if we had to delay the appointment, but she couldn't assure us how quickly we could get a new appointment. Evidently someone at the Embassy had dropped the ball and not delivered our appointment card to our lawyer or facilitator when they were supposed to. They generally made the appointment 1 week from when they notify the lawyer of the appointment. We had waited so long for our precious baby that we weren't about to reschedule our very important appointment! I was afraid it was impossible to get the trip to come together, but we had to try! We immediately got on the phone with American Airlines to see if we could get out on a plane in the morning to Guatemala City. It turned out that we could leave Amarillo around 10 am with one stop in Dallas and then we would leave in a few hours from there on the only flight from Dallas to Guatemala City! Wow!! It was possible. We might actually get to hold our baby and never give him back. We then called the Guatemala City Marriott and they had a room available! This was the hotel of choice for adoptive families and was often full, but we were blessed enough that we got a room. We then realized that we had to be on a plane in just 17 hours for an international flight which meant we had to leave our house in just 13 hours to be able to be in Amarillo and at the airport the 2 hours prior for the international flight! That also meant we had to pack for a 1 year old child, for ourselves and TRY to get a little sleep. We didn't even have time to call everyone that had asked us to promise we would call the second we found out anything. We had to rely on family and friends to pass the word. I'm not sure either of us slept that night, but we did manage to get packed and make it to the airport! We were so excited and nervous all at the same time. We were about to be parents!! That was only something we had dreamed about for years. Fifo, our facilitator in Guatemala, told us that he could schedule for us to receive our baby boy at the Marriott the night we arrived. We could hardly wait to hold and kiss our baby boy once again!


All three of the pictures today were from the our final visit to Guatemala City. I believe they were all taken in our hotel room at the Marriott. Most of the time we had to stay in the hotel because the country was unstable and dangerous. (Isn't he handsome!!)