How we started to become us

Lovely Judge 10 broke the law for several days, but finally, last Thursday we got our Sentencia! And, since nothing has been easy for us, I needed to go back and sign again on Friday due to an error. Well, at least it's done!

Today, Karen's new birth certificate was obtained in her birth town of Girardot. Tomorrow we do Colombian ID and Passport. Things are moving! Barring any unexpected circumstances (oy!), we should be home this week!

First meeting

 I thought that many of you don't know how we got to this place and might be interested. Here's our story...

On December 31 of 2010, just a year after Meredith's death, we had Merwyn's family at hour home for our family Christmas celebration. Joel was having a blast with his cousins. At one point (I'm not sure how this happened) he ended up at my feet lying on the floor while I was washing dishes. He looked at me and said, "Mom. My kids aren't going to have any cousins to play with".

We'd always wanted another child but it simply wasn't easy for us. Merwyn and I began to discuss the prospect of adopting. We have a lot of friends who have adopted, so it's quite a "normal" idea for us. We began to research countries. We can't explain why, but we were drawn to Colombia.

We researched several agencies and in the Fall of 2011, decided to go with Lutheran Social Services of MN. We were directed to their program for special needs and told it was a 4-6 month process. We were very excited!!!

We completed our paperwork and sent it out early February 2012. We didn't tell anyone, except for a few close friends, because we considered it akin to "waiting until you hear the heartbeat". It wouldn't be long though...

By May, we didn't yet have a referral and we were confused and frustrated. Questions to our agency were not really answered. Finally, I did a google search and discovered the problem. In December, a news program (like 60min, say) did a story reporting that the ICBF (governmental agency in charge of children) was involved in children being kidnapped to be adopted internationally. One thing we learned about Colombia when we signed up is that they take great care of the kiddos in their care, and were pretty ethical. Most involved with Colombia do not believe this report. However, the ICBF decided to put a hold on the entire process and go through all their files. They also instituted a process of searching for family for all kiddos 6 degrees out.

Papi doesn't seem to mind playing with girl toys!

The entire process in Colombia was at a snails pace. We began to think it would be a long time before we received a referral. I began to search the various web pages that listed adoptable children and paid closer attention to the emails from our agency about available kiddos.

In November of 2012, the email we received was for Karen, with just a small summary statement about her. At that point she was 5 and her 6th birthday was in January. I rejected the idea because our age range was 2-5. But, I didn't delete the email like I did with all the rest.

In January of 2013, I don't know why, but I forwarded the email to Merwyn. Now, for those of you who know Merwyn, you know he is a very even-keel guy, always the same. When he emailed back saying, "This looks good!", I knew I needed to jump on it.

Our agency got back to us and said that Karen's file should not have been given to them because the "6 degrees of relation" (see above) had not been completed yet. Convinced that Karen was the kiddo for us, I asked every 4-6 weeks about her and always told, no info yet.

On Monserrate

In the Fall of 2013, becoming more frustrated with Karen's unavailability and the lack of a referral for a kiddo, we began to talk about transferring to a different program country. We moved slowly because, quite frankly, it didn't seem right.

Thanksgiving evening, upon our return home from dinner, Merwyn asked me if I saw the email from our worker. He forwarded it to me and it said that Karen was available but we had to act fast. This seemed odd to us, considering how long we waited for her, but after several days of understanding what the country was looking for, we moved forward. I learned later while in Colombia, that the reason for the unusual requests being made of us was because another family was interested in Karen too, but our agency fought for us because we'd been asking for so long.

At this point, Karen was moved to an orphanage in Bogota that facilitated adoptions. We waited for reports and files to be sent to us, and then sent info to an international adoption medical clinic. We finally felt comfortable that, yes indeed, we were adopting Karen in February, and believed we'd be traveling in April.

But wait! Nope. The orphanage wanted updated paperwork, so in April we finally were able to complete the paperwork required to travel. The rest...I think you know!

It has not been easy. I have no doubt though, that she was meant to be part of our family. I'm already having a hard time remembering life before her.