This Is It

Tomorrow is the day!  In a mere 5 hours, Ken and Patrice leave for Tumaco.  He will sign the sentencia and they will be ours... forever and ever, amen.

As such, we are again asking for extra prayers:

• Ken is still not well.  He's already in bed and hopefully will feel better tomorrow for the trip.
• Tumaco is not at the top of the 'must see' list in Colombia, if you know what I mean.  Patrice and our lawyer have assured us that the road is safe.  They have done this trip many, many times with other adoptive parents.  We trust their judgement.  More importantly, we trust God.  I don't believe that God would call us all the way down her to adopt these kids just to allow their new Dad to be taken away from them.   However, I will feel much better when he is back in Pasto with us.
• This will be my first day with all six kids by myself.  It's not going to be easy.  I need an extra dose of patience, peace and fun to make it through the day.  It's always a difficult day when we are stuck in the hotel.  I was planning on taking the kids to the park... I feel confident that I can do that... at least I did till this morning. 
• The past two days have been very difficult for the girls, and therefore Ken and myself as well.  Please pray that they are having positive feelings towards this adoption tomorrow and aren't struggling so much.
• John has been doing so fabulous with me, I'm really ok with that part of tomorrow.  I just hope he doesn't feel betrayed and revert once Ken returns.
• Please pray for Connor, Rylan, & Cody as well.  They have done amazingly well this whole time.  I don't expect for them to be perfect all the time but tomorrow would be a bad day for them to slip up.

In other news, our first week here was the last game of the regular season of fútbol (soccer) and Colombia made it into the finals for the World Cup.  That day was crazy and everyone was selling Colombian shirts to support the team.  We didn't buy them then and have been unable to find them since.  The kids really wanted one.  At one point, Diana had told me that at her house in Tumaco, she has one.  This makes me sad.  I know full well, she'll never see any of 'her stuff' again.  How some kids manage to survive and even thrive after all that they go through amazes me.  Anyway, Patrice took us out today and helped us find them.  Can I just say that Patrice is awesome.  It was raining and he let us sit in the car while he drove around and went into all the little shops to talk about prices.  Once he found one with reasonable prices and sizes for the kids, he found a parking space and took two of the kids by the hand and we all walked there.  Once we had decided on what we wanted, he then talked the guy down on price for us.  The kids actually got the shirt and a pair of shorts and Ken and I each got a shirt.  It was about $75 USD, which I think is a pretty fantastic bargain.

The current plan is to do the Tumaco thing tomorrow and head to Bogotá over the weekend.  I just don't think I can pack all our stuff while taking care of the kids to be ready to fly to Bogotá on Friday.  Plus the kids really want to exchange the tickets they've been saving at the arcade.  As much as I'm mentally ready to go, I don't want to rush and be stressed.  This is difficult enough without putting unrealistic goals in front of ourselves.  However, the monkey wrench is that Monday is a Colombian holiday.  We were told that we needed five business days in Bogotá.  I really, really wanted to be home on Saturday of next week.  So that's the last prayer request.  Please pray that all things in Bogotá move unusually fast and that we can get it done in four days.  We are ready to come home.