17 days in Panama!!

Hello Dear Friends! We have made some progress this week. On Monday, Maria from my agency flew in to see if she could help move things along. We had an appointment at the US Embassy on Tuesday. We received our Article 5 at the meeting. This is a very important step. This is the approval from the US allowing us to bring the children in to the United States. Our social workers came to visit on Monday and Wednesday. We have our last visit tomorrow. They will have their report ready on Monday. This is the report that is supposed to go to the judge after we have been living with the kids for 30 days. The social workers are very happy with the children's progress. SENNIEF (the adoption authority) has agreed to turn in the report a little early to the judge. Hopefully, the judge will accept it. I had to write a report as well and Maria translated it into Spanish this afternoon. This is great news.

George and I have decided that we will not leave Panama without our children. The attorneys were going to request that we have temporary legal custody of the children so we could leave earlier and then come back in May to finalize everything. We have also said that we will stay until they children are legally our children...and we are legally their "mama" and "papa". The time difference is probably only 10-14 days and we feel that completing the adoption now will be healthier, easier, and less expensive for the family. It looks like we may be here through Thanksgiving. (my favorite holiday) :(  If we are, we will fly Thomas and Maura Genet here to spend the week with us since they are out of school. Li-Li and Bella's school have been wonderful and so supportive. They have agreed for them to stay out and will be sending more work via email. The wonderful families keeping Maura Genet and Thomas have also agreed to keep them for a little longer. Thankful that my family are able to help out on weekends.

Now the good part..the children!! They are doing amazing. Javier, the 6 year old, has turned out to be quite the helper. He also tries to help Ronnie do the right thing. Of course he is running a lot but we are all tired of being in a hotel room. Things here are really expensive so it costs $50 for us to get to the mall and back...because they charge per person. Therefore, we are not venturing out too much. Ronnie will be four on Nov. 5th (same as my niece Logan). He tries to be just like his older brother. He is a little sensitive. He is such a happy child. They are both saying "please", "thank you", "I love you", "chocolate", "washy washy", "Bella", "Li-Li", "Mama", "Any", "banana", and " Papa". Sophie is doing great. She is laughing, smiling and playing games. We did start setting some boundaries today for Sophie and she didn't like that too much but we will get there. :)

George has been in Philly this week and it has been hard because we miss him but luckily my stepsister, Courtney, has been here since Monday to help out. She has been such a tremendous help. George will be back here on the 28th of October. :) Please keep us in your prayers for the duration of this trip.