A quick one

Yikes, the upload took so long I don´t have much time for a message......
Pics: Of course there´s a new one of the Miller Three, plus one of us with our new friends from Michigan, Kevin Nikkie and Isabella Heil. They went home today without Isabella, We´ll be having dinner tonight with another couple that had to hand off their son today too. We can sure empathize...
Then there´s a picturee of Mateo carefully studying a book with pictures of his relatives - Poppa take note! Finally, Mateo prepares himslelf for the cursory embassy pediatrician exam we took him to yesterday. Passed with flying colors!

Pink Slip Drama

Hi friends,

Well, we got good news yesterday...Matt went to the embassy with someone from our lawyer´s office and he was able to pick up our pink slip for our final visa appointment. Now for the bad news...our appointment isn´t until the morning of Monday, September 18th which means we won´t be able to pick up his visa until the afternoon of Tuesday, September 19th. Which means we won´t be coming home until Wednesday, September 20th. Turns out that the US Embassy has the luxury of taking off both American and Guatemalan holidays and next Friday is Guatamala´s independence day, so we have to wait until Monday for our appointment.

First came tears of sorrow for having to wait so long to bring him home. Then came tears of frustration because it means we won´t be making the Boise trip as planned that following weekend. Then came tears of anger at how ridiculously difficult it was to get a hold of Alaska Airlines to change our flight home. We had some angels (Matt´s mom and our friends Shannon Kelley & Sarah Fronza) working on our behalf.

When we finally got ahold of someone at Alaska, I cried tears of desperation when they suggested that we fly home going from Guatemala City to Miami to LA to Portland. When I had meltdown on the customer service representative about that itinerary, she said ¨Let me see what else I can find for you.¨ Sure enough, it worked. We will leave Guatemala City at 9:45AM on 9/20 and go through customs at Dallas/Fort Worth but then get back on the same plane to go to Denver where we will connect with an Alaska flight home to Portland. We are scheduled to arrive there just after 7PM that night.

Once we had finalized the plane arrangements, it became clear that I (Sarah) was going to have a mental health episode if I didn´t get a change of scenery. So Matt proposed that we go to Antigua for a week for some vacation and to take some Spanish classes. We will make the arrangements today, but expect to go from Sunday to Sunday, then back into Guatemala City for the visa appointments.

Of course, there was always the possibility of wrestling the immigration bureaocracy for an earlier appointment - not officially possible but in reality, perhaps, maybe, at some point and under some conditions possible - but we decided to enjoy some time with our son in the country of his birth. We had spent the last week tied to our room and our phone while clearing one official hurdle, and did not want to waste more time doing the same when the end result may have been close to the same return date anyway.

The good news about being in the country during this time, in addition to the bonding time it allows us with Mateo, is that we get to accompany him to see the Embassy approved doctor today for his final medical clearance. We will post some pictures tonight or tomorrow from that visit so you can see him interact with a medical provider.

We tried to load some pictures with this blog, but blogger.com is having issues (confounded by trying to do it from this fairly fast (by Guatemalan standards) internet...so we´re off to get some lunch now, and will try to upload some photos a bit later this afternoon.

Love from all THREE of us (it is so fun to write that!!) in Guatemala...Sarah, Matt, Mateo

Getting Closer....

Just came down from the Laywer´s office and a call to sarah at the hotel. I´m on for a trip with their courrier to the embassy for pink slip time, and the agency is rumored to have called our hotel with the news that the papers have been cabled down. Could be a double joy for the LaPlante family, as Sarah´s sister just gave birth to her second son. Mateo´s cousin Nathan Edward Lamers was born on Friday, Sept 1st at 7:58pm. 7lbs 5oz, 19". With three boys within 4 years of each other, family get-togethers should be appropriately rowdy.

More Photos, More Waiting...

Well, here we are again, a little farther along the path of not knowing anything.....
Turns out that our initial approval to adopt abroad was held in the Portland immigration office rather than being forwarded to Guatemala. So we have been working with our agency to notify that office that we need to have the form cabled down. We´re hoping to hear from the agency today whether it was sent down, and I´m going to the embassy with the lawyer´s messenger at the 3:45 ´pink slip´distribution time, in order to confirm details about the problem if the pink slip does not, in fact, show. After that, if necessary, we´ll let Darlene Hooley´s staff penetrate the labyrinth of the immigration department for us. That´s the long-story-short version. We´ll be happy to bore you with the long-story-longer version when we see you next.

Our stay here at La Casa Grande has helped put our own situation in perspective. There are a lot of other adoptive couples cycling through, and while a few are gliding through more quickly, plenty are hitting even more land mines. We´ve befriended a coulple of families from Michigan, who are both visiting their children pre-pick-up, as we had in the past. Today and tomorow they have to leave their kids again with their foster mothers and head home. One of them matched with their 7 1/2 month old daughter about the same time we did, but are only now getting ready to enter PGN. A family from Wisconson spent a year in the Russian program before learning that their agency was still working to license themselves in that country, which has anyway intituted a moratorium. They switched to Guatemala and are finally bringing home their son.
So in any event, we´re still happy with our decision to come down pre-pink-slip. Our time with Mateo´s been incredible and our delays have been just that - the normal delays we´ve been prepped to expect, and not anything that actually could jepoardize the process. If everything is just going to take longer than it should, we prefer it to take longer while we´re holding our son - and an incredible document that affirms, in very official sounding spanish, that we are his parents. And as my sister noted: ¨At least you´re getting a nice long vacation in Guatemala!¨ We´ll have future blogs on our excursions out into Mateo´s country of birth.

Above are some photos from last Saturday, when we had Mateo´s foster mother and her family to the hotel for Dinner. It was great to meet all of them. And culturally interesting. Most family members didn´t speak unless we talked to them first, deferring to the father, Francesco, seen holding up Mateo. He spoke with me most of the evening. As the men of the family we were the designated representatives, aparently.
Their son Harold, in the blue shirt, just finished High School and is entering University to study business and languages. We gave him our English/Spanish dictionary (the best edition I could find, after a typically obsessive search) to help him on his way.

Well, this internet cafe is at the base of the tower where our lawyer´s office is. It´s time to log off and head up there to check in and arrange to join their messenger on the pink slip trip....

-Matt

Okay, so a few more pictures from Guatemala

I guess I forgot that the internet is everywhere - and I have a camera with USB access. So look forward to more pictures from Guatemala, and more, and more, and more. By the time we´re done, you should know our hotel room better than we do!
Our papers went to the embassy on Monday, and we´re still waiting for our pink slip. Since they don´t issue documents on Friday, and they´re closed for Labor Day, the earliest we could get a pink slip is Tuesday, so chances are that our return flight will be later - I don´t know the Spanich for c´est la vie, but there you go.
Got to get back to the hotel for dinner with my wife and son! We´ll keep the updates coming.

-Matt