Our First Field Trip - day 6

Hey everybody,

Keep on leaving your comments, they are great! Whoever wrote the Letterman top 10, had us cracking up. I feel like I'm communicating with everybody more than I usually do!

We have had this baby now for 4 nights, and Linda already is in the process of weaning her off her middle of the night feeding. They get later and later and shorter and shorter.

Last night was a cake walk, she got up around 1:30 but was only up for about 20 minutes and then she got up around 5:30 and also was up for about 20 minutes.

Me?, I'm still having a panic attack if she makes one little peep! So Linda doesn't even get a chance to do a night feeding. I am standing over the crib before I even have my eyes open.

After writing it all out like this, I am sure I probably cursed myself so hopefully it goes well tonight.

- - - - - -

So since yesterday was a nightmare and all we wound up doing was "nothing", today we were to go sight seeing. All I wanted was good shots of the city. So this morning I got up and charged the extra batteries for the camera and made sure the video camera was all ready to go.

We were supposed to go out with the translator around 11:30. But he called at 10:30 and said he was getting a new muffler for his car and would be here around 1:30.

So that gave us time to veg for a while. We put the baby on a sheet on the floor. She layed there for a long time and was very happy to do so. She started to get fussy on her back bacause she couldn't see James. She is very infatuated with James. If he is in the room, she will not take her eyes off of him.

He was only a few feet away watching a dvd, so we plopped her next to him. And after a few seconds she focused and, boom,couldn't get her eyes off of him.

So together they both watched the dvd.

James is very fond of his new sister. (More on that in a second.)

When it was finally time to go check out the sights, we packed up everything and got down stairs raring to go. We were going to this place that is similar to the Old Bethpage Village Restoration. I will never remember the name. It is a replica of a Colombian village square from over a hundred years ago.

We drove for about 20 minutes to get there. If you look close in the distance you can see the bright green christmas tree at the top of the hill, that was our destination.

There is a large observation area that over looks the valley that has the city of Medellin in it. Behind us you can kinda see the view.

It was at this point that my glee turned to despair, for in my haste to leave the room, I left the extra batteries to the camera behind and that was the only picture I was able to get of the city below. :-(

Luckily I had the video camera, so we hopefully have the memory of that view on tape. I was hoping to share these incredible views with you guys, but alas.

It was actually getting fairly hot at this point so after we walked around the little town square, we decided to go back to the hotel and veg some more. The little town square, in case anybody is interested (Nancy K), it was actually really boring. It was mainly a touristy thing. The best part was there was a church at the end of the square that actually holds mass on Sunday. It reminded me of those old Clint Eastwood movies where there is always a church with a taco bell tower on it. You all know what I am talking about.

By the time we got back to the hotel and changed into our bathing suits, the weather started getting pretty cloudy. Linda and I hung out by the pool watching James and his new found talent swimming back and forth in the pool. After a while we met the other couple and chilled out with them for awhile. They introduced us to another local who had lived in brooklyn and graduated from manhattan music school and now teaches with her husband here at some prestigious music school. The woman's sister graduated from Columbia university and is now some big wig architect in the city.

It didn't take long for the weather to really start to get crappy, this picture doesn't really do it justice, but a storm came rolling up the valley towards where we were. It was like some hollywood special effect. By the time we got the boy out of the pool, the storm just went to the left and it never even rained one drop.

- - - - -

James is starting to go through the "I'm done sharing my Mommy and Daddy" phase. He has started all the classic signs of trying to get more attention by acting like his baby sister. Doing the same things that we say are cute for Amelia, but not cute for a 5 year old. As much as we reassure him of our love and devotion towards him, he is having a hard time accepting it. When one of us is with him, the other one becomes the enemy.

This morning, Linda and I were both in the bedroom when he woke up. Usually he wakes up and wants some hugs and some cuddling. The first thing he said to us this morning was "How come you pay more attention to Amelia than to me?" Well if you are not crying right now… My heart was up in my throat with that question. Linda of course had a crying baby in her hands so there was nothing that she could do right away. At the same time all we both could manage was "you know we still love you." I'm sure it sounded pretty weak to a 5 year old.

How do you explain to your child that you still love them the same, yet they see your love being directed in somebody else's direction? We have been making a conscience effort, even before we came down here to reassure him of our love for him. He will obviously come around, but right now, he's got it rough.

The kid loves this little baby, he does stuff all day long to play with her and to make sure there aren't things lying around that she can get to. And constantly tells us both, how to feed, burp and change a baby.

Tonight for dinner he wanted to have a pizza, so luckily at the pool side restaurant they have fairly decent brick oven pizza.
While were down there finishing up the other couples with the 5 year old boys showed up. God has blessed us with the presence of these little boys. One of the little boys is from Denmark and does not speak any english, yet the three kids play like they have know each other forever. James can at least act like a five year old boy for a little while, showing off each day.

After dinner we came back to the room to get ready for bed and the woma, Alyssa, with the boy, Santiago, called us and asked if we would like to accompany her, Santiago and her husband to the giant shopping mall tomorrow.

We have been trying to get enough courage up to go by a taxi to this mall. Everybody raves about the restaurants and the shops. They also have small rides for the kids. So that was very nice of them to offer their time to take us there.

- - - -

Also, everybody say your prayers for us, because one of the most important parts of the adoption process is happening tomorrow. We have to go meet with the social worker. She (or he) has the ultimate say if we can go onto the next step. We weren't supposed to go until after we established residency for at least a week down here. But they called the orphanage today and told them to send us tomorrow. We assumed that it would be Friday or Monday. We have our meeting at 8:15 am.

We'll let you know how it goes.

Good night all....

I Can't Believe I forgot to tell you this...

The other day I am walking down by the restaurant by the pool and happen to walk past somebody that looked very familiar to me.

Than yesterday in the broad day light, I figured it out. Can anybody recognize this guys tattoo?

I was walking by and and saw these two guys sitting there trying to order food in english. When I got closer, I said outloud "wow, you guys are the last Americans I would expect to see down here in Colombia." (because I am cool like that).

The big guy's response was "Yeah that's why we're down here. Nobody knows who we are". He asked where I was from and we spoke a little bit about how nice the country was.

I wanted to get a picture of him with James but I was too embarrassed to ask. But they hung out at the pool all day, and James and I were playing in the pool. I think just because we spoke english, those guys made small talk all day long.

Here is another image of the guy.

He is going to be here until tomorrow (wednesday) so hopefully I'll ask him to take his picture.

If you don't know who he is yet, his name is Jeremey Shockey. Tight end #80 for the New York Giants.

MONDAY - day 5

We had set aside today to go sight seeing and to check out the local culture.

That was yesterday, before our night from hell began...

I posted late last night because I had the 10:00 feeding which wound up being 11:00 (not so bad). Amelia was very fussy during this feeding and drank about an ounce (out of the 4 that I made). She fell asleep around 11:40 at which time I did the blog update. Not to mention that James was up until after 11:00 for some reason extremely restless. He usually is sleeping by 8:30.

I was exhausted and went to bed around 12:45 about 7 minutes before she woke up crying. So I got up and walked her around the hotel for 25 minutes until she fell asleep. I laid back down around 1:15 am.

She woke up around 2:30 am at which point Linda got up, I think. I was so delirious I can't really remember. Linda tells me now that she was up for about 30 minutes.

Amelia than woke up at 4:00 am which was my turn. She was up for about 20 minutes.

She then woke up around 6:00 am, my turn, again ( I can't really figure out the math because I am still delirious). She cried for about an hour and 15 minutes straight. She drank about 1 ounce of the 4 ounce bottle that I made. She wanted nothing, except to cry hysterically, which by the way she is very good at.

At around 7:15 am I woke Linda up to relieve me. After making the handoff, I got back into bed and passed out. Around 7:45 my son woke up and climbed on top of me.

A A A A G G G H H H !

Actually this is where it all gets better...

James and I fell back asleep until about 9:00. Linda was able to work her magic and get the baby to stop crying.

I got up and made a fresh pot of Colombian Coffee, mmm! We sat around for a while. That's when our translator called to see what time we would be ready to hit the road for some sight seeing. We had to pass and rescheduled for Tuesday.

At this point Linda gave the baby a bath. After which the baby needed some naked time. Nothing is cuter than a baby cute little naked butt.

Needless to say James was already acting a little goofy, because he didn't get his usual 11 - 12 hours of sleep. I decided to take him down for some breakfast. Which was like trying to drag him off to be deloused or something. He wouldn't let me leave without him. but he wanted to go. Again, A A A A G G H H H!

Okay, actually this is where it starts to become the best day we have had here so far.

After James and I had breakfast, which consisted of one omelette each, (he didn't eat his) and about 10 pieces of french toast, which James ate half. We decided to go on an adventure.

We started our adventure at the hotel bullring. James was cool about it until he heard a noise and I told him I think that it was the bull, at which point he ran like it was Pamplona and the running of the bulls was about to happen.

The hotel has this really cool brick path that zig zags down a steep hillside. And of course beautiful scenery all around you.

At the very bottom of the path which took us about 10 minutes to get to was a very cool bamboo forest. These things were huge up close.

After that, James realised how easy it was going down hill and that we had a long way to go before we would get back to the top. We finally made it and James thought maybe now was good time to go tell Mommy about our adventure. We finally got to the elevator and the boy was sweating bullets.

After James did some homework and after the baby napped we all went down to the pool. All of us stayed by the pool for almost 5 hours. We had a pizza delivered to pool side. We sat under the palm trees.

We actually sat with another family that just adopted a baby girl. While we were hanging out a 4 1/2 year old boy, named Santiago came over to talk to us. Turns out he was from California. So James was so excited to have some one to play with. The two of them played in the pool for about 2 hours. This little boy knew how to swim very well. And I think James was embarassed that he was wearing swimmies.

Well, the knuckle head decided he didn't need the swimmies anymore and took them off. And proceeded to swim the entire length of the pool. If you look closely you can see his head in the background by the pool steps. He did this two more times. And I was like, ooh baby, this kid will be sleeping before dinner if he keeps this up. Afterward he was, of course, pretty exhausted.

And the entire day, this is how the baby acted. She was all full of life and happy as a clam.

We than met another family from Denmark, who just got their baby girl today. They also had a son, Simon, who was five years old. The little boy didn't speak english, but the parents did. So the kids all had somebody to play with, which was probably the best day for all of them.

Linda was hanging out with the other moms all sharing experiences. It was really great meeting everybody else.

I gotta say this trip is absolutely fantastic. We have seen so many Americans here, most of the help speak english. Communication is a lot less stressful.

It turns out that in the year 2000, when we came down for James, Colombia was having a very hard time with their civil war and the rebels were actually bombing in some of the larger cities. Tourism was almost non existant during this time. So we only saw about 10 other people here at the hotel. We were so scared we barely ever left our hotel room.

This time it is completely different, in 2001 there was a cease fire with the rebel forces and a new president has been elected here. The economy is booming, Colombia is apparently a hot bed for the textile industry. This past weekend here at the hotel they had a huge convention for the textile industry and there were people from all over the world here. That's why we had to change rooms after the first night. They kept all of the convention people on one side of the hotel.

Anyway, it is now my usual 12:30 am bed time. And we all know how fast that 4:00 am feeding comes around.

Sunday - Jan 29

Thanks everybody for leaving comments. We really appreciate the feed back. It makes us feel like we are not that far away and going through this alone.

Today started at 5:10 am so already the 4 am feeding is later, woo hoo!
And I am posting so late because her 10:00 pm feeding just ended at 11:35 pm so we're hoping for a 6:00 am feeding tomorrow.

This morning the baby's congestion seemed to be getting worse. Linda wanted her to see a doctor. All guests of the hotel get free medical care. We called down to the front desk and ordered one doctor.

Within an hour a lady doctor and an assistant showed up at the door, neither of which spoke english.
Of course the english to spanish dictionary that we have doesn't have the word "congestion" or "yellow boogies" in it.
Linda and I had to play charades with the doctor which was actually alot easier than we figured it would be.

That is right up until she handed me a prescription. All of you know how difficult it is reading a prescription at home. Ha Ha, you should try being here. The Doctor starts telling me what to do in spanish. Just like dopey Americans who try to speak slower so the foreigner understands, she did to me. Well guess what, no matter how slow she spoke, I am still illiterate in Spanish.

I was freaking out, I could feel my ears getting hot and red. We had to call the front desk and the doctor told them what to do. They then translated to Linda over the phone. So the doc leaves.

Okay, now what. Do we call walgreens and go pick up or prescription in 20 minutes. Obviously they don't have a walgreens here. At least we haven't discovered one yet. So we called our translator to take us to a pharmacist.

He just happened to be up in the mountains today (his terminology, as I see mountains all around me) and won't be back until after 6:00 pm. Which by this time is about 8 hours away.

Now he wants me to read the prescription to him over the phone so he could call it in for us. Holy crap! As stated earlier, reading a prescription in english is nearly impossible. This process took about 15 minutes, because one of the words was apparently abreviated and he kept asking me why I needed drops for the baby's elbow. What the fudge was this guy doing up in the mountains anyway? Especially since we are already in the mountains.

He hangs up and calls back 5 minutes later and said that the drugs will be delivered to our room in about 20 minutes which they were and everything has been fine since. There must be some serious prescription plan here because the two drugs that I got cost a grand total of 6,800 pesos plus a 2,000 peso tip to the bell boy came out to the equivalent to about $4.50 american money.

- - - -

The rest of the day turned out to be a very casual day.
We had nothing to do today except lounge around the pool and go grocery shopping. We are now in an apartment suite with a kitchen, living room and Bedroom. It's nice and comfortable.

We met another couple from California who adopted a baby girl. They also were using the same attorney as us back on Long Island. It turns out this guy grew up in Hicksville and lived there until he was in his 20's. So we got pretty friendly with them.
They got here a week before us. It has been great to have somebody to talk to.

I'm going to sign off now because it is now 12:06 am and I can't see any more. I will have a bunch of pictures to upload tomorrow.

Day 3 - 4:00 am Feeding! Ugh!

The orphanage told us that Amelia needs a 4:00 am feeding. Well, holy crap, she sure remembered that she needed to be fed. At exactly 4:02 am we awoke to a combination of a blood curdling scream and a coughing fit.

The baby is slightly congested so she tends to have coughing fits when she wakes up. Combine that with the fact that she was starving, Oh man, what a ruckus!

All I can say is, the 4:00 am feeding is just like I remembered it. It sucked!

I immediately jumped up and hit the ceiling. Scooped up this baby who sounded like she couldn't breath. But of course I was just panicking. Linda followed us into the kitchen area and while I paced up and down, she got the formula together. Well, that five minutes of prep time, seemed to last forever. I was already exhausted by the time Linda handed me the bottle.

Once I sat down and got comfy, all the while Amelia is screaming at the top of her lungs, I started to feel relaxed with the whole thing. This is the point that it finally hit home for me.

4:10 am, crying baby in my arms, looking to me to feed her. Her big round, tear filled eyes, staring at me. Asking me to take care of her. This is the point that it hits me, there is no going back now. I can almost see her walking down the aisle already.

Giving her that bottle, she slurpped at it like there was no tomorrow. After about 5 minutes she needed a burping, and man did she let some good ones go. I thought for sure she drank half the bottle. But she only drank one ounce, and she was done eating at thaat point. But she was wide awake and ready to go.

That was Linda's point to say good night again, and she disappeared and left me and Amelia alone.

Amelia and I walked up and down that hotel room about a million times. After about 45 minutes she started getting cranky.
I tried giving her the rest of the bottle, but it wasn't warm enough. At which point we start the whole ruckus over again.

I have the baby in one arm, trying to reheat the formula with the other. It only took a couple of minutes back in the hot water to get it to be drinkable again. But to Amelia it must've felt like ten hours.

Again, she starts slurpping that thing down so fast, she actually gets sweaty on her forehead when she eats.
After about 5 minutes she is unconscience and back in dream land. I cautiously get her back in her crib and tuck her in with her little blanky.

I notice it is 5:10 am and everybody is now sleeping soundly. I say to myself this would be a perfect time to get a workout in.
Well, that was the last thought that I had as I lay back down in my bed until James jumped on my at 8:20 am to get the day started.

- - - -

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We had breakfast in our room. James played with his guys for awhile. We played candyland about a gazillion times.
We went down to the pool around 11:30 and James and I went swimming for about an hour.
Around 12:30 we came back up stairs and had lunch.

James had to do his homework today.

Here is the view to the left from one of our windows and here is the view to the right.

I wanted to include this image in yesterdays post, but forgot. It is the first time James got to hold Amelia for the first time.

Tonight we went down to dinner and right before we exited the building we spotted MOTHRA. Gotta love the South American jungle life.

And finally, here is how the day ended. James and Amelia sleeping soundly around 9:00 this evening.

So until tomorrow I bid you all a good night.

FINALLY!!!!

I know it took forever, but it took me two days to get the internet to work in our hotel.
I was going to tell you all about the wonderful flight to get down here. How excited James was to be on a plan for 5 hours (ha ha) and tell you how beautiful it is here in the Andes Mountains in Medellin, the city of eternal spring, but all of that seems trivial now because...

Okay, so here's how the day went.

It's now 9:45 on Friday night and we have been a family of four since noon. So it is almost 10 hours and already she feels like she has been part of our family since the day she was born!

I cannot describe the feeling of anticipation that we had since we have landed. Even James just couldn't wait to get his baby sister.

Today we met up with our translator/guide Eduardo at 7:45 am to go to the public courts to see a notary. Once we were there we also got to meet with our lawyer Fanny Vargas.

Basically all we did was sign a couple of papers giving each other the power of attorney. What that does is it allows one of us to stay back at the hotel when the other has to be present at certain court appearances. The whole process took only about 45 minutes.

We came back to the hotel for a quick breakfast, because Eduardo came back at 9:45 to take us to the orphanage.

The orphanage looked good, it has an entirely new wing added to the old building. We saw a couple of small children playing just near the front of the old building. It happend to be a somewhat cloudy day, but being up in the mountains, makes everything beautiful.

Once inside, we waited for a few minutes before Raquel, the orphange director, came out to see us. She was the same woman who presented James to us, and we were very happy to see her again.

She brought us into one of the presentation rooms, which is a medium size room with a million photos on the walls of babies that have been adopted over the years. At this point she went over a lot of paper work which takes almost an hour. I thought James was going to explode with excitement. He was very, very good. And fairly patient for a five year old who could not wait to see his baby sister.

And after the hours time. Raquel left the room for five minutes to get the baby.

We were all very excited, it is like waiting for christmas morning when you are a kid. When Raquel came into the room holding this beautiful little girl... I don't even know how to describe it.

Linda let out a whispered "oooh", and smiled a great smile. James went over to get a better look. I stood there watching my family meet for the first time. My family. wow.

Raquel handed over the baby to Linda and left the room to give us some privacy. Amelia was so incredibly friendly, she immediately went into Linda's arms and smiled. Linda sat down so James could get a better look.

It was all so surreal, time seemed like it was standing still and yet moving by so fast. Amelia is incredible, she took to us as fast as we took to her.

Then it was my turn to finally get to hold this baby, oh my gosh, what a feeling.

After we spent about 15 minutes with Amelia, it was time to go back to the hotel.

First we stopped at a local grocery store to stock up on baby stuff and some junk food.

We have been in the hotel ever since around 2:00 PM. It is almost 11:00 now so I am going to sign off and update some more tomorrow.

Buenes Noches!

Final Night at Home

Okay, this is it. We have been running around like lunatics all day.

We have 4 suitcases and several carry on bags packed and ready to go. We plan on walking out the door around 4:30am for a 7:00am flight. Man, do I hope we have everything we need.

We should be in Medellin by 2:00 in the afternoon, for one final day of being a family of three!!!

That's all for now, thanks to everybody for their support and prayers.

Hopefully we will see you all by Valentines day!!!!

Sunday night

8:00 Sunday night-
4 more days until we are out of here.
We spent most of the weekend trying to finish up the baby's room. I had Michael LaRose helping me paint it. So that is finally done.

Linda had her last day of work on Friday, so she will be decorating the room for the next couple of days.

I am getting a little antsy the closer we get to the date of departure. I think we all are. James can't wait to stop going to school every day for 3 weeks. We still have to get the suitcases out of the attic.

I haven't even tried on my suit yet. I only own 2 and if neither one fits, oooh I am in trouble.

We just heard some good news about an hour ago. My brother Dave and Jackie are on the way to the hospital to have a baby. So after Wednesday, that makes 4 babies under the age of 15 months for my mom (the grandmother)!!!

Today's Status

Well, we are in a mad rush to finish getting things together for this new baby to come home.
Of course I am basically finished patching up the giant hole in the wall that Linda wanted complete before the baby came home.
Our plan is to have the whole bedroom painted by Saturday night before we go to bed. :-P

Sunday is going to be spent finishing up and decorating the room. It is going to be a mad rush, just like one of those decorating shows on tv.

We are supposed to call the orphanage to check in with the director, Raquel. For some reason both of us seem to be way to nervous to make this call. It has caused major stress. We can only call between the hours of 11:00am to 1:00pm. So yesterday I went home on my lunch hour to make the call. Only to discover our new phone (using the cable phone system) does not allow international calls. What the hell does that mean? After a few seconds of trying to get my panic down to a manageable state did I realize that I just have to go online and log into our account to give myself permission to make this call.

So I call Linda at work, figuring she would know what to do. She sends me to the website area. Okay easy enough. She then says to log in using a particular name and password. Well of course that doesn't work. Now I'm starting to panic even more, because my time window was closing rapidly, not to mention I have to get back to work.

I figure that maybe on her computer the password might be saved, so I turn on her computer. Which brings my blood to the boiling point way faster than it should have.

Apparently, her computer has to be turned on a "special way". Having her try to explain it over my cell phone with a lousy connection only adds to my inability to contain my mental stability. Repeatedly, turning her computer on then off, then unplugging usb cables, turning on the computer etc, etc, etc. I never got it to work....

Ultimately, I F R E A K stressed by the fact that I now have to be back at work in 20 minutes, and only 5 minutes left to call the orphanage. I couldn't handle it. So I yell and scream and curse and tell Linda that she has to call when she comes home from work at 3:00 and now it is her problem.

Typing it all down now just makes me look and feel silly. After all, it was just a simple little phone call.

After Linda came home she tried calling, but Raquel had gone home. Linda was told to call after 11:00am on Friday.


Today, Friday, I again rushed home. This time at 11:30 and tried calling. Of course I get a woman who doesn't speak English. So in my rudimentary Spanish I ask for Raquel. Only to be told in spanish, that Raquel was not there. The woman than started trying to explain something to me. But unfortunately, I didn't get it. For all I know Raquel couldv'e been coming back in 5 minutes. I hung up once again discouraged.

With all of the turmoil leading up to this adoption, We still can't wait to get a hold of that baby...

Getting Closer

We have had no more news since last week.

The stress is starting to get to us. We have been taking James' old baby stuff out of the attic and the garage.
Linda has been cleaning the stuff and putting it together.

Looking at all these baby things is a real slap of reality. Every day we get closer to this blessed event and yet every day we get more and more nervous about it.

Linda had started getting the nursery together, laying it out nicely. Yet on Saturday, I decided to investigate a leak in the ceiling.
Well, after making a small hole in the wall to determine where the leak is coming from, I went to home depot and bought everything I needed to patch the roof.

I climbed up and stood on the top step of the ladder on my tippy toes (praying to god that I wouldn't fall) and fixed the leak.

So on Sunday I decided to take this little hole in the wall and make a giant hole in the wall.

Now I MUST fix everything in the next day or so. We need to paint this room completely by this weekend.

The last thing we did before we fell asleep last night was argue as to when we need to get this room done by.

Linda want's the room done completely before we leave to pick up the baby. I'm trying not to let this get to me and think the baby will be in our room when we come home anyway.

Of course, I will do everything in my ability to get it done before we go, but you never know....

Wenesday January 11 - Aaargh!

and the changes continue....

Linda just heard from the lawyer. He now wants us to travel on the 26th. A week later than we were supposed to originally go.

Linda speculates that the reason we have to wait is because there is no hotel rooms available.
We contacted the hotel ourselves about two weeks ago and they told us they didn't have anything available until the 26th.

Ah well, we knew this was going to be a roller coaster ride. At least now we can book our plane tickets with a couple of weeks notice instead of what we thought was going to be same day or so.

+My first post

As most of you know, Linda, James and I are in the process of trying to expand our family.

On Friday, December 30th we were presented with a beautiful baby girl.
We have given her the name Amelia Beth. She was born on July 30th, 2005.

If all goes well, we will be leaving on January 18th to go to Medellin, Colombia to pick up this wonderful addition to our family.

Today is Tuesday January 10 and we have one week and a day until we leave for our trip.
We are madly rushing around trying to get reaady for this new baby to enter our lives.

Linda is going to go to the Colombian consulate in NYC today in order for us to get our travel visas.

More to come...

Another Change

Okay, it is now 11:15am and I just got a call from my lawyer. As of right now, we will be traveling on Sunday January 22nd.

So with all of these changes, we still can't make reservations. We must wait until the last minute... can you say ka-ching!