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!