A Beautiful Day & Night!

today turned out to be a beautiful day! it started out a bit cloudy, but we packed up cruz in the baby bjorn and his morning bananas in the diaper bag and headed out to explore more of our neighborhood. the sun came out as we were sitting at juan valdez enjoying coffee and bananas and it turned into a beautiful day! we found lots of nice shops and explored a couple new areas. cruz seems to love the bjorn and daddy likes wearing it. yay!

we spotted a gigantic kitchen-aid mixer so cruz & heath jumped right in it. perhaps we have another future chef in the making?

cruz is pretty excited that his auntie mel is coming to visit and wanted to let her know how he felt about her...

a few minutes after we sat down for dinner, guillermo, one of the paris staff, came and told us that we had visitors! jose and dario came to meet cruz! it was great to see them again and so nice to introduce cruz to them. they even brought him a gift - a big blanket (made in colombia!) and a hoodie towel. so sweet! just as jose & dario were going to leave, our beautfiul night got even better....the jaenisch and zuge families arrived back from the coast! it was so nice to finally meet them in person and to have more english speaking families around. i can already tell we've made some lifelong friends. cruz, alton & jack make quite the cute trio!

it's been a great day here in bogota! cruz is fast asleep to my left and papa heath is 'resting' to my right. we are truly blessed! have a great weekend!

love,
ang, heath & cruz

A Walk & A Trip to the Park

this morning after cruz ate his bananas, we ventured out for a pretty long walk and stopped in a few parks as it was a beautful, sunny morning! i tried out the baby bjorn and cruz seemed to love it. he and daddy sported their iowa hawkeye shirts today - go hawks!

as you can see, we are very well 'protected' when we are at the park! security guards with big guns are on guard all over! :)

lastly, wanted to share a pic of cruz's buddha belly! he loves when i blow kisses on it!

love from bogota!
ang, heath & cruz

More Pictures of our Happy Baby

Tummy Time!

One of My Faves: Daddy & Cruz @ the Park

I'm a Messy Eater!

Coffee Time - It's in His Blood!

Baby Twins Fan

Not Feeling So Hot, But I Still Look Cute!

Mommy & Me after my First Bath @ Hotel Paris

Daddy's Best Friend

Hasta Luego!

Day 2 Highlights

daddy and cruz are both napping so i thought i would jot down a few highlights from presentation day and day 2 (our first full day with cruz).

Presentation Day:

-started out our day by sleeping in one last time!
-breakfast at hotel paris (juanita makes delicious french toast!) and then we walked and had coffee at juan valdez
-window shopping & shoe shopping for heath at unicentro (large shopping mall within walking distance) - i made him unpack his running shoes before we left b/c they were too heavy. turns out he needed them!
-lunch at el corral - yummy, greasy, American style hamburgers & fries
-stop at grocery store for a few supplies
-back to hotel paris to shower, change & prepare for presentation!
-we were supposed to get picked up by luz stella (who works with lss) and a driver at 3:30. we sat in our lobby area anxiously awaiting their arrival, but they didn't get there until 4:05! talk about making us more nervous! (well, at least me)
-arrived at los pisingos at 4:20...crazy taxi driver, but he actually got us there very quickly (traffic in bogota is CRAZY!)
-met with carlos, the director of LP - he is in the black coat in the pictures, and he spoke with us about the adoption process, the legal processes, etc. and then he introduced us to andreas (in the white)
-andreas spoke with us about cruz's routines, his likes & dislikes, went through his medical reports (everything is looking good...he just has a cold right now and had some diarrhea over the weekend...we think he might be teething as he keeps sucking on his fingers and anything else he can get in his mouth)
-andreas then took us upstairs to a very special room where cruz spent much of his time; as soon as we walked in the room we saw our beautiful son!
-andreas presented cruz to us and then stepped out of the room so that we could bond with him and get to know one another; it was such a precious moment and one we will never forget!
-after a few moments, luz stella came in and took some photos for us and we played with cruz for a while as we got to know him
-when we were ready, andreas led us back downstairs to the room we started in...it was now dinner time and all of the children were eating...they were so adorable and they all watched us and smiled and waved. we're excited to go back and tour LP and interact more with the children.
-we finished up by saying good bye to andreas and carlos and then hopped in a van with a much better driver! :) traffic was horrendous and it took us about an hour or so to get back to paris. cruz fell asleep in daddy's arms in the van (he seems to have the magic touch!)
-we were welcomed back home with a special sign for cruz on our door and many of the staff welcomed us and took pictures of us
-i gave cruz his first bottle with us and then proceeded to change his diaper...and also proceeded to have him pee all over the changing mat & his clothes! gotta love boys!
-after a very long and emotional day, we finally all got to sleep after 11:00 (they said that is his bed time?? let's hope we get that changed!)
-cruz seems to be a good sleeper - he woke up once about 12:30, but i think he was just a little scared, being in a new place. i held him for a few minutes and then put him back down in his crib and he went right back to sleep

Day 2:

-cruz actually slept in til almost 7:00 which was great for us...i didn't sleep very well, must have been too excited & i kept listening to both of my guys snore! (cruz because he has a cold and heath, well because he's heath!)
-morning routine went fairly well, he was supposed to have a bottle at 5:00 am (?), but we waited until he woke up (never wake a sleeping baby, right?)
-pureed bananas were brought up from the kitchen at 10:00 and he seemed to like those...until we attempted to put him in the baby bjorn and he projectile vomited the bananas all over the bjorn, the carpet and my arm! classic! luckily, heath is an AWESOME dad already and handles everything so well.
-ended up scrapping the baby bjorn idea and used one of the paris strollers and went for a short walk to the grocery store for his rice cereal and then stopped in the park for a few minutes before lunch. it's a beautiful day here, mostly sunny and probably mid 60's
-cruz was a little crabby at lunch so belydia (sp?) held hime for a while while we ate and then we all came upstairs for naps...daddy and cruz are still sleeping and it's been almost 2 hours!

that's about all for now! i'm trying to figure out how to post a video on here. i posted on facebook so some of you can check it out there. i will leave you with a few new photos for your enjoyment!

PS - just found out that my parents & melissa will all be coming down next week to meet cruz! yay! we can't wait for visitors!

Presentation Day!

we are now a family of three! it's been an amazing day and i will blog more later, but wanted to get pictures out for everyone to see!

Day One in Bogota

day one in bogota and our last day as a family of two! we started off our day by enjoying sleeping in one last time and then we experienced our first meal at hotel paris and it was as good as everyone raved. we had delicious pancakes for breakfast and then headed out on a walk to explore the area we will be living in for the next 1-2 months. we discovered a very nice area with all sorts of shops, restaurants, parks, etc. we ended up walking about 2.5 miles total and then ended up back at hotel paris for lunch. let me tell you, we will NOT go hungry while living here! thankfully we will be doing a lot of walking to burn off all of the food. for lunch we were served steak, potatoes, soup, coleslaw and a tangerine for dessert...we thought maybe because it was sunday, this would be our big meal of the day. we discovered we were wrong, but more on that later! after lunch our friend jose & his cousin dario picked us up to show us their city. they have already been the most gracious hosts and it has been so nice having them here. they took us to unicentro, a very large, upscale shopping center where jose insisted on getting us ice cream cones at crepes & waffles (yum!) and then we exchanged some money so we now have pesos in our possession. after unicentro, we headed to jose's apartment for a little relaxation before heading back out on our tour de bogota. he doesn't live too far from los pisingos so we decided to drive by cruz's home, but before we could get there, we made another pit stop at a little food stand where he surprised us with freshly made empanadas, apple soda and little cheesy biscuits! they were delicious! after that pit stop we headed over to los pisingos and snapped a couple pictures of the complex from the outside. it was an odd feeling know that cruz was inside of there and we were so close to him. we then continued on our journey and made one last stop at hacienda santa barbara, another shopping area. somehow we managed to NOT spend any money during our first day of travels (thank you jose for all of the treats!). after jose & dario dropped us off, we had about an hour of down time before it was time for dinner. yes, dinner after all of that! remember how i said that we thought maybe the evening meal would be lighter today since it was sunday? we were wrong! we were served delicious fish, rice, bread, vegetables and pineapple & cookies for dessert! yikes! we are now settled back in our room, enjoying our last night alone before cruz joins us. no guarantees that any future blogs will be this detailed...i just have a lot of free time tonight! :)

here are some pictures from our first day exploring:

in front of los pisingos! cruz where are you? :)

our welcome sign @ the airport in bogota

sites on our morning walk

views from jose's apartment

We've Arrived!

we made it to bogota and hotel paris! all of our flights were on time and went well. just wanted to let everyone know we made it. will blog more & post more pics tomorrow...time to organize our room. i'll leave you with pictures of us on our flights!

minneapolis to atlanta

atlanta to bogota

buenos noches!