Cause for Celebration!!!

We received the written judgment this afternoon confirming and legalizing the adoption of our two youngest daughters!! It's official, we are a family of six!!! This also means we should be able to come home soon, about 2 weeks!! We're very grateful for the help of our attorneys here, Ximena and Cumanda. They managed to complete the lion's share of the legal work before the court holiday from August 1st through August 15th. We have to get new birth certificates, ID cards, passports, a visit with the National Council of Children and then we head to our embassy for visas to go home.

Life is good at the beach

King of the beach

Panama hats are made here! Cool. Crafting!



Manta is the 2nd largest port city. Tuna is a big business here. Don't ask me what that fish is, but we saw lots of fish being sold -and carved up - out of carts in the street this morning.

Heck yah! Ice cream, baby!


We are relaxing for a week in Manta. Life is good here for us.
We'll likely head back to the city on Wednesday. We had to have help to get the upload speed fast enough to bother posting. We've been without Skype and blogging for a few days - hardship!

Here's a link to more pics

Click Here!

Papallacta

one of the pools outside our cabin


f & n in our rustic cabin - no tv! what?


f, n & j on a bridge over a river we crossed to get to our cabin

f and c loving the warm water


they all want to hang on me at the same time - help!

Great weekend. It was chilly (50 Fahrenheit) for us to get in swimsuits, but the thermal pools all ranged from bathtub warm to hot-tub hot, and then scalding thanks to springs heated by two nearby volcanoes. The kids loved getting to swim and goof around. M didn't try to drown himself as much as he did the last time we had him swimming - progress. C and I got the opportunity to get massages and slathered in Andean mud at the spa and then wrapped in plastic wrap and left to soak - we loved it. From the hot spring pools we could see the clouds swallow the hillsides and hummingbirds in the trees. All the fresh air, altitude and fun = all 4 kids slept for the 2 hour ride home this afternoon.

Adoption decree

N,M,F & J with our cook's 4 mo. old baby. They LOVE this baby and fight over who gets to hold her.


All dressed up to go to court yesterday. This is our "backyard."


We met a judge yesterday and he was clearly smitten with our little family and our lawyers were able to persuade him to issue the adoption decree today! Unexpected great news! So late next week we'll have new birth certificates for the girls with us listed as parents, and after that - ID cards, Ecuadorian passports, and finally visas and home..... We're still gonna be here a few weeks - (these things still take time!) but it means that instead of being home Sept 1, we'll be back (dare I say) mid-August. I should not be writing this, because I don't want to jinx anything - hope there are no new roadblocks or slow-downs.

Tomorrow we are off to Papallacta - hot springs about 2 hrs away. We'll stay overnight - we learned our lesson driving at night when we went to Otavalo - no need to repeat that experience. The kids will have fun swimming and hopefully this time tomorrow I'll be immobilized in an Andean mud-wrap or soaking in a hot pool of therapeutic water (with a rum and coke, just maybe?).

Then Tuesday we fly to Manta on the coast. We have rented a house for a week or two (until we are called back to Quito for the next process). The home has a pool and is right on the beach and is about 3x the size of our current apartment. Oh, heaven! The kids are really looking forward to that.

Thank you so much for all your support and prayers! We were in such a funk earlier today and this good news has turned it all around for us! Woo!

Ice cream and playgrounds everyday!

A scene from our wanderings yesterday. Check out how moms here carry their babies/toddlers. Cool homemade contraptions - forget 'Baby Bjorns!' These moms are working - they're selling fruit from their baskets on the streets.


We scream for ice cream!


J & N - favorite - 'vainilla'

We seem to find a reason to get ice cream every day. What's not to love? It is so entertaining and as a bonus it takes our little ones at least 30 minutes each to eat a single cone. Maybe they are savoring it, maybe they are just slow-pokes. We visited 3 different playgrounds today. We're a tad bored here. We miss the indoor playgrounds at the malls, the amusement parks, the water parks, kids gyms, and general commercialized kid-friendly family traps the US offers on every corner. We're improvising here. It's building character - that's what Norm would tell us (wink).

Tomorrow (Thur) we have an appointment in the afternoon at court! Woot! It is our 'audencia' with a judge - our adoption hearing.

This weekend we're planning a mini- getaway to Papallacta - hot springs. Can't wait. We have much to look forward to.

Picture Gallery Link

There was a problem with my link from my prior entry. Click here to view pics.