We're home and the kids love the snow!

We made it home to Alaska last night after a stopover for a few days at Christmas visiting Grandma & Grandpa in Oregon, and then we drove to Washington to visit their other Grandpa yesterday. We finally took that final plane ride bringing us home to Alaska and it feels so good to be home. The kids are enjoying their new home and are still finding toys and cool things to entertain themselves. They absolutely love the snow outside and have engaged in several snowball hurling events during the past day. It snowed while we were visiting my dad yesterday in Washington and the day before at Oregon they had their first experience with snow falling. They're real troopers as they love the snow and sometimes even make snowballs with it without their gloves on, and they don't even mind it. The cold weather doesn't bother them and we are so blessed. Like any mom, I''m having to remind them to wear the appropriate outside weather coats and gear before going out, but they really do love the snow and even don't mind the cold weather which comes with the joy of snow. Last night we saw a moose on the road and stopped to look at it and Fabian especially thought that was cool.

I for one am happy to begin to settle back into my own house and am excited to get a routine going here with the children. Still so much to do though but things will fall into place better now that we are home! There's so much I cannot wait to post on in regards to our journey and I hope to get all caught up within the next few days because I really need to express how wonderful God has been to us in His infinitive faithfulness! As the year end draws near also, I feel a great need to reflect on all God's goodness too! It truly was the year of jubilee for us and so many other of our friends! We're blessed in so many ways and I can't wait to share so much more of the highlight of our journey with you! Stay tuned.

All done here in Bogota

Okay, I just have a minute to write as I sit here at Archie's in Bogota. We're staying at Betty's Place and have been without internet for a few days now so there's been no time to write and update posts. We have been in Bogota since Tuesday late night. We picked up visas today for the kids which gives us the go ahead for travel. All systems are go and we are set to fly out tomorrow morning to the US. God is so good to us and opened up some seats tomorrow on flights -- what wonders He has given and continues to bless us with! We will update more when we have a chance. Our love goes out to everyone! Gotta run as there's a terrible thunderstorm out there and we are under the awning at Archie's pizza using the internet. Anyone who knows me well knows how much I cannot stand thunderstorms and lightning so I'm off to hide under the table now. REALLY!

Quick update on Sentencia -- yippee!!

Yesterday the good news came and we got sentencia! Unless you're a spanish-speaker or adoption-literate, you might think sentencia... that doesn't sound good to have... especially in a third-world country or so, but trust me, we came here hoping to get sentencia at the earliest time possible! We wished for it and expected sentencia to come much sooner, and as each day passed and we didn't hear of our sentencia, we grew more discouraged. Trusting in the LORD became so much of our needed focus! (and just as a sidenote, as I was typing that last sentence, I did not emphasize nor did I touch the ALL CAPS key -- which again is just clarification that the Lord is ever present here, and I definitely have goose bumps all over right now!)

There's many examples of how much He guides us through this and helps us through the setbacks and in the next few days as I gather a moment or two about, I hope to write of how extensive God's touch has impacted us and in the many miraculous ways He has shown us of His love! It's just simply amazing and I know on the quick timeline I have right now I wouldn't do any justice to the beautiful displays God's shown us of His glory!

Today was the day we were scheduled to leave Colombia but we clearly have missed our flights. Our business here still involves another week of paperwork to finalize everything then we will be cleared for travel. We're finding that changing flights at this busy time of the year is proving to be a costly endeavor. It was devastating news to learn yesterday to learn that we needed so much more money for our plane fares home! It seems to be cheaper to abandon the tickets in hand because the change fees paired with the difference in fares now are way too costly, and what we'll end up doing is just purchasing one way tickets to our destination. At this time of the year the airlines have us over the barrel for sure. And our visas are set to expire soon so we would need to get out of here at our earliest convenience anyways!

Please pray along with us that God direct me as I seek out travel arrangements. I pray also for God's faithful provisions as this is taking such sacrifices in ways not known to many. We know God will provide "just enough" as He is and always will be faithful! We ask that you hold our family up in prayer this week as we continue to work our way through the adoption process.

Thank you for looking in and feel free to leave comments. A glimpse of home always means the world to us and we love to hear from you! Knowing you care really means alot! I hope to blog more later on the wonderful things God is doing in our lives here... but for now, Ciao!

God Bless,
Genece

Quite the enjoyable evening!

This won't be a lengthy entry because I'm just exhausted and it's very late. We just returned from a nice evening out in Cucuta. After our 2 and a half hour swimming excursion in the late afternoon, we were surprised by a phone call from our interpreter Alexandra who at our attorney's wishes wanted to invite us for an ice cream or a coffee in the early evening. We rounded up the crew and went to the mall for a very enjoyable visit with our attorney and Alexandra at Juan Valdez coffee. MMMmmmmm, very tasty coffee and wonderful treats which I'm going to have to write the name down of what they were, but they were wonderful tasting! We found out our case may be progressing now and we could possibly hear something very soon regarding sentencia. We wait patiently as the Lord prepares us to proceed! And we continue to pray! As much as we enjoy Cucuta and all it has to offer, and enjoy the beautiful Colombia as we've grown to know, we certainly do want to continue this adventure and get home before the Christmas holiday travel goes berzerk!!!! Our flights are scheduled for Friday so it's looking like we'll need to change the flights to a later date. But what later date??

After the mall we went to this park with many decorations and lights displayed. It's just amazing how many light displays they had out there. Like a little town with little buildings that you could walk through and they were all decorated and lit up. A huge tree was in the middle of this arrangement. Just so awesome of a sight, that's for sure! We took tons of pictures so I hope they turned out okay and you're able to tell a lot from the pictures.

We took a drive around Cucuta which was very enjoyable! Then we went to grab a burger at Carritos, a very nicely decorated restaurant downtown decorated so nicely in periwinkle colored lights everywhere. An outdoor restaurant... and very busy... and very tasty... and even had a dog that took up temporary residence seated just under Marissa's seat, until Fabian kicked it one too many times (perhaps on accident but who knows, he's all boy and a little fiesty at times.) Marissa didn't even know the dog was there until halfway through the meal.

The kids made friends at the pool today and I'll have to report on that probably tomorrow because I'm too tired right now.

Well, off to bed now and more later. Ciao, Genece

Still no sentencia but quite the celebration!

Still no word of when to expect sentencia but we feel the hand of the Lord very present in everything we do. AMEN! God has a very defined plan for us and we await His tender mercies! We are so thankful to be here in Colombia during the Christmas season. From what we've seen, Colombians do go all out for decorations and beautifully-colored lights. Rick's dad would love being here right now to view all the great light decorations and displays because that's Dave's thing -- Christmas lights and decorations -- oh yeah!! It's very fascinating and what a glorious time of the year to witness such sights. Thank you Jesus for all you do. You are the reason for the season and we are truly blessed to be here in Colombia at this time.





Yesterday was interesting. Little corrections had to be made and the day just happened to bring on many. We didn't set out to teach some lessons -- really -- however it just happened that way. There were a few very slight behaviors that we felt necessary to correct before they got too out of hand, and yesterday was the day when we were forced to put our foots down in order to let the children know we mean business. Granted these are all very mild behavior issues but it is our job as parents to show them the way. Anyways, long story short, their pool privileges were taken away for the day following many attempts to get them to conform to our wishes. So when it came time for the pool, only Marissa got to swim and they understood but didn't like that we followed through. Even more of a lesson, both Fabian and Karen had to sit and watch. As hard as it was to endure watching the sad twosome pouting a little as the watched from poolside all the while as Marissa swam, we have had much better behaviors coming from the both of them today. Hallelujah! In fact, this morning was a shocker when Karen got up and dressed with the first prompting from her dad. Fabian needs work on accepting responsibility as he blames others whenever he gets in trouble. Not really blames but it happens such as this... we'll say Fabian, no touching the baby, and he'll say in a very stern voice to his little sister, "Karen, no touching the baby!" Sort of a pass the buck type of deal, and he's not picky with passing the buck -- it usually gets passed on to the nearest person to him that he can turn to and repeat the corrective measures that were initially meant for him. He does it all the time so we figured we'd better get ahold of it and teach him a different way. Acceptance of responsibility! He does accept correction well and bounces right back and doesn't hold his anger. Karen can hold her anger for much longer and definitely knows how to pout to get her way. She's quickly learning to conform and we don't see the long outbursts of anger following the correction nowadays. Now Luis, even at 10 months old now, can hold onto his anger. He knows how to hold a grudge! Really! He has been so spoiled for so long and that's very clear, but he's learned that crying doesn't accomplish much. Don't get me wrong, he sure has tried to get his way by crying, but so far it hasn't worked much so he's giving up on that technique. He still has both his sisters trained for the "fetch" game when he wants them to keep picking up his toys as he drops them purposefully. Instead of crying to get his way he is now this super smily boy most all of the time now. What an absolute joy he is! Very gifted with natural charming abilities and just a happy-go-lucky kind of little guy! He doesn't like his siblings to invade his space and gets upset when they do so Mama and Papa have to run interference all the time for him.





There was a heartwarming speech I had to give yesterday to address to the children after we came back to the room after being at the pool. You could almost see it in their faces that they understood why they lost their pool privileges for the day, but they both had this look of concern that we must not love them anymore and possibly we were giving up on them. Rick and I have been very consistent whenever any corrective criticism is given to follow up with emphasizing how much we love them and how happy we are to all be family and trying to explain why we corrected them in the first place! I am so thankful that during this very crucial explanation following the pool visit yesterday that God placed the correct words in my mouth to get our point across! It really was amazing and Rick commented on how well it went and told me how amazed he was that I continued to rattle off Spanish. My Father above deserves ALL credit for gifting my tongue to speak to my children. What a heavenly experience and for it I am blessed! At that moment I had a TV program on a christian channel singing spanish songs when I noticed one we sing quite regularly in our church. It's a song by Israel Houghton and the new Breed, "Lord you are good and your mercy endureth forever, Lord you are good and your mercy endureth forever, People from every nation and tongue, from generation to generation, We worship You, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, We worship You for who You are ... and You are Good!" It was sung in spanish and it was so cool when the kids got up and started jumping around at the same exact moment as we did. What a blessed event! An outright expression of just exactly how awesome our God is! He let all of us know of His presence at that exact moment. Then we heard the loud fireworks being shot off from town and walked outside our hotel room to take in the beautiful fireworks display. See, the Colombians celebrate a holiday on Dec. 8th, but the festivities actually begin on Friday. It's Dia de la Imaculada Conception and it brings about many fireworks celebrations and the lighting of many Christmas displays. So cool to witness and left us with such overwhelming feelings. We had been told earlier in the week that Friday marked the day when people in Colombia lit candles outside but we had no idea of the exact significance of why they did this as a tradition. So on our trip to the store yesterday we picked up some candles and planned on participating. We almost scrapped our plans of lighting our candles and placing them outside our door because we didn't think anyone else in the hotel was going to, but then we saw the family next to us had lit candles marking their front entrance terrace, we decided we needed to also. The kids went nuts and jumped for joy as we lit the candles and placed them out in the front area. Definitely a treasured moment!!! Just this morning as I read another family's blog that are adopting and are now in Bogota, the Colombian people light the candles for the captives taken by guerilla forces. I knew when we lit them that it was truly a touch from God -- a very somber moment and one which will be forever preserved in my mind, but I had no idea at that time the importance or real significance of those lit candles!



Oh and by the way, there's a quick little story on the lit candles. Today as the maintenance guy went around to our front entrance way and as he scraped the dried candle wax left from our celebration, we felt compelled to leave him a tip. Rick and I opened the door to tell him of our appreciation for his services and he was so overwhelmed by our gesture. It was quite a humbling experience to know that the equivalent of $3 or $4 US dollars meant so much to him. He really didn't want to take the tip but we insisted. He didn't feel he was worthy of receiving it but it was so much of what God led us to do at that exact moment. I am sure he needed the money for something and God was providing for his need by working through us!





Well, I'll close now because it's very late and I need to get some sleep.



May God bless each and everyone!

Genece

Still waiting wanting word of Sentencia

We still await sentencia which we have no idea of when it will come. We remain hopeful that it will be this week. We are going to contact our agency in-country representative early this afternoon with hopes of finding out if there is any news or any clue of when it might happen. Our attorney an her husband and our interpreter came to the hotel to visit us on Monday night and she had no word of when to expect sentencia. We have no way of contacting anyone locally as we have neither our attorney's phone number or that number to reach our interpreter. We are literally just waiting here and are basically on our own. Please bear with me for a moment as I vent just a little frustration here... I'm sure if we were somewhat in the loop on what to expect we might not be experiencing the frustrations we are. We are just wishing the sentencia to be signed so that we can get rolling with the other documents so we can go home.

Poor little Karen got feeling sick to her stomach last night (actually had a bit of it all day but she didn't want to miss out on any food or pool time). She didn't really complain about it or feel real bad until after we came in from the pool. She laid down for a bit and was better by dinnertime. This morning she woke up very nicely considering she still was sick to her stomach. We didn't realize she wasn't feeling well until at breakfast when she wanted to lay her head down on the table and didn't want to eat anything. She's relaxed in bed most all morning but just got up to eat a snack of kiwi, a little of a pear, and now they are munching on a few chips which the kids refer to as Cheetos which cover any sort of chips... they're all called Cheetos. Sort of reminds me of living in the deep South and growing up in Tennessee when we'd be out at a restaurant and we'd order our drinks and say we wanted a Coke, then the waiter would ask which kind and we'd say Dr. Pepper or a 7-up... ya know, all sodas were referred to as Cokes.

Luis is quite the character. As a baby he sure is gifted with such great personality traits and is sleeping better each and every day. He may wake up in the middle of the night and whimper for about a minute but then he falls right back to sleep without needing any type of interaction. For the past 2 days in a row he's slept in until just past 8 am when I have to wake him up. What a great little baby he is! We all slept very good last night as it rained lots in the night and that always has a lulling effect.

Luis is eating so well nowadays too. He loves his eggs in the morning and he loves spaghetti which we had last night for dinner. He has learned to chomp on his crackers and now he just swiped a cookie from his brother when he wasn't paying attention. We tried to get it back but he laid claim to it right away so there was no taking Luis' cookie from him! He's just our little man!

Alright, a funny thing happened on the way to breakfast today. As we were walking there, Marissa stopped to wait for us under a tree and for some reason she looked up. About that time we saw these droppings which came down and landed on her arms. She started whining about how yucky it was that some bird had taken a poop on her. At least it only landed on her arms and not on her hair or on her clothes. She just had to wash up very well before breakfast but we all got a little giggle out of her unfortunate demise. And fortunate for her that it was from a bird because just yesterday we were noticing some iguana poop that had fallen from the trees and were commenting on how unfortunate it would be to be seated below an iguana at that moment. Aaaaahhhhh, the memories!

Well, more later hopefully.
Sending our love, the Hefty Family!

Bright and sunshiny morning for Karen...

As the title says, "Bright and sunshiny morning for Karen", well that's because the tooth fairy came and took her tooth and left her a US Dollar! She didn't wake right up for it but it was far better than we've been dealing with. Took her about 5 minutes to move around and finally open those eyes up... I wonder if she'll get the hang of this waking up thing before Christmas morning after Santa Claus has come. I've got predictions that she'll still be slow, but there's always hope -- yes indeed! Fabian is such a great morning person, wakes right up and is raring to go.

All of our kids have a loose tooth and we had been telling them to try to work their loose tooth out. Rick teased that he would pull the teeth for them which they all cringed and heavily guarded their mouths! Then when we explained to Karen about the tooth fairy and that if you leave the tooth overnight the tooth fairy would come and exchange the tooth for MONEY! Her eyes got super huge and a big smile across her face ensued! She said, "Aha, un minuto!" and off she ran to the bathroom to grab some tissue and she was focused on a mission to pull that tooth out. Actually it took her only 15 minutes to get it out & believe me that girl was determined! She wanted that money from the tooth fairy!

So this morning she awoke to a crisp $1 bill from the tooth fairy and she was so thrilled! Another funny thing about her is that she refers to Rick and I as millionaires. She thinks we are millionaires and when we explain to her that we are not -- that we're just normal people, she gets very upset and keeps saying, "No, mi mama y papa -- si, si millionaires!" The spanish accent marks aren't there but the gist is that she keeps repeating yes, yes, my mother and father are millionaires!

Well, I'll try to write more later. Finally, our internet is working but there's not really much for reception, Very low signal on the wireless.

I posted some more pictures yesterday to the picasa web album.

More later, and keep prayers up that we will receive sentencia soon (which is when the judge signs the adoption decree which then starts the process for completing the paperwork and being able to return home).

Genece