A nice dinner out with our new friends

We had a wonderful dinner out with our new friends from France.  They have been in Colombia for about 4 1/2 weeks to adopt their 2nd son, Tomás, and are going home tomorrow.  We have enjoyed getting to know their family and will really miss them.  However, we are hoping to keep in touch and maybe plan a trip to France!  They are such a wonderful family and clearly love their children. 

Walk in the Park

We had a very nice start to our day.  Ava slept until 8a!  We almost had to wake her up.  After numerous days of rain, we finally got some sunny weather.  We had a nice breakfast with the other adopting family.  We then decided to spend some good quality time at a park that is very near to our Hotel.  We ended our day with a lovely tour of the outlying areas of Bogota.  Our representative and her two children (Juan Pablo and Mariana) took us to a quaint little Italian restaurant.  The food and view was amazing.  Ava was an angel as usual.  She decided to sing along with some songs on the ride home.  We were not sure if she was singing in Spanish or English, but either way it was beautiful.

Mommy's lucky charm!

We had our 3 week anniversary with our little girl yesterday and we are wondering what we ever did without her!  She wakes up happy just about every day and seeing her first smile of the day gives us so much joy! 
Our new home, Zuetana, is wonderful!  They are spoiling us!!  The ladies are so kind and cook 3 fantastic meals every day!  Tony is in heaven.  The first night we arrived, he came running back in our room after checking out the place and enthusiastically announced, "Dinner is ready"!  He was really excited and has been enjoying every minute of it!
Today we spent the day walking around the city.  We found a great mall called Unicentro that had a bowling alley inside it.  Ava kept score.  Typically Mommy is probably one of the worst bowlers around and rarely breaks a score of 100.  But today, with her lucky charm Ava, she had her best game ever and actually beat Daddy!  I think he may request a rematch tomorrow!

Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles.

Little Ava has perfected blowing bubbles!  She practiced all day and was eager to show everyone her newly found skill.  She is quite a messy girl, but she had so much fun!!

Today we met another family going through the adoption process.  They are from France and are adopting their 2nd son from Colombia.  It was really nice to share stories and experiences with them.  The boys are absolutely adorable and they make a beautiful family together.  Their 6 year old son speaks French, Spanish, and English!  So intelligent!  We are hoping our Little Ava will speak both Spanish and English fluently.  We have been trying to speak mostly Spanish while on our trip, so hopefully we will keep it going.

We're back in Bogota

We made it back to Bogota yesterday morning.  We have changed hotels to a much smaller one that caters to adoptive families.  Sorry for not updating as of late, but we have both been hit pretty hard with travelr's sickness.   We hope we are over the hump.  Even though we have been under the weather, little Ava has still been a shining star, loving life and every new experience she encounters.  She has recently discovered her lips and is enjoying blowing bubbles and making as many new sounds as possible.

Lazy days!

We are having a great time relaxing and enjoying the Cartagena weather.  We started our day off with a walk on the beach.  Ava seemed to be soothed by the waves and was quickly asleep.  We spent the rest of the day swimming, playing with toys, and napping.  Ava has really taken interest in her toys and loves to put everything in her mouth. We are in heaven being able to spend so much time with our little girl.  It is going to be a rude awakening when we get back home and have to start thinking about work and other obligations.  I don't know how we are going to be able to be away from her for a whole day!  Today she took a 2 hour nap and I had a hard time resisiting the urge to pick her up and hold her.  Our time together as a family has been truly amazing!

We are loving Cartagena!  Our hotel has a beautiful roof top pool that Ava is really enjoying!  She is quite the little swimmer!  We are having such a good time that we are going to try to extend our stay throughout the weekend.  Enjoying this warm weather and seeing Ava's obvious love for the water makes it really hard to leave.  Hopefully we can work something out!