Officially Ours

Sebastian, John and Cate are officially our children as of yesterday! The driver picked me up at 1:30 and we were off to downtown to the Courts. I found out that our court was officially closed as of yesterday morning but they made an exception to our case and we were able to sign our Sentencia papers. We got to the courts and our court was boarded up with cardboard and there was a sign on the outside that stated that they would open back up on Aug. 2nd. I immediately went into panic mode and asked our rep. if we were for sure going to sign and she said, "Yes, but we may be here all day", to which I replied, "I will sleep here if that is what it takes!" Well, I would say within about 20 minutes we were sitting in the judges office and signing papers. AMEN!! Our attorney, who was worth his weight in gold, handed me the documents and said, "Congratulations, you are a mother!" That was such a great feeling! Our attorney, our rep and myself almost went skipping out of the court because if we weren't able to sign on Friday, it would have been Aug. 3rd at the earliest.


Next, we were off to get Cate's original birth certificate and then her new birth certificate which changes her name to Catherine Ann Vettel Meyer and lists Rhett and I as her parents. It took a lot of going back and forth and Cecilia telling me, "just keep following me", but we were finally out of there.



On Monday morning, the driver is picking me up at 8:00 to go get Sebastian and John's birth certifcates done. Unfortunately, all three of the kids birth certificates are in different places. After that we will hopefully come back to the hotel, get the kids and grandma and go get the passports done and possibly the medical exams depending on how long everything takes. If we go by Colombian time, I hope we can at least get the passports done!


Today, we had a really fun morning, we went to Monserrate, which is way up in the mountain of Bogota (as if we weren't high enough) that you take a cable car type thing up and it overlooks the huge city of Bogota. At the top, you look at the stations of the cross. It was so beautiful. There is also a really cute church up at the top at the end of the stations.


This is a view from the cable car as we are coming down the mountain! Pretty spectacular.
These two ladies stopped by and were having such a good time with the kids. In this picture, John is pulling his bully self but he was laughing the minute before at the lady in the red jacket!


This is a partial picture of Bogota, I took two more pictures (one to the right and one to the left and I still could get it all. The city is huge!

The boys and I in front of one of the stations of the cross.

We have an extremely busy week ahead with all of the appointments but we are on the home stretch. We are really excited to land in MN!

Love,

Holly, Sebastian, John, Cate and Grandma