O-U-T: the three sweetest letters in the English alphabet!

Well, after two weeks of knowing that we were going to get the phone call from our agency today, I decided I needed to get out of the house and away from the phone. Wouldn't you know that meant that I finally DID recieve the phone call -- we are finally out of PGN (the Guatemalan government agency that approves or denies the adoption) after 9 and a half weeks!

Today I was with the cheerleaders at my old school helping them get ready for their competition. I had just finished talking with Jill and KeeKee about some of the changes that can be made to their routine if things aren't going smoothly and was ready to go to lunch. That's when the phone rang. Cynthia had said she knew that the call would come when she and I were together, but she got it slightly wrong. Evidently I needed to be with Jill. See, last March Jill had just walked into my class when I got the call from the front office that I had to call my adoption agency right away. Seems Jill has a more special roll in my children's lives than simply their favorite babysitter! Chris and I are going to keep her in our prayers forever, the special young lady that she is!

So, now we wait for a pink slip which will give us an appointment at the American embassy. Hopefully we can get the new birth certificate quickly, with her last name listed as Merrill and our names as her parents. Then is the passport, and finally all that paperwork is submitted to the embassy and they will give us an appointment for our interview. THREE WEEKS is the goal for all this to be done by so Chris can travel with me to pick up our daughter. That would be good in deed. Please Lord, have mercy on us. I can't take another long wait!

Go go gogogogo GO!

This weekend Chris, Garrett, and I headed to Charlotte for the Navy bowl game. Of course, we had only been back in the States a mere day before heading out, but whatever.

Friday we were refingerprinted for the adoption. Our fingerprints are only good for 15 months, and we had been fingerprinted last September. Earlier our adoption agency had said that this wouldn't be a problem, as we would have her home before we expired, but time just didn't work with us. Garrett was a very good boy waiting for Mommy and Daddy to be done, especially considering how tired we were. We met another family that had just adopted a little boy from Guatemala and was in the process of adopting him a little sister. Garrett thought that he was fun to play with.

Friday afternoon we attended the street fair and pep rally to get the fans excited about the game. Garrett sat on Chris's shoulders, taking it all in. The noise, the lights, the smells, the people. It was a lot for a little guy. We had dinner with Mark and Jodi (Chris's cousin and her husband, who live just outside of Charlotte), and then we collapsed around 10. We have officially decided that we are getting old and cannot keep up without sleep.

Saturday was spent celebrating and watching the bowl game. Mark and Jody came over to the hotel early to "tailgate" as it were in our room. Garrett claimed the football beads that Mommy had bought to wear to the game. Now he had his own pretties to play with. To top it off, he found his first bug, a lady bug, on his foot. We checked it all out, and then she met an untimely end, crushed in his little fist.

Garrett thought that the game was great fun. We watched the march on of the Mids, but somehow missed the fly-by of an F-18. I bought a Cat-in-the-Hat style Navy hat to wear during the game, but Garrett claimed that as well. Chris thought it was good to help hide his Boston Red Sox baseball cap, in case their might be some confusion as which team our son would root for. Of course, we heard the normal "Gogogogogogogo!" at various points throughout the game, and not always when Navy had done something good on the field. Mostly, Garrett sat on Daddy's lap and just took everything in.

Chris met another grad who knew Steve Amiaga, who was the captain of Chris's sailboat the weekend we met, and who sang at our wedding. We hung out with Dave and his wife, Sandy, for the 3rd quarter, and they joined us after the game for dinner. Unfortunately, Navy lost the game in the last 3 seconds to a BC field goal. Overall it was a great game that Navy played very well. We had a grand time and cannot wait to take Garrett to Army-Navy sometime soon with his sister!