Home:)

Hello everyone,

We are all home safe and sound:) Our day of traveling went more smoothly than I had even hoped it would. I had myself mentaly prepared to be that person on the plane with the crying baby that everyone glares at, but it wasn't like that at all. Athena was a dream! She hardly cried at all on either of our flights, even during take offs and landings. We were able to entertain her most of the time and she took naps during a lot of our time in the air also. We left our hotel at 5:30 am and after 2 flights, 1 layover and 2 car rides, we arrived at our home in Mayville at about 10:30 pm. Thank you to grandma Nicholson and grandma Janet for picking us up at the airport:) Thank you also to Beth and grandma Janet for feeding us for our first couple of days home:)

Athena is adjusting very well to her home. She seems to be comfortable with her own room and new bed because she continues to sleep through the night. She got to meet several family members already including her two grandma's who picked us up, grandpa Ralph and Uncle Joe:) She LOVES Amber and Isabelle! If either of them are in the room Athena's eyes are glued to them and she reaches out to touch Amber whenever she is close enough. We went out for our first family walk today and everyone did very well:)

It's great to be home:) Hopefully we'll get a chance to see everyone soon and you can all meet our little sweetheart!

Love,

Nic, John and Athena

Our last day in Bogota

Athena with John, John and Jenny, other guests of Zuetana.

A going away gift for Athena from her friend August.

Hello everyone,

We apologize for slacking on blog updates! Since we recieved our sentencia on Tuesday, we have been crazy busy getting ready to come home. We have had several appointments each day to get everything done and have been getting back to the hotel late and putting a lot of our evening time into trying to comfort a very over-tired Athena! We have been so fortunate to get everything done in time to fly home on Saturday. Each appointment needs to go in a certain order. ie-you need to sign certain documents at the courthouse, then take those document to be notorized, then take the notorized documents to the passport office because you need her passport to be able to get the doctors appointment for medical clearance for her visa, then take it all to apply for the visa, make an appointment to pick up the visa, etc..... The point is, we were so lucky to have everything fall into place to be able to fly home on Saturday and not have to wait out the weekend to wrap things up when the offices opened up again on Monday! Cecilia, our coordinator has been amazing with organizing everything and keeping all of our ducks in a row, ordering us drivers, making appointments and being an all around miracle worker:) We are sad to leave our friends here at the hotel who have become our family away from home, but they recieved good news shortly after us and are leaving for home on Tuesday:) We're leaving the hotel tomorrow morning at 5:30 for our 8:00 flight from Bogota to Houston, Texas. After a 2 1/2 hour layover in Houston, hopefully just enough time to make it through immigration, baggage and customs, we have a 2 1/2 hour flight to O'Hare where grandma Nicholson and grandma Janet will be waiting for us:) We have a few last pictures for everyone to enjoy. Hopefully you'll all get to meet Athena soon in person! She's excited to meet all of you. We're going to lay low for a few days after we get home and let her get used to her new home and get comfortable with her surroundings, but we'll certainly start introducing our baby girl to everyone very shortly after that:)

Love from Bogota!

Nic, John and Athena

SENTENCIA!

We got the call at 5:30 tonight that we have sentencia!!! We just got back from a celebration dinner out with Ann & Camillo. John is going to court to sign the papers tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:00 am. to make Athena an official Zuge! We're going to try to get all of the paperwork accomplished by Friday or Monday. Soooo, if all goes well we will most likely be home on Monday or Tuesday of next week! We'll let everyone know as soon as we know! No pictures today, we just wanted to send a quick note to tell everyone our good news.
Love,
Nic, John and Athena

Fun Weekend:)

Hello,

We had a very good weekend here in Bogota. On Saturday we went on a trip that I have been looking forward to. We went to the Bogota Botanical Gardens. It was so cool! The park is divided into different sections to represent different regions of Colombia and the different categories of plants. One of the most beautiful attractions was the building that showcased all of the exotic flowers and plants that grow in the tropical areas of Colombia. As you walked through the buildings the climate changed from green house to green house to get warmer and more humid to represent the different ecosystems from the desert to the tropical rain forest. There was one room that showcased orchids, Colombia's national flower. Outside of the buildings were herb gardens, a huge rose garden, lilly's, and all differnt types of flowering trees. It was awesome. Definately Nicole's favorite tourist attraction that we've gone to yet:) We were only there for a few hours, but we all agreed it would have been great to spend the whole day and bring a picnic lunch.

On Sunday we went to a large market at La Hacienda Santa Barbara. It was a very large market spread out into 3 large parts througout the neighborhood. Although we didn't buy anything it was so nice to spend the morning walking around the markets and seeing all of the sights and sounds with our friends Ann, Camillo and August. We got to sample some tasty fruits and see some more pretty spanish colonial style houses and shops. We all met up with another family from here at Zuetana for lunch. We went to the Bogota Beer Company on the main square. We all had some tasty brew pub food for lunch. We got back to the hotel just as an afternoon rain storm was moving in and Athena tucked in for her afternoon nap:)

Tomorrow is the start of week number 5 for us, so we'll see what is in store for us:)

Love,

Nic, John and Athena

May 3rd:)

Hello everyone,

There isn't a whole lot of excitement around here, but we did do a few fun things this week to tell about. On Wednesday we went to learn about emeralds at a beautiful emerald dealers' store. It was an interesting experience. Freddy, the store owner, sent his driver to pick us up for our tour and shopping. When we arrived we needed to be buzzed in through a set of locked doors. When those doors were locked behind us, then we were buzzed in through the second set of locked doors. The inside looked like any other really nice jewelry store that you would go to in the U.S. Once inside, we met Freddy. He is a very nice man who speaks very good english and he taught us all about emeralds. We learned how to tell the quality of emeralds and how they are graded. He showed us tons of examples in each category ranging from a very poor quality 2 karat emerald for $200 to a 1 karat beautiful, nearly flawless emerald for $22,000! Apparently, 70% of the emeralds mined in the world come from Colombia and they are all mined within a small 60 square mile radius. We went thinking maybe we would by a pendant for Athena so we could have something extra special from Colombia to give to her when she is older. Of course we're already pushovers for our baby girl and we ended up buying her an absolutely beautiful solitaire pendant!

The hotel has an activity coordinator Carmen, who sets up activities or outings for the guests every few days. Yesterday was mini spa day and I got a french manicure:) John came walking by while I was getting it and commented "Gee, it's soooo rough being a new mom. I barely have time to get in my manicure during nap time!"

Today was probably John's favorite day because we took a little break from the hotel food and went out for burgers to a place called El Corral Gourmet. He's been looking forward to going to this place for quite some time. The hotel food is good, but we haven't had burgers since we've been here and we're both big burger fans:) It was really good, John had a 1/2 lb. triple cheesburger with nachos!-such a Wisconsin boy! It was kind of cold to go out walking to the restaurant, but we bundled Athena up and put her in her snuggly and the I put my rain coat on over the snuggly, so she was plenty warm. Like a baby kangaroo:)

One of the German families here who are just a few days ahead of us in the process and are in the same court as us recieved their sentencia today! We're hoping we're next:)

Everyone keep your fingers crossed for us:)

Love,

Nic, John and Athena

Week 4

Hello all,

Today marks the begining of our 4th week here in Bogota. Athena is growing before our eyes. A few of her sleep-n-plays and onesies that fit her when we first got here, are getting too short on her now. Granted, the clothes dryer for us to use here at the hotel practicaly incinerates anything you put in it, so her clothes may be shrinking a bit:) We really think she has grown though! We made it through the weekend after the vaccinations and Athena's fever was gone by Sunday evening. Today we went out for lunch with Ann, Comillo and August. We went to a Brazilian restaurant and it was quite the experience. They have this system where they bring out 16 different types of grilled meat for you! Every few minutes they bring out the next one, big slabs of meat skewered on big sword-like grilling sticks. They take a huge knife and slice a piece off right onto your plate. We all tried all 16 of them and were ready to be rolled out when we were done. John's favorite was the lamb & beef tenderloin. My favorite was the buffalo and believe it or not, the chicken kindeys. We all agreed that the grilled cow udder was "udderly" disgusting.

Tomorrow will be a slow day as it is a Colombian holiday similar to our Labor Day in the US. I'm not sure if anything will be open or not. Wednesday we are going to an emerald dealer to learn about emeralds (a large export for Colombia) and if we can find something in our price range, hopefull buy a necklace or something to give Athena when she is older.

Love from Bogota,

Nic, John and Athena

A weekend in

Athena with her friend August.

Hello everyone,

We were instructed by the orphanage to have a doctor come to the hotel to do the second part of all of the vaccinations they started Athena on. The doctor came at 1:00 yesterday and Athena got 5 different vaccinations. We were told to stay in for the next 48 hours and moniter her for a rash and high fever and to "be prepared for a long night if she has these reactions". Athena is doing pretty good. She has a low fever, but continues to eat and sleep well. We're supposed to give her children's tylenol every six hours for the fever and even when we needed to wake her up during the night to give it to her, she fell back asleep pretty quickly:) She's being a trooper:)Right now, we're past the first 24 hours, so she should start to get even better from here.

Yesterday morning we went to visit the mothers home where the birth mothers live and recieve prenatal care while they are pregnant. We had a tour of the facility and got to meet some of the residents and their older children. The picture of Athena at the mothers home is with our coordinator Cecilia and two of the girls living at the home right now with their mothers.

John is very happy that today, one of the days that we need to be cooped up in our room, is the day that the NFL draft is on:) The draft, combined with entertaining Athena and reading books when she's napping is going to be the extent of our weekend.


We'll talk with everyone again soon!

Love,

Nic, John & Athena

Salt Cathedral

Hi everyone,

This morning we went on a little outing to the Salt Cathdral just outside of Bogota. The cathedral was build to honor the hard working salt minors because salt is a very important part of the economy is Colombia. It is a catholic cathedral carved deep into a salt mine. It was really beautiful on the inside. The mountain is made of salt, carbon and pirite (fools gold). The walls sparkled all around & they had the statues and other sights of interst illuminated with blue lights. The tour was about an hour long & Athena had mixed feelings about it. She started out doing fine in her snuggly, hanging out and looking at things. About halfway through, she had had enough of the darkness and let us know it. Of course the moment she decided to let loose with her objections was perfect. Right as the guide took us up to the choir loft and explained to us that the walls around the loft were carved just right so that the sound from the loft would carry and resinate throughout the entire cathedral & corradors is when she started to loudly cry her head off. Classic:) We were one of "those" families ruining other peoples good time with our screaming infant! There was also a huge power outage while we were down in the mine. Luckily, they have a backup generator or that could have been interesting. Apparently the outage was throughout the entire country of Colombia!

Here is a picture of Athena with her best friend cinco-puss and a few photos from the cathedral. The pictures from the cathedral aren't nearly as pretty as the real thing, but you can get an idea of what it was like:)

Love to everyone!

Nic, John & Athena

Ayudame

He's not screaming... he's yawning, really:)
Playroom for children.

Babies awaiting the arrival of their families.



Athena and one of her caretakers.

Athena's 1st crib.

This is the infant room, Athena was here for about 2 weeks.

Today we went back for a tour of Ayudame, the orphanage that Athena lived at for the first three months of her life. Ayudame translated means "help me". All of the workers were so excited to see her. It was clear to us that the care givers really do care about the children there. Everyone wanted to hold her again and they all commented on how much she's grown since she's been with us. We have pictures of her with her caretakers, nurse and the assistant director of the orphanage. We got to see the infant room, baby rooms, toddler rooms and the dorm style rooms for the older children. Ayudame is actually almost empty at the moment. There are only 2 infants, 5 babies and one school age child at the facility at this time. They have room to accomodate 40 babies and many older children. They are expecting a group of 20 school age children next week to be transfered from a state orphanage. They have a small gift shop in the orphanage that sells hand made items as a fund raiser for Ayudame. All of the items are made by the birth mothers while they are staying in the mothers' home. We bought a hand knit scarf to give to Athena when she gets older. One of the highlights of the visit came after the tour. We were talking with the orphanage assistant director and asked her if there was anything she could tell us about Athena's first three months that we could put in her baby book. She couldn't think of anything, but she did go and get Athena's file to look through one last time for us and she found Athena's baby footprints from the hospital & gave them to us! We are so happy to have them & gain a small piece of the three months that we were not with her.

Love to all!

Nic, John & Athena

A sunny day:)

"I waited until dad was asleep to play dress-up with his clothes!"




Athena really loves her new teething toy:)

Hello everyone,

It was great to see the sun today for a few hours after several days of dreary drizzles. We even ventured out for 2 walks today to take advantage of the sunshine! We had a day of hanging out at the hotel today and it was one of our best parenting days yet. It seemed like we knew what we were doing! Bath, bottles and naps all went perfectly today:) The next few days are scheduled full though, so we'll see how those go. Tomorrow we have a tour of Ayudame, the orphanage that Athena lived at for the first 3 months of her life. Thursday we're going on a tour of a salt cathedral. It sounds a bit odd to me, a SALT cathedral? Everyone we talk to though, even locals, say it's one of the things you can't miss seeing in Bogota, so we're going to give it a wirl:) Friday we have a tour of the mothers home where the birth mothers live while they are pregnant and after they have the babies. Friday afternoon we have a doctor coming for a house call to catch Athena up on her vaccinations.

Hugs to everyone!

Nic, John & Athena

To Market, To Market..

Hello everyone,

We're spending an afternoon in our room relaxing and napping after a little excersion to one of the markets this morning. The one we went to was about a 20 minute walk away & it is held in the large courtyard of another hotel. It wasn't as big as we thought it was going to be, but of course we found a few cute things we couldn't pass up. We bought a photo album and a hand carved wooden parchisi board. When we saw the parchisi board, we both agreed we couldn't pass it up. In the afternoons when Athena is napping, John and I have passed quite a bit of the time playing parchisi on the board they have here at the hotel. The one we bought is super cute and they personalized it with "Zuge" for us. There is another, bigger market that is a little further away that we may venture out to next Sunday for something to do if the weather is nice.

Athena has a taken a special liking to one of her toys already. Her favorite so far seems to be an animal that goes along with her floor gym. We think it is a type of octopus. It looks like a zucchini with 5 legs coming off of it like an octopus & it has huge eyes. Since it only has 5 legs, but looks like an octopus we have named is cinco-puss.

That's all for now around here:)

Love from Bogota!

Nic, John & Athena

Historic Bogota

Hello from Colombia,

Today we took some time to explore the old downtown of Bogota. We had a wonderful tour guide, Hernando. He is the son of our adoption coordinator and is an anthropology student at one of the universities in Bogota. We started our excursion by visiting the Museo del Oro, or the Gold Museum. This museum highlights the cultural history of Colombia pre-european contact. The majority of artifacts on display are, you guessed it, gold. Hernando did an excellent job of explaining the significance of the different items and also gave us a unique insite into the history of the different native tribes that were living in the different regions of Colombia.

After the museum Hernando took us on a walking tour of the colonial center of Bogota. This is where the Spanish conquistadors set up the original city of Bogota. Many of the buildings in this area date back to the 1820's and older. It is a very beautiful area with colorful Spanish colonial buildings, stone roads and a mountain backdrop behind it all. Also located in this section of Bogota were all the government buildings, including the presidents home.

While exploring Bogota we happened upon an organic cafe that served traditional Colombian foods. We also had the opportunity to give Athena her 1st bottle lunch outside of the hotel. We weren't sure how it was going to go over, but she did great and finished the entire bottle in record time. Our lunch was awesome. We had big steaming bowls of absolutely delicious home made soups called Ajiaco & Sancocho De Gallina along with corn flat breads and pico de gallo with avacados. It was so good! It was also very affordable. The thee of us had more than we could possibly eat for about $12 dollars U.S. Processed food is very expensive however. The other day at the grocery store we paid about $4 for a can of Pringles. The home made food of course, was much better than the Pringles:)
Love from Bogota
The Zuges

And you think YOU have bedhead in the morning!

Hello everyone,

It was a slow day for the Zuge's today in Bogota. It's a cold, rainy day, right around 5o degrees out, but we still had to sneak out for a coffee date with some other American couples from another hotel. (yes, grandma Janet, we bundled Athena up really good and put a stocking cap on her & the coffee shop was right around the corner!) This coffee shop is amazing! It's owned and run by a man who is a native of France and it's called Jacques. There are about 20 different coffee drinks to choose from and tons of pastries and desserts that are just over the moon! John and I just had coffee this time because we had just eaten, but we got to sample some of the other's desserts and we will for sure be going back. Athena did really well. She lasted for about and hour and a half before she got restless and we had to get going. Not bad for a 4 month old in a fancy french coffee shop! Tomorrow we are going to a gold museum. We'll tell you all about it tomorrow. John is very excited to go, being the history buff that he is:) We're going with the son of our adoption coordinator who is about our age. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get a chance to see the sun again. Take care everyone!

Love from Bogota,

Nic, John & Athena