LFA Day 35 - Wrapping Up!

Thank you for all of your prayers! I, (J) woke up this morning feeling much improved and was able to go with Karl and the kids to the U.S. Embassy! I am so thankful to be feeling better and to not have my whole body ache anymore! I should be feeling pretty good come Thursday, our travel day.

Today we were at the Embassy from 9:30 am to 1 p.m. - UGH (exhausting)! Our paperwork was accepted with no problems!!! Yeah!!! We are supposed to return tomorrow at 3 p.m. to pick up the kids´ visas. Then, all of our in-country adoption paperwork is DONE!

In addition to picking up the visas, tomorrow we will pack and shop some and get some rest before the next day´s LONG journey home (12 hours with our layover.)

The kids are soooo excited - little Claudia keeps saying "¿vamos a estabos umibos?" (In Spanish, the U.S. is called estados unidos.) Anyway, it is really cute! Anytime the kids hear a plane, they yell loudly "avion, hola avion!" and all three of them jump up and down and cheer. It is adorable! By the way, some have asked about our openness to being greeted at the airport and our answer is "YES! We would love to see you when we arrive!" If you want details about our flight schedule, email us.

Moments with Karl: Today at the Embassy I had some special moments that I wanted to share - each of them brought the sensation of tears to my parental eyes (and also do as I type). The first was when we all heard "Anji Joy Daniela Armstrong" over the intercom. This call was for the visa payment. I went up to the window and was never more happy to pay $1,200 - a tiny sum to bring our 3 children home!!! The second was when I was again called up to sign paperwork. Looking through the glass with the intercom phone to my ear I could see our childrens´immigration folder with the title "Armstrong Babies". How wonderful this is!!! Thank you for sharing in our adventure with us. Bonus Moment: It was also great to hear "Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong and children...come to window #4..." announced and for Armstrong be pronounced correctly ;) K

To end this post, I have to say how sweet our kids are! They are really blossoming. Tonight at dinner, we prayed as usual together and each of them wanted to pray AGAIN when we were done - EVEN ANDRES! Okay, to say that this was totally cute is a complete understatement. If this had been captured on video, it would have won the home video grand prize. They each took our hands, closed their eyes very seriously, and gave thanks. Andres "prayed" extra long (multiple times) verbalizing as best as he could "bllbblblbbbb blbblblbllb blblblblbb blblblblblbbbbb bllllbbbbbb" with his little tongue going in and out of his mouth and a very sincere look on his face (with his little eyes closed!) Each child would clap heartily when finished. It was so precious - but even more precious than that is to see our children learning to love to give thanks to Padre Dios and their continued excitement over the Word of God. They bring it up continually. At the Embassy today, Claudia took a little book, pretending it was the Bible, and recited from memory the introduction to our children's Bible, "¿Que es la Biblia?" following along with her finger just like Mami does. We are very blessed indeed!