Promised Post of all (most) the wonderful people I met!

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this post!! Here are some of the great and brave moms I met while I was in Guatemala last year. There are even picts of my first mothers day!!! A lot of these pictures are actually taken by my friends and then emailed to me...all our fun adventures!

Here are a handful of pictures from my sister's camera when she was down with us the first week and a half.

Having to be creative for bath-time! Mateo didn't know the difference!

Checking out Aunt Melissa's camera..and yummy sunglasses!

Here is the walker we bought from the market...it was interesting hauling it back to our hotel! Mateo loved it! (I pretty sure he had one at his foster home) And he loved playing with himself in the mirror!! Actually he still does at home!!

And us swimming...I hope you are not blinded by the light (skin)! My tan definitely improved after a few weeks! Mateo loved swimming and he was quite fearless! I needed goggles just for all the kicking and splashing he did.

Here we (Aunt Melissa and the two of us) are about to get on a boat and take a day tour of all the little villages around Lake Atitlan. Quite a day! Hot, bumpy, major back ache, long windy road trip there an back, but what a wonderful experience!

No this is not a popular alcohol drink! It is my favorite drink from Guatemala! Lemonade con soda! Very refreshing! This picture is in San Pedro La Laguna... this is the little village where the youth group from our church come and minister during spring break every year! It was amazing to get to see the school and the little village!

I don't remember where this is...but he is cute anyways!

This was a wonderful time...what you are seeing is a miracle! It is a very long story...so I will try to sum it all up. One of our house mates Sharon had been there for almost a year...and recently she had gotten news of another big delay with their case...with no near end in site. As with anyone trying to continue supporting two households with one income, they were wondering how they were going to make it work. With in a few days there was an anonymous (she eventually figured out who helped out) donation of months and months worth of diapers and formula for her daughter!! They were dropped off the front gate and we all pitched in with what we could to haul them into our house...OUR STROLLERS with our babies in...can you see them?

This is just another cute pic. that reminds me of all the fun and laughs we had in the house together!! I felt very comfortable among the loony-ness... wink wink ;)

Another mixed emotion thing was...the birthdays that we celebrated together! It was tough that Bella and Eliot were not home to celebrate their 1st birthdays! But we all pitched in to try to make them wonderful and memorable! First was Bella's and Sharon (Bella's mom) chose a pink Gerbera Daisy theme!!! Perfect for Bella. (Second was Eliot's ...shown later in post) Also, there is something you all should know...though there are wonderful bakeries around.... cake in Guatemala tastes quite different then cake as we know it...and dare I say...Not so good!! So we made a cake (actually 4 cakes- 1 big, 2 bread loaf size, and one petite cake) with a cake mix at the store and we had fun being creative decorating it! (Sharon invited a lot of Bella's friends so we wanted to have enough cake for everyone! And Bella got a little one to dig into!) I don't have a picture of the finished products but if you look closely in this pic. you can see a few of them. This is late the night before...

Here are all of us house mates dressed in pink for Bella's B-Day! (left to right- Maria, Virgine, Sharon with Bella and Katie) (this is inside our house...also considered outside (open aired little courtyard that the house wraps around)

Mall day!! We all took a day off and went into the city and went to the mall. Those of you who know me really well might know I am not a big mall person. But it was so nice to go into town and spend sometime in the mall...just clean and air-conditioned, and smelled great! This picture is Katie and I, right before our driver picked us up.

I was in the front, looking back ...Sharon on the left, Katie in the back middle, and Melissa on the right (a friend I met through Katie and Sharon)

Here we are at the mall before the security guard approached us and said we were not allowed to take pictures of or in the mall. Weird?

You can see by this picture why living in a house with Katie was so fun!

Here we are late the night before Eliot's Birthday (Katie's son) Katie chose a monkey theme for Eliot's Birthday party. We all made this little cake for Eliot, and then for all the people at the party Katie served Banana splits to go with the theme!!

Pretty cool huh? We all were a good creative team!!

Eliot is the one in the yellow and brown (for monkey and banana) and Mateo is the one in the blue...and the rest are all girls!!

No these are not ALL of the Mom's in Antigua fostering...but quite a few!

Here are Virginie and her beautiful children! She was one of the biggest blessings God sent me in Guatemala!! It is amazing how we met! I found her online about 3 weeks before we got down there. I was on a forum of Guatemala Adoptive Parents and once we decided I was going down I spent a lot of time on that forum asking question of people who had gone down to foster or who were down there already. We both found each other...and it turned out that we were arriving the same day, staying the first night in Guatemala City at the same hotel, and then leaving for Antigua at the same time only to be going to the same little inn to stay for a few weeks. (She had actually planned to stay there the whole time...and I had planned a little over a week while I looked for a new place to stay) So the more we emailed back and forth before we got there, the more we seemed to have in common! It turned out we got along great and it was so nice to start off with a friend. Later...after I found a place (which is a long story in it's own...and where the wonderful blessing of Katie comes in) They actually had another opening shortly after I moved in and Virginie liked it sooo much she moved in! We did a lot of exploring together and here we are trying another restaurant together. Her son' s name is Cesar and he is 2.5 in this picture and her daughter Rosa is 8-9?months.

Approaching our house after being out and about...you can see the gated fence in the distance. We live behind the fence.

Here we are in the central park...I don't know why I don't have any pictures of Central Park!! If any of my friends do and don't mind sharing...I would love them!

Here we are getting ready for a Mother's Day Brunch- Sharon was hosting(who I was helping)!

I know these are not all the moms that were there on Mother's Day...but Melissa(below with daughter Maddy) when around and took pictures of the moms with their children on Mother's Day.

And lastly...here are some pictures of the Hotel Antigua Pool area that we would go to every once in a while to swim (it cost money ...so we didn't go all the time).

And here are the scooter's I drooled over all the time as I walked by! Never was brave enough to rent one and try it...cobble stone from the 1700s not the smoothest ride.