Fun with our foster family in Guatemala

We have been very blessed to be able to come to Guatemala to spend time with Arabella's foster family. Bella and I arrived on Wed., July 24th, and will be going home on Thursday, July 2nd. I wanted to come before Bella was 2 so I would only have to buy her a lap ticket, which is about 10% plus taxes of the adult ticket price. She did pretty well on the plane. We did have to go into the tiny bathroom for a leaky diaper change. It was fun. I had to stand Bella up on the toilet seat and change her standing up - good thing it wasn't a poopy diaper! She only slept for about 45 minutes of the entire 4 hours we flew, but she played and wasn't very fussy at all.

She was shy for about 10 minutes when we met Karen and her family at the airport, but she remembered them right away. They invited us to stay with them and it has been a very special time. They bought a pool to put on the front patio for the kids to swim. Bella loves the water; we're having trouble keeping Bella out ot if. They swam 2 days so far. We went to the city and the kids had horseback rides in the park on another afternoon. Bella had a goat cart ride. Margie and Joshua rode with Bella in a little cart pulled by a goat. It was so cute! She made Mami Karen hold her hand and we sang all the way around the path.

We went to church, to lunch at Karen's parent's house, and to the mall yesterday. Bella calls Karen Momma and likes her to hold her. She is having so much fun with the children. I am thankful for this special time with the angels who took care of Bella from the time she was 15 days old until she was 91/2 months old (when I picked her up last summer). They are truly beautiful people and love Bella with all their hearts. Bella loves them all, too. They have a special bond.

Above are some of my favoite pictures from the past few days.

Way Overdue Updates and Pictures

This set of pics is from Easter. I told you this was way overdue! The last month and a half of school are crazy for me, so I got a little behind. Bella went to church in her lovely Easter dress and the lady in charge of the nursery let her have chocolate and she had it all over her dress when I went to pick her up afterwards. I was not a happy camper. She had a pink shrug sweater that she wore over her dress that was too chocolate covered to wear when we got to Grandma's. It took us 20 minutes and half a Tide stick to get the chocolate mostly out of her dress before we could take pictures. Then we couldn't go outside for picture with her dress in front of Grandma's flowers because it was too cold without her sweater. She changed into her play clothes for the egg hunt and she was so funny. She would find one egg at a time and would turn around and wait for everyone to clap for her. Then she would smile really big and want to open every egg to see what was inside. We had to keep encouraging her to keep finding the eggs first. She had a blast with the egg hunt and we had a lovely time with our family at Grandma's.