2nd Annual Guatemala Picnic

We attended a picnic over the weekend hosted by a family I was introduced to on Facebook. Last year we went as well and I have to say it was somewhat awkward to show up at a party given by people we had never met. It was far less awkward this year and we knew far more families in attendance. We were all too busy to do a headcount but my estimate is about 15 children (ages 3-5) from Guatemala and their parents. The plan was to just stay for a short time but Marcus and Will were having so much fun playing tag and running "with the boys" (they did play with plenty of girls too but only seemed to talk about the boys) and Greg and I were having a great time talking with old friends and meeting new ones that we stayed on long past the kids' (and my) bedtime.

Greg took lots of pictures which I am not going to post since I don't know how to track down all the parents to make sure it is okay with them. Just picture lots of super cute kids having a ton of fun.

I was listening to several parents share their adoption stories with each other and I realized how much of our stories' details I have just not thought about or even forgotten over the past few years. I went from finding myself curled up on the floor in the fetal position thinking that my kids would never find themselves into my arms to not even remembering exactly why I was so hopeless at the time. How many times did we get kicked out of PGN for each of our adoptions? Just not sure anymore yet when it happened it was the end of the world. Of course we can never get back those early months that we didn't get to spend with our children, but now it is far more easy to see the blessing of all the time we have had with our children.

Sadly there are still about 900 families stuck in the middle of government policies and broken promises waiting for their children to come home from Guatemala. I can't even begin to express (or imagine) the long list of details and setbacks in their processes that they still live every day.