Excess Baggage

Well, we hope that everyone had a merry Christmas this year, especially the ones who celebrated with all of our stuff. Yes, daddy came to town Saturday, his bag with all of the gifts and cash (don't ask) didn't arrive until Tuesday. Guess what?? The bag showed up basically empty! Thanks for leaving us the box of triscuits and 2 bags of goldfish airport people!! I mean seriously, is this a bad Lifetime Christmas movie? OK, we have this family who is trying to adopt a child from Guatemala, we'll have them go through hell, have the wife live there for over a year, and finally when things look good, lets ruin their Christmas by having all of their gifts stolen by drunk airport dudes. I see Bette Midler as Jen and Robbie Benson as me. Can't wait to see it.

Well, we managed to have Christmas anyway. Jen and I played the game, guess how long Max's new Guatemalan bike lasts before it breaks. Jen won with her guess of 1 minute 23 seconds. She was only off by 7 seconds!!! Fortunately, Max got a few gifts since one of my bags made it in tact. There is nothing like the joy of seeing your son discover presents under the Christmas tree Christmas morning. Seeing him over joyed with the opening of presents that lead him to new discoveries. Discoveries like when the lego does not connect the way you think they should they become flying projectiles of frustration. Apparently, sometimes he also feels that the metal Backyardigans lunch box looks better upside of my head. All being said, he had fun and Santa did good. Glad his sleigh didn't get robbed on the way through town.

At midnight on Christmas Eve all hell broke loose. I thought the revolution had started. Fireworks (aka, mix of fireworks and gunfire) were going off absolutely everywhere. I went outside and there was honestly not a direction I could turn where fireworks weren't going off. Apparently the wise men brought along m-80's with the frankincense and myrrh for baby Jesus. It made for a fun and interesting evening. Oh, and a night of Max staying in our bed. Looking forward to New Year's!

Truly hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We did. Oh, and do the pictures somehow remind you of the 70's Christmas Jen and I enjoyed when we were kids?? Soak it in, and enjoy the video. We will be home soon. Miss you all.

Mark, Jen and El Rey MAX

Happy Holidays!!!

Adios PGN!!!!!!!!!

Well after having to change lawyers, hire another lawyer to help advise us, change facilitators, lose all trust and respect with our agency, AND spend approximately 20 months in and out of PGN, we are so pleased to announce that we are officially OUT OF PGN and our little Max is officially a YODER!!!! We cannot even begin to tell you how elated we are with this news. Even though Max has been ours since the very beginning, we are so relieved to know that he is now legally our son and that we can move on with our life as a family!!!!

Moving forward, we have already begun the steps to get us home. At this point it is looking like we will have to celebrate the holidays here in sunny Guatemala and plan to come back to the U.S.A. sometime in January. Who knows, maybe we will go swimming on Christmas Day and get a little sun while sipping some Gallo's while Max savors a peach juice box in a chaise lounge chair. Considering Chicago winters are a serious business, Max may want us to immediately book a return flight to Guatemala the second he lands in the Windy City! I don't think he quite realizes that the weather will probably be his biggest adjustment (as well as mine!).

Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the caring support that has been provided to us over the past couple years. Words cannot really describe how we feel right now. All we know is that we feel truly blessed and grateful.

Will keep you posted on our continued progress...

Much love y besos,

Jen, Mark y Max Crisitian Alexander Yoder

Udderly Ridiculous

Not exactly mooooooving right along here. Still waiting for the Thanksgiving gift. Thanksgiving is over right? Just checking. I seem to recall eating Guatemalan turkey.

Well, while we wait for a sign from the heavens, some dear friends were nice enough to take us on a little journey to two villages and a dairy farm. Max learned how to disimpact a cow while everyone else drank milk from the source and watched them pee and poop. No fancy machinery here either. Just a lot of guys pulling and squirting into buckets...milking the cows. Going to the farm was great for us because we really wanted Max to know where his chocolate milk and hamburger helper came from. I think he has a strong appreciation for cows now.

Seeing other villages is always an eye opener also. Living in Antigua for the entire duration of our journey makes us forget at times how tough life is for the majority of people here in Guatemala. Seeing so many young children working so hard really makes us thankful that we can be with our little jefe Max. We hope for better lives for all.

Our journey was ended with a wonderful traditional pork meal that was wrapped and cooked in banana leaves. We sipped special Guatemalan hot chocolate after dinner, and all of this was courtesy of our friend Ana Maria. As a way of thanking her I cooked her a wonderful traditional American meal...MEATLOAF!!!! C'mon...it's a really good meatloaf. OK, so I probably owe them a little more, but those of you who have had it know. And what better meal after a trip to a dairy farm. Sorry to all of the cow friends we made.

I return to Chicago in the middle of the night Monday morning. Booooooooo. But hey, back I go to Antigua for Christmas and New Years........AGAIN!! Never saw this coming last year. At least my precious pale white skin will be done some good here during the holidays.

Wish us luck next week. We need it!!!

xoxoxoxoxoxoooooooo Mark, Jen, y El Rey de dos anos MAX

No New News....So Photos It Is

Happy Thanksgiving Birthday Cumpleanos!!

Buzz Lightyear, Nemo, Backyardigans, beer... you would think the party was for Daddy. El Rey, Max, turned 2 yesterday and there was nothing terrible about it. After turning down turkey, stuffing, green beans, and giblets on Thanksgiving, Max was all about cake, candy, pop, chocolate milk and presents on his birthday. It must have been the 2 extra days that he needed to mature and accept the difficult things in life. Max worked the crowd of 30+ by performing magic tricks, singing karaoke, and he did a wonderful monologue from Raging Bull that no guest is going to forget. It was a fun day for all and there will be plenty to talk about when dad isn't completely exhausted. Still waiting for one big gift. Should hopefully have something for you in a couple of days. Stay tuned!!

Oh, and Max spit on cake I have been told makes it taste better.

Sorry the rest of you couldn't be here. All are missed greatly. Sorry to hear about the snow back home.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoooooo Mark, Jen, and El Rey MAX

Speak Up!!

As I sit here enjoying pizza from a quaint little authentic Guatemalan place called Domino's, I am reminded how lucky we have been to be here for almost a year! Receiving news today that our file was resubmitted to the PGN made us melancholy as we realize that our time here could be coming to an end soon. We might actually be able to make it home by Christmas...........2013. Let's hope!!! Again, we won't try to make any predictions.

While Max still is not exactly talking up a storm, he is saying lots of new words. For balloon, he says "booooon". For ball, he says "boooooooo". For moon, he says "booooooon". And then, of course, there is still "deet" for everything else. See an apple, "deet". Step on daddy's head, "deet". Point to poo in the diaper, "deet". Good to see that vocabulary grow.

With weather in Chicago beginning to take a turn for the worse, and rainy season ending here I must admit I am excited to be here. It has not rained once in 2 weeks. Sunny and 70's every day! With that, I was excited because that means the end of mosquitoes...or so I thought. The ones that attack me in the house are gone, but now there is a new breed that comes out at night. Max loves to play outside at night. Bad news for daddy. Apparently they love my rum soaked veins because last night I counted 92 bites on my legs and ankles alone. Meanwhile, Jen gets a couple of bites while in bed one morning and she is convinced we have bed bugs. So now I get to spend a good majority of my time here ironing the bed. Uhhhhh. Oh, yeah, I haven't seen 1 bug yet...other than the carnivorous spiders.

Finally, big ups to Max for having the foresight to vote absentee during the election in true Chicago fashion. His vote, and votes just like them, helped put Obama over the top on Tuesday. He was even smart enough to get his friend Anna Lou and his birth mother to vote. He will have a solid career in politics when he grows up. They did shoot off fireworks here when the winner was announced, and I did hear a rooster crowing, so I think they were excited here in Guatemala. It was a little weird watching them celebrate in Chicago while we watched on a laptop here, but hey, at least we got to watch. God bless the Slingbox!!

As always, all are missed. Wish we were there.

Mark, Jen and El Rey MAX
xooooooooooooooooooooooooooooox

Who's Got File?

Daddy here. It's amazing to think that these days receiving our file so that we can correct yet another ridiculous error is good news, but it is. We got word on Friday that after about 7 weeks of trying to get our file our lawyer was finally able to retrieve it from the PGN. That's it. No more updates for now. No more predictions. Those haven't worked. Just trying to continue our efforts to get Max home ASAP. We'll keep you up to date though!

Friday was Halloween also and we weren't sure Max was going to get to celebrate, but Ana Maria who helps us with Max was sweet enough to bring over a costume for Max. He was a brown care bear. I'm glad she didn't bring pink or try to make him Rainbow Bright. She took him to a day care where all of the kids had costumes and they ate cookies and drank juice. While I'm sure the cookies weren't windmills, and the juice wasn't Hawaiian Punch, I am sure he loved it. He then got to search the house for "hidden" candy. Pretty tough to find on the couch, on the beds, on the coffee tables. It's like the search was designed for me. He also loved his costume. He got upset when we took it off, and we had to put it on again over the weekend. Next year we think he will be Scarface.

Here in Guatemala they don't really celebrate Halloween as much as they celebrate Day of the Dead. As far as we have been able to tell, this means that they all make kites and fly them in the cemetery. Two cities have big kite festivals, but unfortunately we weren't able to get to either of them. Instead we went to the Bodegona. This is the Guatemalan A & P. Pretty fun.

Hope everyone had a good Halloween and rotted their teeth out like a good kid would. Enjoy exciting video of Max eating bread!!

xxoo Mark, Jen, and Care Bear Max

More Skinny...

OK, so this week we did not get our file out of PGN yet again, but we have made a little progress. After having no luck in having our file released on Mon., Tues., or Wed., our lawyers and Mark and I decided that we needed to meet the Sub-Attorney General for the second time. So on Thursday that is what we did. Despite the fact that the Sub-Attorney General, could not release our file right then and there, we were told that she would release it on Tues. or Wed. (as Monday is another stupid holiday here). Also our attorney was able to review the previo at the meeting so that they could work on fixing the previo while we wait for the file to be released. The ultimate goal will be to have the previo fixed by the time the file is released from PGN so that it can be resubmitted immediately to hopefully receive approval within a few weeks of its resubmission. We REALLY hope this is the case - yet we remain cautiously optimistic as we basically have been screwed by each step of our Guatemalan adoption process (minus pre-referral, of course, when we had some control).

We will keep you posted on what occurs this coming week and thank everyone for their continued support - it is VERY, VERY appreciated.

XXOO Jen y Maxito

P.S. - Mark will be traveling back down this coming Sunday and will begin to stay down here more than ever before as it is getting harder for us all to be apart. Look out everybody, you may have another Guatemalteco on your hands! I'm sure by the end of this we will be a 100% Guatemalteco family and have to assimilate to life back in the states. But let's hope that by that time OBAMA will be running things or at least elected (oops, I actually got un poco political). Nigh, nigh.

Hmmm, I'm thinking I need to get home!!

OK, here's the skinny, we are delayed as usual. We have known for three weeks now that we have a previo (our file is being bumped from PGN AGAIN for a stupid error), and we have been unable to get our file so we can correct the error because things at the PGN are out of control. We have been told that the system has been down for quite some time, 2 files were approved where birth mother interviews were not done, and 1 file was found to have a forged sub attorney general signature. For this reason, they are now going back and looking at all existing files to make sure signatures are OK, and all birth mother interviews were done and done correctly. Now why they can't do this after we re-submit our file we cannot figure out. Just give us our file!!!

With that being said, Jen and Max are doing well considering. Daddy is visiting again and getting worn out by the little runt. Chasing Max into rooms and slamming doors never gets old for him. For me, that's another story. At least he's happy, so I'm glad to chase. I can stand to shed a few pounds too. Max still isn't saying much. Can anyone tell us if "deet" is a word? Point, "deet." Drink some juice, "deet." Pop dad in the face, "deet." Seems to be an all purpose word. Farting is now also becoming funny to Max so Papi is excited. There really isn't anything funnier than a fart. Of course, we're guys. We laugh, and Jen stares at us. Ever done the "pull my finger" gag? Yeah, Max likes that one.

Jen, by the way, is getting pretty good with her Spanish. She is becoming a true Guatemalteca. I think that she has surpassed my "donde esta el bano" Spanish. She actually orders food over the phone and asks questions in stores and never bothers me to do these things. I may be losing my purpose. Of course, only I come back from the store with Fud pizzas, so I'm good for something.

Big thanks to Steve and friends for the care package. We're shocked it made it here. It was greatly appreciated, and Max thinks the wax lips are awesome.

Hoping for better news Monday. Keep the good thoughts coming. They have to work at some point don't they?

Cubs suck.

Miss you all,

Mark, Jen, and El Jefe MAX

xoxoxoxoooox