Day 5: Enjoying our rental house

Today was another laid back, lazy day. Rose thankfully woke up feeling much better and no one else appears to have caught her bug. Fingers crossed that for the remainder of our trip everyone stays healthy.

We spent the entire day at our rental house with no plans and no rush. We are taking advantage of these low key days. This first week in Colombia is called the Integration period. It's a week spent getting to know your child and your child getting to know you before you proceed to court. At the end of Integration, we will have another meeting with ICBF (The Colombian Child Welfare) before we can leave Villa de Leyva. That meeting is scheduled for February 21st - in just 3 more days! We are looking forward to the next step, but thoroughly enjoying our time here. It is beautiful and the weather is a perfect mid to high 70s.

Our rental house is called "La Lorenza". It's a farm comprising of several buildings. Some are rented out like the one we are staying at, while others are where the farms employees are housed. There are several dogs and cats roaming freely throughout the farm. Rose and Kate, our huge dog lovers, are most definitely in 7th Heaven. Even Cole has gotten a kick out of playing fetch with the dogs. I, on the other hand, am not impressed by their constant barking throughout the night and keeping me awake much too late.

In the afternoon, we ventured on down to the hot tub again for a soak. It was quite a warm day so Rose braved taking a dip in the unheated pool.

Other than the occasional ruckus from the dogs, it is quite tranquil here.

We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the deck and playing in the house. 

One of Samuel's favorite things to do is tear up and crinkle paper. We also discovered that he can bear some weight to stand and knows how to take steps!! It was so very exciting to see. I had tried to get him pushing through his legs to no avail. But turns out he just needed the proper motivation - Shane! He saw Shane walk by when we were attempting sit-to-stands and up he went! His feet are quite out of alignment when upright, but I am hopeful with therapy and bracing, that will change.

Tonight we had the house manager cook for us. It felt a bit strange to be waited on, but this is very typical in Colombia so when offered, I couldn't say no as I didn't want to offend. Natalia went to the grocery store and bought everything she needed to whip up a huge batch of Ajiaco (a Colombian chicken and potato stew). When asked what time we wanted to eat I had said 6:00, but I guess it was "Colombian 6:00" as we didn't sit down to eat until 7:00 pm so it was a bit of a late night for the kids. But it was divine! The whole meal including groceries and prep plus clean up cost $140,000 Colombian pesos. That's just $36 USD! 

Tomorrow we are taking an excursion to an ostrich farm. It'll be fun to get out of the house and see a local attraction. I just hope it's stroller friendly.