Six months, part 1

Six months ago today - on October 6th - Paul and I woke up very early to drive an hour to the airport to catch a very early flight to Atlanta and then on to Guatemala. We had no problems on the flights and had a wonderful time realizing that after sitting in the same terminal 3 times in Atlanta waiting to go visit Rudy that the next time we sat there waiting for a flight to Guatemala we would be traveling with Rudy - on a visit trip to his country in the future. We arrived on time in Guatemala only to discover that not 2 of our pieces of luggage didn't make it. There had been a mix up and our luggage tags were put on someone else's luggage, so his luggage was in Guatemala without him and ours was still in Atlanta without us. The airline assured us it should be on the flight the next day so off we went to the hotel. Of course, the bags missing were all of Rudy's clothes, diapers, toys, snacks, etc. and his car seat for the plane ride home.

We made it to the hotel with time to spare before Rudy was to arrive. Now we had to decide what to do since we didn't have anything for him. We knew we could buy some necessities at the hotel for that night and then go shopping the next day if needed. Rudy finally arrived and we discovered that his foster mother had sent him with only two outfits, a few diapers, and 1 bottle. One of the outfits was the one he came in seen here.

Not very easy to wear around. The other down side was the shoes - they were nice dress shoes but very clunky and Rudy had a hard time walking in them. So we bought diapers and wipes in the hotel store and went to dinner.

The next morning Paul walked to the local mall to get shoes for Rudy - not an easy task when you don't know spanish, don't know his shoe size, and don't want to take him out of the hotel. Fortunately our cell phones worked in Guatemala and Paul was able to call me and try to guestimate his shoe size - we were successful enough for Rudy to have shoes for the duration of the trip that he could walk in. And Paul took the hotel shuttle to the airport the following day to pick up our luggage - which arrived as scheduled.