Our legal judgement for Sebastian is complete! In good time, and just before our trip to San Andres, I headed into the city to the law courts to see notice of our judgement had been posted. Many thanks to judge #15 for making it happen so quickly! Not that this wasn’t totally random anyway! Just the luck of the draw really that it went so quickly. This is great news and took us somewhat by surprise, but it means that Sebastian is now legally ours, and we can move through the final few steps of the process and plan our trip home.
Next on the list was a new birth certificate for Sebastian with the name we have given him; Sebastian Arthur Gwyn Harries, and then a Colombian passport for him so we can travel and he can get a Canadian visa to travel home. He sat nicely for his passport picture and we managed to get it one shot in under a minute! It took about 15 minutes, and numerous attempts for Charlotte when we did hers! The number and spelling of his names caused issues with almost every department we dealt with, the name convention used in Spanish speaking countries is quite different from elsewhere. For the benefit of the authorities here we also had to add Griffiths (Emma’s maiden name) to the mix, so you can imagine they were running out of space in the box on many of the forms! With the final paperwork complete, and a confirmation from the Colombian social services (ICBF) that everything is in order, all that remains is for us to visit the Canadian embassy, a short walk from where we are staying, to apply for Sebastian’s travel visa. This usually takes just 24 hours to complete, so by Tuesday of this week we will have everything we need to come home.
And so the time has finally come for us to bring the big man, and our beautiful little girl back home to Canada. Our flights are booked (big thank you to Alison for all the help), and we will be back in Montreal on Sunday, September 6th, labour day weekend. At just over 7 weeks that will be a week shorter than we anticipated, but all in all not a bad thing since we are running out of shopping malls and kiddie parks to visit! We have a few more fun things planned for our last week here, including a trip back to CRAN to say goodbye to our friends there. There is another family just arrived in the house so there will be some more young folk to help entertain Charlotte as the clock ticks down on our return.
Big P.S.
Many congratulations to both Myriam & Tim, and Shirley & Bill on their new arrivals, they both look gorgeous! Glad you are all happy & doing well.
E, G, C & Seb, Must have been sleeping! Your last post was 30th August and we've just read it - 3rd September, famously quoted "...the day war broke out" - so a little bit more of a news update for us to chew on. You must now be very ready to pack up and fly, it's been a long haul but that is behind you now.
ReplyDeleteJanet is already looking at dates/flight schedules? Daniel seems to have finally flown whilst you were in San Andres so its all a bit quiet 'over here' - but probably not for too long I'm sure. Schools in UK are more or less all back this week (cripes, this year is almost 70% gone already and not a sock darned yet).
We shall keep a sharp eye open now for your sign-off message.
Lol.
J & J