So, fun story.  Peru is immigration-challenged.  Okay, they're challenged in a lot of areas, but for this story, we only care about immigrations :)  Anyway, so you can stay up to like 183 days on a tourist visa, but they typically only issue them for 90 days.  However, there is no way to extend said visa while still in-country.  Now, Matt's working visa/business visa/whatever it is was finally in-process, but he didn't have his carnet yet.  However, we can't do mine or Henlie's visas until his is all done.  This meant, as of February 3rd, my visa and Henlie's visa were up.

We then had to decide how we were going to handle it.  Were we just going to border hop somewhere here?  Were we going to take our once-per-year company-paid trip home?  Would we overstay and just have a fee when we left the country (USD $1 per day you overstay)?  While I know I want to go home, if we went that route, would we all go? Would just Henlie and I go? Would we stay and have the baby in the US? Would we go and then pay for a second trip after the baby came?

Money-wise, if we went home, just me and Henlie made the most sense.  It made even more sense to stay until the baby was born.  Matt could then use his paid trip home around baby time and we could all fly back together.  Not going to lie, the thought of entering the country again without Matt is a bit daunting, and I didn't really want to do it.  However, if we went with a prolonged stay, we would have a lot of luggage, and it would probably just be me and Henlie, which was also unappealing.  We had a hard enough time with our luggage and the two of us when we moved to Peru!  So, we looked into border hopping down here and taking a little vacation.

At first, we looked at taking a domestic flight and driving across the border.  Then we had to decide which border?  Ecuador or Chile?  I originally leaned toward Ecuador.  We also looked at flying directly into another country, but that made flights much more expensive.  Then, Matt's company offered to pay for the trip since we had to take it anyway.  If we'd booked when we were looking, we totally could have flown to Santiago.  However, the next week, the prices like tripled and took that out of the picture.  So we went with the original plan, taking a domestic flight and driving across the border.

There are only 3 flights offered by LAN from Lima to Tacna, Peru daily.  Really early, noon-ish, and evening.  Guess which flight fills first?  Yep, noon-ish.  So, we opted for the 5:05am flight.  Matt couldn't get ahold of his usual taxi guy, Andres, so I called a lady in our ward who offers driving and translation services, Graciela.  Graciela was in the Relief Society presidency when we moved in.  (She may still be, but hey, I'm in primary now, so I don't know those things.)  My friend Abby also used her the day we went shopping for supplies at Sodimac.  When she gave me her card after that trip I thought to myself, "I'm never going to use this."  Surprise, surprise!  I'm so glad she did!  She was available and willing to pick us up and take us to the airport.  Bonus - her fee from San Isidro to the airport was only S/.45.  Andres would have been S/.50

We arranged for Graciela to pick us up at 2:30am because LAN thinks you should be at the airport 2 hours early.  I don't know why. :p  So we got up around 2am and finished packing, and then got the baby up.  I was surprised she actually woke up.  I thought we'd basically change her diaper, put shoes on, and carry her limp body.  Not so!  Actually, that made it rather easier :)

We got to the airport and got checked in.  Then we headed to our gate to wait.  Henlie decided she wanted clothes, so I changed her out of her PJs.  We all had a banana muffin from Wong for breakfast.  I also bought a bottle of water and a bottle of juice at a little cafe because I was thirsty.  Matt gave me S/.20.  Bonus, there were Halls cough drops by the register.  Gosh dang it, I needed something to help with the coughing.  They were only S/.3, so I had enough after the drinks to buy them.  I hate Halls, but at least they helped :)

LAN is really good (okay, most airlines probably are) about letting disabled/elderly people board first.  Then they also give preferential treatment to those with kids.  So they got us all scanned in and waiting.  Unfortunately, we were a little delayed.  They said it would probably be 5:30am.  Really, they were only like 10 minutes late.  Fun story, though, while we were waiting with the rest of the traveling-with-kids crowd, we saw Elder Bart from our ward sit down at our gate.  Since they decided they weren't really ready to board, we were able to go say hi and chat for a second. :)

Then we were able to finally board.  Can I just say, I rather liked not having Henlie in a car seat.  Obviously when we fly to the states again, we'll use it, but it's just so big!  I think she prefers not sitting in it either :)  The flight to Tacna was about an hour and 45 minutes to two hours, so it wasn't too bad at all.  And hey, you get snacks!  And a drink.  Mmm chicha morada :)  I may be addicted to that drink.  It's usually what I get if we go out to eat :)  


The rest of the trip will follow in other posts :)

Before Matt left for work on Tuesday, I made him take a picture so I could prep our gender reveal announcement.  I made 7 different ones, but this is the one I liked best and have shared :)

After Matt came home from work, we headed to the chiropractor for a much needed adjustment.  Then, we came home and tried to call some people.  People who were supposed to be available whenever (*cough* Dad and Curtis *cough*).  We did finally get in touch with my Dad.  Unfortunately, Dad was on his phone, not a computer, so he didn't have access to the Google Hangouts chat while in a video call.  Nor does he have WhatsApp, so we screenshared and pulled up the announcement.  We could hear them, but not see them when they first found out.  But thanks to Google, I did get some screenshots of everyone :)




Next, we had to wait like an hour for Curtis because he was practicing away from his house.  But we did eventually get him home.  The nice part about doing it this way was we actually got to chat with everyone, which we don't do often. :)  Unfortunately, Jackie and Curtis also don't have WhatsApp, and apparently I needed to give them permission to view the file....which was titled Boy Announcement2..... ah well.



After those two, we had to wait many hours because the rest of the family apparently is busy.  Also, time difference.  However, we lucked out because Michelle's class was cancelled, so we got to call her a little earlier than we anticipated.  Now, she does have WhatsApp, but she was talking to us via her phone, so we still couldn't see her reaction. (If you look at something else on your phone, it shuts the camera off on Google Hangouts.)  We did get to hear her say "Yay!" though. haha



Then, it was time to call Devan.  Unfortunately, he wasn't quite ready and Mom swooped in with her call lol.  She told us, "Dad isn't home yet, but we can't wait!" lol  Fortunately, Mom was on her computer and has WhatsApp.  We were able to send the picture to her phone and watch her reaction.  We told her we needed to see McKade too, but he didn't hold still very well :)  However, we did hear him say, "Yes!"  He totally predicted it would be a boy...because it will be born outside of Utah.  So far, all of the children born in Utah have been girls, and the only boys were or will be born outside of Utah lol




After Mom, we had to hop over to Devan since there was like an hour that he and Kayla were both home.  Unfortunately, they had some technical difficulties, but they did finally get them worked out :)  Apparently we've never video chatted with them and Kayla needed to download something, plus their internet was a bit slow.  Eventually, it all worked out, though :)  Again, we sent a WhatsApp to accurately maintain surprise and see their reactions :)


Then it was off for another call to Jason and Camile, because Jason was also only home for like an hour between work and church stuff.  Another WhatsApp success story :)



And that was that.  I did let my aunt Caleen in on the secret via FB chat, but no video call for that :)  After that, we went ahead and posted it on the Facebook.  At the moment, the initial announcement photo has 138 likes.  I also made it my cover photo, and while some of those are duplicate likes, it has 48 likes.  I guess everyone is pretty excited to know what we're having.  After all, I did make them wait like a whole day to find out lol