Gotcha Day...Revisited

If you remember our gotcha day blog, we were told we would be called one by one to get the babies. When we stepped off the elevator and turned the corner this is what we saw! All the babies were already out playing and waiting for us. One of my travel mates (Anne) had this photo of exactly that moment. The rest of us were caught off guard and we didn't have our cameras ready. Katie is in the back of the picture being held by one of the nannies. Libby G., who was adopted in our group is standing next to them and Anne's daughter Jillian is front and center! I'm so glad she had this photo!

Chillin With My Big Sis

Both my girls are sick, Taylor with an ear infection and Katie with a sinus infection so they have been hanging out together watching movies in Dad's chair.

Don't Worry Dad...

Jim took Taylor out for ice cream this afternoon and she had on this little spaghetti strap top and the strap had fallen off her shoulder - just like this picture. Jim told her she was "hanging out" a little too much and to pull up the strap to which she replied...
"Don't worry Dad, I don't even have any of "those" yet!" Too Funny!

Heeerrre Puppy Puppy...

Still Cute! And checking out Clover our Japanese Chin. They have played really well together so far...

I'm Cute and I Know It!!!

Battling The Time Change

Oh this nasty jet lag! We are trying to keep Katie up as long as we possibly can to help reset her internal clock but it is a rough go. I would post pics of what Jim and I look like but it would be too scary. Jim is having a hard time resetting his clock. I think I will be ok by tomorrow though. We've been walking around with toothpicks holding our eyes open!

Getting To Know You...

Showing me the ropes...

Cruising

Are You Sure About This Dad?
OK...Here I Go...

I Did It!!!!

We Just Flew In From Beijing And Boy Are Our Arms Tired...

And our backs, bottoms, and any other muscle you can think of! Thank God we made it home safe and sound. Katie had a "blow out" on each plane trip and we wound up throwing away 3 sleepers along the way. Something about the ascent must trigger her little bowels because she kicked in each trip as soon as the plane was in the air. You should have seen Jim and I both crammed into a tiny airplane bathroom with no diaper changing table trying to strip her down and clean her up with out messing up ourselves! I know...too much information.

We were just too darn tired today to take any pictures to post. We will be doing that tomorrow. She is an eating machine and just can't seem to get filled up. I personally think she is taking too much formula so we are going to be working on slimming that down in a few days. We have been battling to keep her awake as much as possible so she will sleep through the night and get adjusted to US time.

Check out the blog tomorrow and we will have some pics for you. Thank you so much for all your prayers and support. We couldn't have made this journey with out it.

Look Out Florida! Here We Come!!!!

Today is the last day for us in Guangzhou! We have our oath ceremony at the Consulate this afternoon at 2:30. Katie will be a dual citizen after the ceremony and then a US citizen once we land in Newark. We have an early wake up call (6 am) then we are off to the airport for a 3 hour flight to Beijing. We then catch our flight from Beijing to Newark which will be a 15 hour flight. After a 3 hour layover in Newark, NJ, we catch our flight to Orlando which will be another 2 and 1/2 hours. Needless to say we won't want to see another airplane again for a while!

My blog is just about out of space for photos so I probably won't post anymore until we get home. I hope everyone has enjoyed following our journey! China was amazing but we are ready to get home! Please be praying for us that we will have a safe and uneventful journey back!
Kim

White Swan View from the Pearl River

Waterfall at White Swan

Inside the lobby of the White Swan Hotel. The beautiful waterfall and Koi pond.

Getting Squished on the Couch

The Whole Crew

All of the babies from various provinces in our travel group.

Red Couch Photos

One photo before leaving and the rest at the White Swan on the red couch. The last two photos are of the Chongqing babies from Dianjiang in our group.

From left to right is:

Julia C., Evelyn H., Katie, Jillian H., Olivia, Libby, Jenna and Marlee.

Outfit

In a few hours we will be walking down to the White Swan Hotel for the famous red couch photo. It has become a tradition that all adopted children pose for photos on this couch in traditional Chinese dress. Here is the outfit we bought for her. In the picture it looks salmon color but it's actually pink. I will post the photos of her later today.

Sha Main Island - Guangzhou

Our hotel sits on the Pearl River on Sha Main Island. Here is a little history:

In the Western eyes, Sha Main is one of the more interesting places in Guang Zhou, originally an uninhabited sand bank, with two small bridges linked to the river banks. During the mid 1850, foreign merchants rebuilt and established a foreign enclave on the reclaimed area of Sha Main.
Nowadays, walking along the main boulevard, you still can see the worn out old colonial buildings, the restored French Catholic Church, sidewalk cafes, bars, boutiques etc. Polish, German and US Consulates are situated at the far west of the island. Be sure to make a detour to the riverside embankment, where you can slowly walk under the shade of huge banyan trees, watch the multitude of riverboats, or observe the people practicing Tai Chi.

We walked around today and basically it is a big oval with shops everywhere among the hotels. We took a walk this morning and watched some people fishing in the river and one fellow caught some type of snake or eel. He carefully took it off his hook and put it in his catch bag.

Pretty As A Picture...

We borrowed a bow from one of our travel mates to see how it would work. Lots of people here think she is a boy! It lasted about 2 minutes and she figured out she could pull on it so the bow went bye bye...

We just arrived in Guangzhou for the final step of our paperwork journey. We have a medical exam for Katie tomorrow and they take a photo for her Visa to enter the US. After that we have shopping and later a 2 hour river cruise on the Pearl River that our hotel sits on.

The Victory is very nice! The rooms are larger than I thought and we also expected rock hard beds but to our surprise they are very soft! We are not looking forward to our long plane ride home. Katie screamed for the first 20 minutes or so on her first plane ride so for the last one that will be about 20 hours should be very interesting...

It was sad to leave Chongqing when we thought about her leaving her birth place but what a wonderful life awaits her. One of the families traveling with us found out a couple of days ago that their baby was a twin. When the finding ads were delivered to us it was noticed after a hurried phone call to the orphange it was discovered that the twin had died shortly after arriving at the orphanage with her sister from Vascular Heart Disease. It was a shock for the family and very unexpected news. I would have thought they would have disclosed that in her medical reports.

Anyway, everything else is good! We are going to have pizza in our rooms and then a quick tour of the island we are on for the grocery stores and for shopping!