The Steel Beam Phenomenon

We were very blessed to receive new pictures of JQ last week! A friend traveled to China to adopt her daughter, who happens to be from the same area as JQ, so they met and she sent me these pictures! Doesn’t he look so happy? She said he bounded down the steps to greet her and he was all smiles. Aw…our sweet and wonderful boy.

We are not without a certain amount of stress right now. There is so much going on and I’m doing my best to keep up, but I’m going to be honest here, this is a stressful time. I don’t really want to be edgy and irritable because I spend a lot of energy trying not to worry, but it’s happening.

As much as I want to go to China again and meet JQ and bring him home to join our family, I’m trying to stay cool about the timeline here. In the past, we have struggled with adoption timelines: they were always too slow and we experienced one snag after another that made the process drag out. This is not the case this time around; in fact, the opposite is true and this process is going very fast. Where I thought we might travel around Thanksgiving or early December, we may now be on our way in less than 8 weeks.

In less than 8 weeks, we will (Lord willing) get on a plane with our crew and make the journey to the other side of the world to meet our son. We are thrilled!

But this is where the stress part comes in: because it is so much faster this time around, we have less time to prepare, whether it’s our home, our finances, or our hearts. Sometimes, there is so much in front of us that it is overwhelming and it’s hard to know what to tackle first. We have been fundraising and I have been trying to work extra to pay for many of the expenses that go along with all of this, but again, it is hard.

I work from home. I’m a “stay at home mom” in that I don’t leave my house to do work. I teach my kids at home, too, but I have a business as a freelance writer that I have worked for several years to build. Some months, it is slow, and sometimes, it is extremely busy. For the past year and a half, I have been very busy with different contracts, sometimes working on several at once. It is nice because I like to work and to write and we have been able to pay off some things, like, you know, debt.

Since finding out that we are going to China sooner than later, I have been trying to work more to help offset some of the cost. I have prayed that the Lord would continue to provide for what we need to pay for this trip. And then, as I finished projects and turned in invoices, I reached a point that I have not been in for almost 2 years. I had no work to do.

I don’t mean I had nothing to do. I just mean that I had no income earning potential in front of me at all. Not one contract, not one word to write that was in any paying form. Every company that I work with had snags from their end that were delaying their processes, hence, they had nothing for me. It’s a shaky business sometimes. Being a freelancer means times of feast and times of famine. I just have been frustrated with the timing of the famine this time around.

Adding to the stress is Asher’s passport situation. I was half joking a few weeks ago when I made comments about calling the customer assistance line at the passport center for help. It is now a problem. We still do not have Asher’s passport and we cannot get a hold of anyone who can tell us what is going on. In this day and age, it seems weird that you shouldn’t be able to call, email, or otherwise message someone to get answers, but after several weeks, we are still in the same place. This morning, I FedEx’ed more paperwork to them, overnighting it to Virginia. We paid extra to have expedited service, which we were told they cannot guarantee anyway. We also contacted our Congressman’s office to ask if they will inquire for us as well.

It’s a problem. It’s stressful and it’s hard. We have reached the point that Russ and I refer to as The Steel Beam Phenomenon, which means that during a time of great stress, you cannot sit and focus on the problem(s), you have to just sit back and wait. There is nothing you can do. Last year, when we were building our house, we reached the point where we had a hole in the ground and a basement filled in. There were then plans for placement of a large, steel beam under the floor on the first level to act as support for the rest of the house. A good thing. But the county engineering department wouldn’t sign off on it, for whatever reason. They were in disagreement with the architect and the builder and despite calls, emails, changing plans, making modifications, more calls, and more emails, there was nothing we could do. The situation took a month to be resolved, in which there was no work done on the house at all. Our hole in the ground sat and waited while three different parties worked out the details about a steel beam.

But that’s how it goes. Three other parties (not us) worked it out. We tried (we really tried) and grew more and more frustrated with each day. There was no amount of work on our part that could change the situation at all. We just had to wait. It was painful to sit there and do nothing. It goes against the grain of life sometimes. But that is what had to happen. We couldn’t fix it and we had to rely on others to work it out and trust that it would eventually work out. And it did.


I will keep trying to reach someone about Asher’s passport but I don’t have access to their paperwork. I can’t force clients to contact me for more work. However, I can give up the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth that seems to happen under times of stress. Okay, I don’t really do that. How about giving up repeatedly checking emails? Wandering around heavily sighing in distress? I’ll think of some other things I’ll let go of as a response to stress and remember that this too, shall pass, and then one day, it will be a distant memory when we step off that plane and know that in a few short hours, our family will grow yet again and our son JQ will be with us.

Honduras 2015

I went to Honduras in June of this year. About two months ago. I haven't really mentioned it because...I don't really know why. It was an amazing experience. I learned a lot and saw things that I had never seen before, I met some amazing people, and we participated in a dental mission that met some of the needs of the people in various villages there.
So why have I not been talking about it? The answer: I don't know.
I really struggled when I was there. I mean, really struggled, so much that I cannot really define it. Back in December, I learned of a team from our church that was going to Honduras to work as part of a dental mission: several dentists and lay people from the church and community would be going as a team to visit various villages outside of San Pedro Sula in Honduras and work with some of the people to check their teeth, perform extractions, and do cleanings, as needed. Even though I do not have experience working with dental patients, I thought that there might be something I could still do as a nurse, so I emailed the trip coordinator and said that I was interested in going.

Fast forward six months. I boarded a plane with about 25 other people that I barely knew and traveled south to Honduras. I have never been to Central America before. I do not speak Spanish. It didn't matter. The people that I traveled with were, in a word, amazing. I met many wonderful people who were all there to help the people of Honduras, to meet a need for dental care. The dentists that traveled with us were so awesome...they had such compassion on the people there...and each had a very strange and interesting sense of humor, as I would find out.

The country is lovely. They grow coffee, bananas, and pineapple, among many other things. The people are hardworking and kind; they love their children and take pride in their work. I had many encounters with the local people who came when they heard that a dental team was coming to their area. In some cases, they waited all day to be seen. Sometimes, they didn't need dental care, but they learned that some medical people were in the area and would we check a blood sugar level or look at a recent finger injury? Sure.

It was humid. I had one episode of car (or rather, bus) sickness that involved some amount of vomiting on my part. But no parasites, no food poisoning, the power went out a few times and it was hard to sleep. Once, a toad crossed my path and I thought it was a small rabbit because of its size. We shared showers with frogs and scorpions and there were some incredibly large bugs.

This is as big as it looks, and it's real.

I also met people who had tremendous hearts for those who lived in Honduras. People who traveled back year after year to serve those who needed dental care. I have little to no experience with dental care, but I worked in post-op for those who had teeth pulled. They were tough. They walked away with gauze in their mouths and a free toothbrush and were fine, instead of needing iPads and games and toys and all of the other things that we in the U. S. sometimes seem to need when we have dental work done.

So why was it so hard? Maybe because it was such a different culture and a different time. Maybe because I missed my family terribly. I do believe that I was meant to go. And it meant something. And sometimes when things do not seem like they are the right time...they are actually God's correct timing, whether we realize it or not. Although I had a hard time there with almost everything that I encountered, it was still meant to be and I was supposed to be there.

Going to Honduras meant that we had good times, and we had bad times, and we had...times. It was worth being there and it made a difference. The people are amazing..both the people who live there and those who volunteered their time and energy to go and serve. And I'm quite sure that they would do it again, and I really admire that.

The Center of Home

It's hot. Well, it's July, so I can't complain that much; it's to be expected, but still, I sometimes wish for a 60-degree day thrown into this mix. I'm not a huge fan of humidity, tanning, beaches, and searing heat, which is probably why we went to Banff for our honeymoon instead of Mexico. When it's this hot, I do my time and then go inside.

This is pickle-making weather. What do you do when it is so hot outside that your kids run through the sprinkler every day and the air conditioner runs at a near-constant pace? You heat your kitchen even more by making pickles with fresh cucumbers from the garden. I don't make dill pickles. I don't really like them but when we need them for sandwiches or something, Vlasik from a jar works just fine. The pickles of our family are sweet pickles, much to the chagrin of some I know who have inadvertently bitten into one without realizing that it was not a dill pickle. I love to make these. They are tangy and they have bite; they make your eyes water a little from the vinegar and I could even drink the juice when the jar is empty. Okay, I don't do that part. 

I like canning things and we have a lot of pickles, but we also eat a lot of them. My kids have them almost every day with their lunches at home. I've seen Asher eat half a jar of bread-and-butter pickles in one sitting. We like them. It comes with the bounty of the garden, which is a blessing. We also pickle beets, which may sound even more gross to some than even sweet pickles. I have a strange set of children who live here. They like these kinds of things. When setting out a dish of pickled beets for dinner, I frequently hear, "Yes! Pickled beets again!" and that is not even being sarcastic! So, I really love making them. I think they look so good when they are all sealed and lined up on the shelves. 

This year, our garden is in sad shape. The ground that we tilled a few months ago to create a garden space has not been used for planting anything in over 10 years, so it is not well conditioned and doesn't have a lot of nutrients. It does have a lot of clay in the soil and is great at growing weeds. It is not so great at growing other things, such as peas or broccoli. Things are coming in, but it is slow. Most of my produce comes from my mom's wonderful garden and next year, I'm hoping to have more bounty from my own after a year of composting and using the soil to grow things again. 

Until then, we'll enjoy what we get. It's still fun and I love seeing these finished products of canned pickles, beets, salsa, spaghetti sauce, and tomato juice sitting on the shelves. I'm sure other people have different ideas of fun than I do. Maybe they'd rather be outside in the sun soaking up the heat! Give me my kitchen any day...I love being there cooking and canning in the center of home. 

A couple of weeks ago, we received an email from our adoption agency that they would be asking China for an update on JQ and did we have any questions we wanted to pass along?

Yes.

So, we asked a little more about his foster family and where he lives, if there is anything he doesn't like (so we could try to avoid that or at least know ahead of time) and if he knows he is being adopted. The agency said they would ask and then let us know, but keep in mind that it could take up to a month to get an answer.

A week later, they sent us an update on our sweet boy.

Current health is good. His development is normal. He can run and jump. His speech is normal and he can say some simple English words.

They call him Jia Qing. He is extroverted. He does not like when other children take his toys or things. He is excited about coming to the United States. He does not have any fears about coming to the US.

He has been in a foster family for three years. There are foster parents and three other children from the orphanage. He knows what adoption is. He knows he is being adopted. He and another younger boy share a room. He does not share a bed. He showers daily. He has a best friend. He brushes his teeth daily. In the school, he will help sweep the floors. When he is at home, he will help fold the quilts.

And, we received two new pictures:

They also sent his current measurements. He is the same height as Caleb and weighs two pounds more. Caleb, in response, has started eating more and told me that he needs to put on weight now since he is the oldest. In reality, Caleb and JQ are 10 months apart. They are both 8 years old right now, but Caleb will turn 9 in a few weeks. I have the feeling they will be mistaken for twins once they are together.

The boys are very excited about JQ. They will share a room with him they keep finding things that they want to show him or to take along to China when we go.

Speaking of China, we are going sooner than we thought. At least, that is, if everything keeps going at the same pace as it has. We are in stage 2 of immigration paperwork and may now be traveling in September! We shall see. We have really had only one snag so far, related to Asher's passport. It's more of a hiccup than a snag. We got the kids passports--Caleb's was renewed and Asher and Ellie's are new. Since they were all born in China, we had to send birth certificates and some Chinese documents for Ellie (it's a convoluted story) and then we waited. We received new passports for Caleb and Ellie, but not for Asher. Instead, we got a letter asking for more documentation about him and his citizenship.

Here's a tip: if you need to talk to someone--a person--about the status of your passport and what is needed to ensure that your 6-year-old son's passport is renewed in time for you to get a visa to take him to China, don't call the hotline provided. It gets you nowhere. Russ put his phone on speaker while he was on hold for 45 minutes. We all listened to the elevator music playing on the phone while we were sitting down to dinner. He was told there were 143 callers ahead of him. He finally got a hold of an answering service and left a message, in which they reminded him that they have 2 weeks to return his call.

So that was not productive. We mailed some more paperwork back and prayed for the best and now we are waiting and hoping that they will give us Asher's passport. This must be in time for us to apply for visas to go, which is soon. Unfortunately, Asher overheard us talking about it, so we tried to reassure him that it will work out and be fine. Still, the next night at dinner, he asked to say the prayer before the meal and it was something like,

"Dear God, thank you for this food. Thank you for JQ. Please let me get my report card [his term for his passport] on time so I can go to China, too. If not, I guess I'll stay home by myself. Amen."

Sigh. Please, no. So we talked about it some more and reassured some more. It will be fine. I wish he had not heard us in the first place, but it was hard to cover up the fact that his passport never came in the mail. So, we press on. We are going forward on faith that it will work out. This will not be the worst of our snags in this process, and this is all actually going so fast that sometimes, it makes my head spin. Six months ago, it was the middle of winter and our main focus was moving furniture and getting the house done. I never dreamed I'd be heading back to China before the end of the year. Well, that's how life works, and it keeps things interesting.

Hope and Homecoming

What a blur the past week has been. We are now (almost) mid-July and are enjoying the summer so much.
This past weekend, we celebrated Independence Day by going to a small-town, 4th of July, all-day event complete with a parade, amusement park rides, craft booths, food stands, and the like. It was beautiful weather and a very nice day to be out in the sunshine, celebrating our freedom.

I'm pretty sure the kids liked the parade the most. Has anyone noticed how parades have evolved into something of a candy fest...in other words, if the latest float isn't throwing candy to kids, there isn't a lot of interest. This kind of bugs me, since I think it should be more about recognizing those in the parade. Still, we enjoyed it and the kids were still in awe of many of the floats and specialties passing by. Caleb and I had this conversation:

           Me: "So, what was your favorite part of the parade?"
           Caleb: "I liked the veterinarians that were marching by."
           Me: [silence....crickets..] "Huh?"
           Caleb: "You know, the guys with the Army uniforms that marched                with flags and we stood up and clapped for them?"
           Me: "Ah. I liked them, too. For future reference, they are known as              veterans."

Sweet kid. :)

On a different note and a JQ update, this adoption is going fast. Faster than our last three. Fast. It doesn't seem so fast when one looks at the months it takes to complete, but when I think about how we accepted his file at the end of March and how we will probably travel this fall...that is fast. It's okay. We're good with that.

We have already received the copy of his Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and are awaiting the hard copy of the form to come in the mail for us to sign. If anyone still reads this blog from years ago, the LOA is a pretty big deal. Once you turn in all the paperwork, you wait for the LOA to come, which means that you will be traveling in a few more weeks. For Caleb and Asher's adoptions, it took about 2 1/2 months from the time we sent our paperwork to get the LOA. I think with Ellie's process, it was close to 2 months of a wait. This process: 5 days.

So things are going fast. They are faster this time because we had some paperwork done that had actually been sitting in China for the past four years...which is a long story that I won't get into. Suffice it to say that this time around, we have to be on our toes and be prepared. So we continue to prepare.

A little over a week ago, I sent JQ a package. We have done this with all of the kids...we want to send a few nice things to have during the rest of the wait and also a photo album so he knows who we are. Our agency has Chinese translation that we can add to the pictures to identify "older brother, younger sister," etc. There isn't much of a way of knowing if he receives the package or not, although with all three of our other adoptions, the kids showed up on the day of the adoption carrying the photo album and at least the stuffed animal that we sent.

I was thinking about past packages we have sent off into the realm of the postal service to hopefully reach our waiting child. Here are a couple of things that I sent Caleb, now nearly eight years ago:

He still has the stuffed puppy. He showed up on his adoption day with it and it remains in his room, along with a multitude of other stuffed animals. However, the puppy has changed a bit over time.

He lost an ear and part of his nose, not from too much love from Caleb, but rather from the work of this unruly beast:

Well, these are what memories are made of. The stuffed puppy is loved by more than one member of the family. I'm hoping JQ will get his package and will enjoy what we have sent, but more than that, I hope he is finding out that we are here and we are his family; that he is treasured, he is wanted, and he is loved.

It's Been Awhile

Okay, seriously, no judgement here. I know it has been 3 1/2 years since I wrote a word on this blog. We basically adopted Ellie, came home from China, I wrote a blog or two about it, turned off the computer, and didn't return to the site again. Life just gets in the way, sometimes. Actually, it gets in the way a lot, as I'm sure most anyone reading this knows. It is hard to keep up with a blog and I admire anyone who is faithful with theirs.

So, a lot has happened in the last 3 to 4 years around our house. Here is a short recap of our life in abbreviated form:

• We adopted Ellie and became a family of 5.
• I started working in surgical recovery at the hospital and the kids went to school/daycare.
• I changed jobs to work as a school nurse at a Head Start program.
• Russ changed jobs and started working at his current position with the State.
• I quit my job outside the home to stay home with our three lovies and work at what I love: writing.
• My beloved Dad died of leukemia.
• We started homeschooling. 
• We sold our house.
• I went back to China to work with Love Without Boundaries' cleft team, caring for kids undergoing surgical repair of cleft lip or palate.
• We moved into an apartment after selling the house. (Yikes!)
• We started building our new house on the land left for me by Dad.
• Our house was finished and we moved in!

That's a recap of some of the major events we have been involved in lately, although there is so much more...too much to write in one blog post, certainly. We moved into our house in the country on January 31st of this year. The next day there was a blizzard. Since then, we have managed snowstorms, hail, flooding, and a small tornado. Alternatively, we gaze every morning at a beautiful expanse of land, wildflowers growing, trees swaying in the wind, and space to run. We have room for a garden, we planted trees, and we are growing grass. I walk up the driveway to the mailbox and we live on a gravel road. We have country sunshine and beauty all around us and we love it. I can't say that enough.

So, we have been happily living in our house and adjusting when one day we happened along a post from our adoption agency that we used when we adopted Ellie. China requires 5 years of post-placement visits after adoption, so we have stayed in contact with them. Russ and I had been thinking somewhere in the back of our minds that we might adopt one more child, someday, but as time has gone on, it never really materialized, for several reasons. 

1. All of our children were toddlers when we adopted them and we weren't sure that we wanted to go through the diapers, tantrums/screaming, complete lack of rational communication thing again. Really, once you're out of it, it's nice to be out of that stage and we didn't really want to go back.
2. While it may seem like we go to China a lot (okay, maybe more than the average person), it really is a big deal to go. It is not just jetting off to Asia once every couple of years because we have the time and money to do so. It's a big deal. Adopting another child is a very big deal.
3. We were tired. Maybe too tired to consider it anymore. 

Because of these reasons, we were mostly content to just be. Until one day, while going through some post-placement stuff for our agency, we learned of a little boy who was waiting for a family. We were a bit thrown by his age: he was seven years old and turning eight soon. We had really never considered adopting an older child. I'm sure it has its own joys and its own issues as well, but we just hadn't thought about it and we weren't sure that we wanted to think about it. 

But, the whole thing persisted. The topic kept coming back to greet us and we couldn't turn away from it. Could we adopt an older child? Would we be right as a family for this child? Was it even possible? Finally, we asked our agency for more information about him and they sent us a file about him to review. When I first opened his file to look at his pictures, I was greeted with this handsomeness:

And....that was pretty much it for me. This sweet boy grabbed my heart. I couldn't believe that he had not been adopted and that he was still waiting for a family. The more we read and learned about him, the more we knew that he was to be our child.

His name is Jia Qing (JQ) and he had a birthday about 10 days ago; he just turned eight. He was actually hosted by a family in the U.S. this past winter and we had the amazing opportunity to speak with them about him and his time here. They had wonderful things to say about him and sent us many more pictures and videos, which was such a blessing. In truth, with our other adoptions we received about 3 grainy pictures of the kids bundled up in five layers of clothes or sitting propped in a basket or a chair. Through the videos and photos of JQ, we were able to see so much more of his personality, which just shines through. He is awesome.

It didn't take much more convincing. We said yes.

We contacted our agency and submitted a Letter of Intent, which is a letter saying that we want to adopt him and why, as well as how we will care for him. We received a soft "lock" on his file, which meant that we were matched with him but couldn't really announce it or say anything for a while until it was made official through China. We had to redo parts of our homestudy, meet with a social worker again, and file immigration papers again.

We are currently waiting on our immigration paperwork. We have an appointment to be fingerprinted with the Department of Homeland Security, which sounds intimidating, but we've had to do it three other times before. After our fingerprints are processed, we will receive approval and then we can move into the next stages of processing.

That is it in a nutshell. I know it doesn't do anyone justice to provide a short re-cap of life over the course of a few years, as well as a very important process that we are taking on again. If only I had been updating this blog for the past three years! Oh well. For now, I will continue to add updates here as we go through this process. And let me say...we are over-the-moon excited! Our lives are so blessed and full to begin with and now we are adding another precious child to our family. Our cups are overflowing! 

China...Part Two

We felt extremely fortunate on this particular trip to China. Not just because we stayed safe, had a nice time, were given the means to go,or that we were traveling with a lot of good people, although those are all good reasons for appreciating this trip. Additionally, we felt fortunate because Ellie has been doing so so so well...we were just so happy to see her smiles, hear her little laugh,and watch her interact with us and others.

After we met Ellie in Zhengzhou, we stayed there for several more days before we made a flight to Guangzhou. I, for one, was happy to leave and move on to the next city, mostly for air pollution and weather purposes. And, when walking down the street, we literally had to dodge scooters and bikes right and left, as they are everywhere: in the streets, pedestrian walks, sidewalks, etc. We took a flight to Guangzhou, the second leg of our journey, where we would stay for the remainder of the trip. Most people who adopt from China have to go to Guangzhou for the American consulate portion of the process, even if the baby is from somewhere else in the country, as was the case with us this time. So, our flight to Guangzhou was about two hours, and I sort of used this time as a small test to see how Ellie would do on an airplane (in part because, in the back of my mind, that long flight home was always looming), and she did OK. We arrived in Guangzhou late, met our guide, and were taken to the hotel, which was wonderful.

The next morning, we had to take Ellie for a brief medical exam as part of the immigration process. I was so thankful that this time, we did not need to repeat her immunizations before she could come to the U.S., which we had to do with Asher. The policy has changed back to the former method, where we instead just have to promise that we will immunize her. She otherwise had a basic medical exam, height and weight, and saw an ENT, who performed some basic hearing tests. I was curious as to his response, even though the whole thing was not terribly scientific. After his assessment, he turned to me and in broken English said, "she hear...a little," which was actually the same report we had gotten from her orphanage director when Russ visited. We had noticed this as well, that if we speak in a loud voice, she will turn and look, responding to her Chinese name. She also seems to notice when babies around her cry.

After the exam, she was declared healthy and we left to walk around for a bit. We were not staying in the same part of Guangzhou that we had been for our previous trips--Shamian Island. The main hotel there that many adoptive families use is currently closed for renovation, so we stayed off the island, even though we came back to visit and shop there. I still love the architecture and the feel of the place, which is different from the rest of the city.

A couple of days later, our group took at trip to the Guangzhou zoo, which was a great success. It was quite large, but there was a lot to see and Ellie seemed to pick up on a lot of it, pointing out many of the animals. Because it was just after New Year's day, there were a lot of people out who would normally be at work. We were also slightly harassed by a couple of park workers who followed our group with little bullhorns, shouting "do not feed the animals!" as if we were secretly trying to sneak them food. It was funny, at first...otherwise, it was a really nice day, the weather was great, and of course we saw a couple of pandas in the process.

We were starting to get to the point where we wanted to go home. Our hotel was lovely, we were doing fine, but I was missing my boys and really, living out of a suitcase does get old after a while. Still, we did get to spend time doing different things--some of it was similar to our last trip, while some of it was new. We went to the pearl market, walked around a huge pedestrian mall loaded with people, tried roasted chestnuts from a vendor on the street (delicious!) and ate at some different restaurants. My sister had emailed me early in the trip, updating me about how things were going at home. She closed by saying:

"Take care! And eat some weird food!"

This is my sister we're talking about, the true foodie, who tried all manner of organisms when she visited China with us two years ago. Without her, I was less brave for eating weird things, or maybe it was that I was getting homesick, which is probably why we also ordered pizza more than necessary. We did eat some delicious food on this trip. Of course, there were also times when I couldn't identify some of the food, as well (or, I could identify it but was not going anywhere near it. For instance, chicken feet found on the buffet).

A couple of days before leaving, we had our consulate appointment, which is when we finish up the paperwork for Ellie's visa to enter the U.S., thereby making her a citizen upon arrival. There's also this whole swearing-in ceremony that makes me tear up, every time. We were not allowed to take cameras into the seating area, and they even confiscated our GloWorm at the door, so we didn't get a lot of pictures of this time, important as it was.

I'm sure that I'm leaving so much out, although there is not nearly enough room to write it down (well, I could, but who would read it all?) By the time we were ready to head home, we packed our things, checked out of the hotel, and went to the train station, stopping to pick up the visa on the way. We took a train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, staying at the same hotel as when we first arrived on the trip. It was so strange to check in there for the night, a mere two weeks after our first stay, yet so much had changed!

The next day, we got up and went to the airport to fly out of Hong Kong, directly to Chicago, which took about 13 1/2 hours. Ellie did very well, but slept very little. We had several people sitting or standing around us who were interested in her and who asked us a lot of questions. I will also say this: I really do like the people of China--they are who they are without apology. What we sometimes consider rude, they are not even bothered by, yet so many people also seem curious and interested in westerners and they are not afraid to show it. As an example, we had some extra seats on the flight, so I moved at one point to give Russ more room to try and give Ellie a chance to sleep (which was unsuccessful, as it turned out). I brought my laptop over to a new seat and looked at pictures from our trip and of our boys, while the guy next to me leaned over and looked at every one with me, as if I had approached him and said, "hey, do you want to look at some of my pictures?" which, I did not, but that's all right. Others, also, came to us and asked a multitude of questions about Ellie and us, every time we stood up or walked around out of our seats, which was kind of nice, until the end when we all just wanted to land and be done with the whole thing. At least we can say that it wasn't boring.

We are so glad to be home. Actually, as I write this, it has been a week! The time has flown. The boys came with my parents to meet us at the airport and ran down the walkway to meet us. Asher, in particular, looked as if he was a foot taller--they both seemed so big compared to Ellie. All three have had their moments of adjustment this past week, obviously so, but we continue to be amazed at how well everyone is doing. Ash is back in preschool, Caleb is back to speech therapy, and Owen came home a few days after we did. Actually, Ellie hates Owen and seems really afraid of him, but that is for another post entirely....

It's good to be home, our family all together at last.

China...Part One

We're home. And things are going well, actually. If we could get over this jet lag it would probably just feel so normal around here already. Ellie moved right on into our home without looking back. This girl just fits in here like a glove. It's amazing!

As you can probably get from this late post, I was unable to write anything from China. I even thought that I had it figured out before we left, since we had problems when we traveled in 2010, but I was still wrong. It was so frustrating to get there and realize that I was stuck and would just have to wait.

We had a great trip, although it was hard to say good-bye to the boys. For their part, they did very well and through Skype, we were able to stay in contact with them the entire time. Plus, my sister sent several pictures of Christmas so we could see them opening presents and having a good time, which did my heart well. It was weird to be in China on Christmas. Although there were many pictures of Santa (actually, the same picture of Santa posted everywhere), the day felt commercial-only. Many people told us "Merry Christmas!" but I actually think they sort of thought that was what we wanted to hear, seeing that we were westerners. Still, it was an unforgettable Christmas, to be sure.

Russ and I flew to Hong Kong, spent one night, then flew to Beijing on Christmas Eve. It was an interesting experience to be out on a pedestrian mall on Christmas Eve in Beijing, which was so full of people that we were often shoulder-to-shoulder at times in the party atmosphere.

There was also some sort of holiday show going on in the lobby of our hotel, but overall, it was a quiet evening. The next morning, on Christmas Day, we got up to meet the rest of our group and to make another flight. We had opted out of touring Beijing this time, having done it twice before--not that it isn't a great city or anything. Since everyone else in our group had gone through the tour, they had already had a chance to spend a couple of days together before we arrived. We met everyone for the first time and let me just say, what a fantastic travel group we had! Seriously, we met some of the most wonderful families on this trip. We met those of various backgrounds: some having adopted before while for others, this was a first trip to China. Some families were brave enough to bring their children along while others, like us, had made the choice to let them stay behind. There is something about traveling with other families through this important time that seals a bond--not just anyone can say they have traveled halfway around the world together to meet their children at the same time. We were truly blessed by this group.

We flew to Zhengzhou--a city on the smaller side, we'd been told, of roughly 8 million people. You know, small. This place was the capitol of the province of where Ellie has been living since birth and like our previous adoptions, the babies were brought from various parts of the province to the capitol city to meet their new parents. We stayed at a lovely hotel, although I must admit, I had a difficult time here because of the air pollution. The country is not known for its clean air, that's for sure, and I thought I had encountered such pollution and tolerated it well before. But this time...it was just, bad. Taking a walk gave me a headache after a while and there was a perpetual "fog" outside that lasted throughout the day. I had worse problems here than when I went to Lanzhou four years ago, and that city is classified as one of the most polluted cities in the world.

Otherwise, the place was so remarkable and busy and this is where we met Ellie for the first time. The day after Christmas, we drove to the city's registration office where we waited for the babies to arrive.

Ellie was coming from Nanyang and traveling with three other kids as well. They brought her in and she was wearing a big, puffy coat that was new for her and she was just so...quiet. She just sat there and looked at us, back and forth, for the longest time, like she didn't know what to think at all. She didn't cry, she just appeared a little stunned. We had to stay in this room for quite a while, signing papers, and we had a chance to play with her. She started opening up after a few minutes, got down on the floor to play for a bit, and even smiled a few times when we gave her crackers.

We then took her back to the hotel and she stayed with us ever since. After the first night, we went back to the registration office and then the notary tomake the adoption official. The first few days are kind of a blur, and were spent adjusting to this new little person and going to appointments.

Russ had an opportunity to go with several other families to visit Ellie's orphanage in Nanyang, a trip that was about four hours one way. Although Ellie didn't actually live there much of the time, it was the place where she was originally placed before entering foster care. Additionally, most of the babies often return to the orphanages for regular visits and medical checks, so they knew who she was. The families that visited were allowed to see some of the rooms that housed other babies, waiting for families or those receiving medical care while there.

Ellie had lived in foster care for roughly 16 months, from what we can tell. I believe she was about three months old when she entered her foster home, and she lived with the same family the entire time, which is wonderful and also sad. Wonderful because this gives her roots as to the concept of family, sad because they really seemed to care for her and although it was a temporary situation, it was hard to break them up. We also found out during this trip that she had a foster brother who is the same age and was adopted at the same time by one of the families traveling with us. Because we spent time with the families, the two kids still got to see each other, even though they had both left the foster home. It was obvious that they were used to spending time together, and they played and chattered away together like brother and sister. Fortunately, the other family lives only about three hours from us, so hopefully, we will see them again so that Ellie can continue to have that friendship with someone she obviously bonded with at such an early age. In the meantime, it has also prepared her for her own brothers, who she met upon arrival home....

I'm going to stop here because there is still so much to say. I'll include it in the next post and add pictures to Facebook but suffice it to say that...so far, so good!