GOING HOME TOMORROW

After 189 days of seeing Emily's picture we will be taking her home!!! It has been a wonderful journey but it is time to go home and be a family of four. We miss our daughter Hannah ALOT!!! Words cannot describe how happy and blessed we are to have 2 beautiful and healthy children. I said it once but i will say it again-It is a marvelous world we live in. Pray for our safe return home and hope to see all of our family and friends real soon.

Pictures from Guanzhou, China

Yuintai Gardens-beautiful park. There were hundreds of roses and many different shaped trees that the chinese shape themselves.

Some of the rose bushes at the garden

Emily playing in the hotel room. This day her favorite toy was a set of "batteries" that we took out of the camera. Everytime we tried to take them away-she started crying.

This picture is a little blurry but how could we not resist putting it up here for all to see.

DADA & EMILY walking in the street in Guangzhou, China

All of our group has come back to us and it has been so nice to see them with their children. Emily was tired today. She slept 12 hours last night and at 11am she decided to lay down for a 3 hour nap!!! Then we went shopping. The shopping here is good. We are off on a shopping tour here tomorrow so we have not bought too much----yet!!! Emily continues to warm up to Kevin and his facial hair. She is giving him a 1/2 smile now when we sneaks a kiss to her. She is smiling now almost all the time. She is still very curious and doesn't miss anything. And still eating everything in sight. She is sucking on her first sucker now and really slurping it up. Hope to post some pictures later so keep posted.

UPDATE!!!!

The last 2 days have been amazing. Emily is now smiling ALOT and giving some wide mouthed kisses to her mama. She is still warming up to dada's mustache but they play together ALL the time. He has started rubbing his face against hers and she cries out but there are no tears. We think this is improvement. She is still walking like a drunken sailor (sorry Tad and Jesse) but her hand eye coordination is 200% better. She eats ALL the time, just like her big sissy, Hannah. Watch out Pete-this girl loves french toast!!! The other thing she really loves is to walk. She walks and walks until her little legs can go no further. Yesterday she actually fell asleep walking on in the park and we needed to carry her back to the hotel. She also has not napped. She goes and goes until she just drops-also sounds like her big sissy, Hannah. Last night she had an old fashioned temper tantrum as she just did not want to stop and go to bed. Once asleep she slept for 12.5 hours. Naps are hard to come by as she just does not want to miss anything. We went to a chinese noodle restaurant today and we were a little nervous as our guide, Helen ordered for us, but it was excellent!!! The only thing on the table that we did not like was the tea they served us as it was made from corn and Rusti thought it actually tasted like vegetable oil. But we really like the noodles with vegetables, BBQ eggplant, dumplings, fried cakes, and "beef" which reminded Rusti of the mongolian beef dish her and Hannah have at the local chinese restaurant. Rusti asked it there was any "American" Chinese restaurants where you could get chop suey and she just smiled and answered "Lucy's". Lucy's is one of the restaurants here that is like a 50's style restaurant (cheeseburgers and fries). Emily loves Lucy's as she has chicken congee and she eats the whole bowl of it (which is a lot for a baby). The rest of the group flies in tonight so we will have more people to socialize with and play in the play room with. Until tomorrow............

We have pictures!!!

Here are some of the many pictures we have taken so far. Emily is very little for her age as you can tell walking with her "baba". Her favorite thing right now is to play with the stacking cups and go for walks-everywhere. She started eating for us today. Scrambled eggs, french toast, watermelon, bananas, and congee. And for you adoption followers-we have had a successful poop!!! Our guide helped us out with some "special" chinese tea-and 45 minutes later-eureka!!! We think we are going to get more of this tea to bring home (just in case). We have found that when Emily rubs her hand in her hair she is tired. She really has not spoken anything except mama, baba, and bye bye, and this is hard to get from her. She is very serious and curious of everything. Today we applied for her passport. We have a free day tomorrow. We may go play in the "Swan Room" in the hotel that has alot of toys. We are still trying to bond with Emily. She has not given us a kiss or really relaxed in our arms yet. Sometimes when she cries, she looks as if her heart has been broken. This seems to be happening less though so we must be doing something good here. Will try to keep the updates coming.

WE HAVE EMILY!!!!!!

Sorry we did not post yesterday. It has been a whirlwind of events here. We received Emily right at the elevators to the Civil Affairs building. We were not to see her until later but we seemed to have showed up at the building at the same exact time. So we got to hold her up the elevator and then they took her so we could finish some paperwork. She is just as beautiful as her picture. We are having trouble with the computers at the White Swan so we can not load any pictures yet. At first Emily did not like Kevin and everytime she looked at him she would scream!!! We later found out it is because he has facial hair and she has never seen any. But he charmed up to her by bribing her with cheerios. Today she is is best friend. The adoption was final today!!!! We can not wait for Hannah to see her baby sissy and return home to be a family.

Delayed again!!!

We boarded the plane from Beijing to Guangzhou on time so we thought our "curse" was over-but then we didn't move and they announced a "technical problem" with he plane and we sat on the plane for an hour before we left the runway. We are here now though. We hope the rest of our group did not get delayed as some of them were to receive their children today. We wish them our love and hope their kids are healthy and can;t wait to see them on Friday in Guangzhou. We took a "tour" of where we will be staying for the next 11 days. There is many restaurants to here (American, Italian, German, Thai, and of course Chinese. There is also a deli attached to our hotel for ice cream which may come in handy as it is very hot here!!! There are 2 parks for the kids to roam as well. We receive Emily tomorrow at 2pm. All we were told to bring is some copies of our paperwork, a change of clothes for her, and some toys. So I guess we will update everyone tomorrow.