One year ago today

We signed the paper work one year ago today for the adoption of our 3rd Daughter.  Incidentally Ella turns 4 years old today.  What a year makes.  We took a little Chinese girl who didn’t speak a lick of English and brought her to America to be part of our family.  She now talks pretty good, she is potty trained, no more bed wetting, knows all the names and sounds of the alphabet and she loves her family that she is apart of.  She loves going to her little co-op class on Mondays and can’t wait to start her school work for the day.  Something tells me that this little girl is not quite done learning  yet, and won’t be for a very long time.

 

Signing the Paperwork for Ella VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Abiding our time while we wait, part II

By this time we have figured that anywhere you go in Beijing there you will find a LOT of people.  Forbidden City is a popular tourist place for foreigners as well the Chinese.  Joy, our guide, was pretty clever by touring the forbidden city and Tiananmen square backwards from everybody else.  Most people start at Tiananmen square and then onto Forbidden city.  Of course we had nothing to compare this too but she said the crowds were much better the way we did it.

		Tiananmen Square VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Abiding our time while we wait.

Much of the next couple days in China were staying busy touring around Beijing and walking markets and restaurants.  We were pretty groggy the next morning but it was fun getting to know the other eight couples in our group adopting in verious parts of china.

 

First was the Great Wall.  What a magnificent piece of architecture which is about 5,500 miles long and built in some pretty rugged country.  This was a dream for us since we both love to hike but the biggest struggle was not walking on the ups and downs of the massive stones but getting away from the people since the part of the wall we went to was a popular tourist site for even the Chinese.

 

Well we set a site on one of the buildings or lookout towers and started hiking weaving in and out of people passing people on the steep grades and watching others try to walk on the very uneven stone walk in high heels (amazing but true).  The more we walked the less people there were and we finally made out goal.  But one problem.  It took us about 40 minutes to get there and we needed to be back with the rest of our group in the parking lot  in a little under 40 minutes.  Well we hoofed it pretty fast a couples time I had to stop and rest because I was getting dizzy at times.  I think we were only a couple minutes late, the last to arrive, I felt like we have been eliminated from the race, oh well.

 

		The Wall VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

How Time Flies!!

Can you believe one year ago today we left for China to pick up Ella.  We have been doing some reminiscing since Ella’s 4 year birthday is coming up and that very same day we signed the adoption  papers in China.  So as we reminisce we will be telling some stories of our china adventure as well as Ella’s first year with us.  

Of course we were very excited but yet we remember back when we left our other kids here with the Grandma’s that we were also very sad to leave them.

Family picture before we left.

As I am typing here we would have been in the airplane 10 hours now and about 3 more hours to go.

At about 3:00 P.M. China time we landed in Beijing and was walking down the row of people in the concourse of the airport looking for the sign that had our names on it.  But we didn’t see it.  We must have missed it, so we looked again, and again, and again, but nothing.  So we sat down to think about what we should do.  Where is Joy our guide?  Do we have a phone number to call?  Is this really how our adventures in China is going to start out?                 View from our hotel in Beijing.

 

So Jeff decided to walk down the concourse again.  Maybe she was late getting here?  Maybe she was stuck in traffic?  Do they even have traffic here?  (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)  Sorry I just had to laugh at that question.  Compared to China our traffic is a walk in the park.  Then Jeff see’s this little Chinese lady who looks like she is looking for some one.  As her eye’s meet Jeff’s eye’s she quickly holds up the sign with our names on it.  Her name is Joy and it was a joy to see her.

View from our hotel in Beijing.