Great Wall, Pandas, and Mcdonald's

As Angie had written, this is the day we got Qin Qin.   In international adoptions, this is considered Gotcha Day.  It is sort of like a birthday, a day to celebrate the child who has come into our lives. We left our room at our appointed time to wait in the lobby. Once there, Veronica got a call to come out and meet the car. They had more children then people to assist with them. We walked out to the little car. I saw Qin Qin.  As we got closer, I wondered if she would recognize us from our pictures. Veronica walks her up to us and asks if she knows who we are. She says Mommy and Daddy in english. The she proceeds to pull out her picture book and point out her sisters and us.  We walked back into the hotel to have a meeting with the person who runs the orphange. She answered the questions she could answer. As they did this, Qin Qin started pulling out markers to draw. Michelle and her started stamping each others arms. We were asked to bring a water...

Today is the day after the trip home. After we get some rest, I plan to enter each day as I remember them. Wish we could have done so in China, but it was too complicated and we had lots of jealousy issues to deal with. The kids did manage to survive the trip. Qin Qin is adapting to her new surroundings. It will probably take time. When we return to Florida, she has some doctors to visit. We also took over 1000 pictures. Most turned out okay. We tried to send them to Snapfish, but it crashed.

International adoptions have a day known as Gotcha Day.  It is like a birthday.  The day the child comes into a families life.  Some people celebrate it and some do not.  Sometimes, the birthday of the child may not actually be thier real birthday.  They orphanage assigns birthdates if it if not given by the birth parent. On this day, we were meeting in the lobby of the hotel.  The children were going to be brought to us.  The orphanage did not want us to visit.  They were concerned that we were carrying the Swine Flu.  In the lobby, we eagerly awaited the arrival of our children.  Veronica received a phone call.  It was time.  We all hustled into the parking lot.  The children came out of a small compact car.  The first children were being carried.  We knew that was not our child.  Then a child who was Qin Qin's age got out.  She seemed nervous.  Veronica went up to her and asked who we were. ...

Flight was great. No problems. Food did not agree with us on the plane. Both of us got sick from something they served.  Angie and I spent the last part of the flight stationed at a bathroom.  One was in the center, while the other was at the back.  The girls happily slept. We could not sit down, without having to rush back to the bathroom.  Looking back, I wonder if it was more that we did not sleep much the night before.  As we walked off the plan, we started to feel better.  That is until we saw the people monitoring for bird flu.  They had temperature gauges monitoring body heat.  When we saw this, we started to get nervous.  If we were sick, they would have quaranteened us.  Luckily, we had a distraction.  Kayla.  When they saw her, they started to smile and point at her.  This was the start of Kayla's China tour.  She was the star attraction.  Little did we know that it ...

Due to excitement, no one slept except Kayla. I tried watching a movie on a DVD player.  I don't think it was a good choice:  World Trade Center.  It was hot in the house and I keep twisting and turning.  Wish I had a sleeping med.  At least tomorrow, we can sleep on the plane. We are getting ready to go to the airport. Angie is doing the final check, but I'm sure she will keep going over it all day long.  In all that planning, we will either bring too much or not enough.  Thanks to our first adoption, we have a better idea of what to expect.  We know the country is not all rural.  We tend to gravitate towards the cities. 

We have found a person to update our blog if we can not get in. Day is going slow. Children are playing and Angie is trying to rest.

Received an email from another family just returning from China. She said any address with "blog" in it is blocked in China, this also includes facebook. Feel free to send me your email and we will send out updates this way in case the blogs are still blocked. afahey2000@yahoo.com or angelafahey@yahoo.com Girls are still asleep, so very quiet here this morning. No headaches yet :) Angie

Angie and I are getting some rest. Kayla and Michelle have been playing hard. They have been visiting with their grandparents. Two days and counting.  We are all anxious for the trip to happen.  Things like this tend to fill the kids with excitement.  This will later translate into sleep on the plane. Angie is still going over everything.  She is making sure that we do not leave anything behind.  I am hoping the girls will help with some of the bags, but we will have to keep an eye on Kayla.  She has been running off.  We will be a some big airports.  Lots of things to distract her attention.  I will be happy when we are on the plane to China.  I mean the plane after the connecting flight.  I hope we have learned some things from the first adoption, but still seems like we have a lot of bags. I probably should have went for a long walk to make my body tired.  Between the excitement/nervousness of the flight and the heat o...

Yesterday we got on the road. Kayla and Michelle were entertained by movies. We brought our own food and drinks, so we did not have to stop to eat. Belle remained quiet. We did have to stop for gas and bathroom breaks. Georgia roads were nice, but South Carolina has not changed much in the ten years we have been travelling that stretch. South of the Border looked more run down then in the past. As we got closer, Michelle said I'm getting so excited. We arrived after 8.5 hours. Traffic was heavy and there were some idiots on the road. After we made it to Angie's house, we stopped by the Garner movie theater. We visited the manager, who we had worked with for about ten years in Raleigh. Found out that Regal had sold off the theater to a budget theater. Now it is time to get ready to go to China.

We have two days before our journey to pick up Qin Qin begins. One week till we fly to China. We are almost prepared. The house is almost ready, but we still have work to do. The kids are starting to get excited, but they are going to miss out on some birthday parties. Packing will be started shortly.  We are excited to get this little girl.  We hope she is as excited to be with us.  I have attached the picture of her that made our decision to choose her for adoption.