Sunday, June 15

Not much to report, just an early departure from Beijing to catch a 9 am flight Zhengzhou.  Easy and smooth, and we enjoyed our flight on China Southern.

We arrived and rode a bus 45 minutes into the city.

On the bus we got our ID cards for the process at Civil Affairs tomorrow.  We also got a final update prepared in the last couple of days from her caregivers to help us prepare for her arrival and shop for food and specific formula and cereal brands that supplement her diet. We are told she really likes her fruit and noodles, and she is "loves" to eat meat when they give it to her. We got her sleeping and bathing schedule and bit on her little personality from her caregivers.  It sounds like she is a great sleeper...some of the construction on her orphanage must now be complete as we are told that she now is walking very well and loves to play outside. We pray as a family every night that ZiXuan will be blessed by God and find peace in our arms.

We took a group walk to Walmart a mile away to shop for all the baby stuff we could not bring, formula, cereal, food, snacks....yada, yada, yada.  Being 8 years post toddler it is hard to remember what you need.  We kept it modest and figure will know better what she needs tomorrow.

John David thought it worth noting that if you happen to be in Zhengzhou, find yourself in desperate need of a splayed open, dried, and somewhat rather flattened chicken....for any reason...the Walmart has you covered...JSYK.

Mmmm...chicken...bock, bock.

We had much to do to prepare the room, our immediate paperwork for tomorrow, gifts to be prepared for the orphanage director and officials that will bring our girl to us, as well as her nannies and all the staff at her LOCC.

We decided there will plenty of time to go exploring the city over the next few days so we grabbed some Subway on the walk back to the hotel with our bags of Walmart stuff.  We had a very special family dinner and a glass of wine with our Subway sandwiches, talked about our journey so far and wondered what tomorrow will be like.  Little Zi Xuan was asleep by the time we ate dinner and we all took note of the fact that it was her last bedtime at the LOCC, her last night without a family, and it will be all of us that put her next to bed and this time part of us.

We meet the whole group tomorrow at 9:30 for the trip to Civil Affairs for what will be a very busy day and we don't know what it will hold...when we catch our breath we will try to get more up...at the least we will try to get some pictures up as soon as we can.

When you all wake up back in the States it will be Father's Day....so happy Father's Day to all of the Dads we know,  but especially to my Dad, John.  I hope you have a great day with the boys at the game.