Gotcha Day June 16, 2014

Incredible...we have her.  It is 1:45 pm in Zhengzhou.  She is sleeping next to me in the crib very peacefully.  T took the boys to get some food while she sleeps.  We are all starving.

What a morning.  We arrived at the Civil Affairs Bureau at 10:00.  There were a couple of kids already there, and several more cam while we waited.  We were all quite full of nervous anticipation and had to wait about 30 minutes.  When her car pulled up and the nanny and the orphanage director got out we could see it was her.  They told us that she loved her picture books filled with pictures of us and the rest of the family...she seemed to recognize us immediately came to us with huge hugs and held us each and then reached for all of us in turn.  She was was happy and comfortable and she reallly fell in love with her tub of apple puffs, which she gobbled up and fed to us.

It is clear that she has been happy and loved in the care of the LOCC and for that we are so grateful. She fell asleep in T's arms on the way back to the hotel and then I carried her up to the room so she could keep napping.

Bedtime in Zhengzhou....what a day.  T and the boys ran for sandwiches for us while she took her nap. We had a room picnic and then Dad had to go off to a hotel conference room to do paperwork for the adoption process tomorrow.  T and the boys played with her around the hotel util that was finished.  She needed shoes so Mom and Dad decided to take her on an adventure...a mile walk each way to Walmart in the Zhengzhou traffic to shop at Walmart....she loved it and though there was little to pick from we did find her a little pair of her own squeaky shoes that should suit until we can find a shoe store.

We all played in the room and then she had her dinner....which was really nothing more than an unbroken process of eating since she woke up from her nap, but we do have a fun game with her feeding and she LAUGHS so hard...it is so funny.  Mom and dad got her cleaned up and and dressed for bed, she laid down so peacefully....looked around a bit with her bunny on her arm and drifted off to sleep.

It was 8pm and he boys were dying to get a shot at the pool, so the 3 boys and one can of lukewarm Tsingtao made our way to the pool for a little swimming and goofing off while Mom got a quiet hour for a bath in the really great tub here in the new wing of the Crowne Plaza.

Tomorrow we go back to Civil Affairs, which we are told can be very hard for the little ones but has to be done.  We will finish the legal process for the adoption, get our adoption decree ant which point she will legally be our child.  We then take a van out to her birth city of Kaifeng to apply for a passport for her so that she can leave the province.

We are also hoping that tomorrow they will take us to her orphanage to see where she her home for the last two years and bring gifts for here nannies and the staff there.  We also have a list of children that we would like to meet and play with for parents that are waiting for their own chance to travel and meet their children.

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.

Saturday June 14

Continued from Friday....

We finished yesterday with a little rickshaw ride through the Hutong and had lunch with a local family that works with our agency.

This is their home

We had a little downtime at the hotel in the late afternoon, and then back to our little neighborhood park for a little catch with Wyatt...I think he likes being the star of the show over there.  All the old men stand around us and ohh and ahh at the way the little dude can chuck a baseball.

We made it an early night in preparation for the Great Wall...of course we still woke up by 3 am, so T and I get to sit and spend some time talking, which has become our habit and is really nice in all the bustle.

SATURDAY MORNING...

Saturday was an AWESOME and busy day.  We met up with everyone for the bus trip out of the city to the Great Wall.  Our guide Alice again gave us some enjoyable Beijing history on the ride up.

We arrived at the Wall and after this group photo with the other families....

we said goodbye to all but one couple in our group and headed up to the 13th tower at the top of the mountain.  We had to keep a pretty good pace to make the loop and Wyatt pretty much led the charge and made the top first.

Though it was crazy crowded and chaotic from the bottom to the first couple of towers, the crowd thins fast and it was not at all crowded all the way at the top.  At the top we got a chance to rest and relax for a bit and really soak in the view, which is spectacular.  I can only imagine the photos Tom could have gotten up here.  We did press a passing Spaniard that we chatted with into some pictures for us.

There is a little old woman half way up that has an old Dremmel and will engrave a heart lock that you can attach at points along the wall.  It would appear they have been doing this for many, many years.  We had one engraved for Zi Xuan with her initials and Wyatt took the lead on the operation.  We hope to show it to her when we bring her back to see China when she is a little older.  We have the spot logged well.

Back in Beijing in the late afternoon, we took some time to rest a bit, get our stuff ready to go for the very early departure and then head out for one last night exploring some of the more colorful areas of the Wangfujiang.  

All the traditional delights are available with something to suit every palate...giant spiders, snakes, live scorpions large and small.  Of course for the more pedestrian, there is stuff like lamb and octopus which were delicious.  Wyatt thought it very bad form to not try something exotic and went with scorpions, at his insistence Dad joined in the fun.  John David refused...and amazingly, for all her travels and exotic tastes, Mom just could not bring herself to do it!  So we have that on her now....

It was a day none of us will ever forget, and we spent some family time talking about all we had seen and then turned in to get some rest for the 6:30 bus departure for the flight out to Zi Xuan's provincial capital  of Zhengzhou, Henan.  

Friday June 13

After a lot of throwing the baseball we went out in search of some food with Wyatt...he wanted some fried rice.  We grabbed some food in a little family stall in a nearby neighborhood and made friends with the owners little boy.

We brought a little something back to the hotel for John David who was resting his very sore back.  We all went to bed pretty early last night and woke up early too...like 4am.  It was nice to sit and have our coffee and some quiet time.  The boys got up and we all went down to breakfast...the buffet is mostly traditional Chinese and pretty incredible and but has something for everyone and the boys were happy to find a huge pile of really good bacon and eggs tucked away in the corner.

We loaded up around 9am with some of the other families who have arrived to go see some sights in Beijing.  The bus ride through the city provided some  cool people watching.

Our CCAI guides Cecilia and Alice are wonderful and Alice is an incredible historian which was a nice lead up to Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City.  The size of Tian An Men is hard to grasp until you are standing there, it's just HUGE.  In the crowd we made a little friend who was just a doll and very proud of her squeaky shoes that she wanted to show off.

The tour of the Forbidden City is nothing short of incredible.  Again the size was hard to comprehend until we were making our way through.  The history, the architecture, all of it is so much to behold.

One of the most stunning parts of the City is the Emperor's Gardens, with 500 year old trees and rock formations, the tree of luck, and the surrounding moat.

After the Forbidden City we went off to tour the Hutong area and have lunch with a local family.

More on that in the next post.

So the journey began after Scott kicked us to the curb at SFO and everything went well with the flight on Korean Air (which is awesome FWIW).  It left a little late...which made us nervous because of the tight connection in Seoul.  Everyone said not to worry...and they were right, the transit process is quick, the security people are efficient.  Why can't U.S. airports work like that.  The boys got their first ride in 777 SFO-ICN and 747 ICN-PEK.

We thought we would take the subway but we haggled a nice little mini van right to the front door of the hotel...like rookies.  Scott dropped us off at 10:30 am and 20 hours later we plopped down for a selfie in Beijing.

We crashed by midnight and were all back up by 4:30...well all but John David, so we woke him up and struck out to explore by 6am.

It just so happens there is a beautiful old Catholic church just halfway down the block and saw people heading inside...so by accident we got to attend the 6:30 sunrise Mass...in Mandarin.  After that we cruised around the Wangfujing District so T could find a street vendor with something interesting to eat.

John David has pulled a muscle in his back, and is hurting so T took him off to get a massage.  Wyatt and I brought our baseball gloves and some balls with us (imagine that) so we wandered off in search of park to play ball.  We found an apartment building in a maze of alleys with some shade trees and a common area with some swings and open space and spent most of the afternoon playing catch for hours.  We were quite the scene with passersby on foot and mopeds stopping to watch us play.  I'm not sure if it was us or baseball, but I guess it was out of the ordinary for the neighborhood.

We met up with T later to show her our spot and stopped for some rice and green beans and chills from a street stall and then came back to the hotel to meet the batch of four families arriving here in Beijing tonight.

Pic with Coll and Wy the night before we left. Colleen will be Xuan's God Mother.  She has been around our family for many many years, my best friend and confidante. Colleen holds a special spot in my heart like no other friend ever has. Wyatt loves to bet on sports with her, it's pretty cute to see the two of them make wagers (usually involving Taco Bell). 

The other pic is the boys this morning in our room, we are a little cramped, but loving it. We walked around Beijing this morning and I had delicious street food. Some sort of a crepe thing with bean curd, eggs and phyllo dough folded in the middle. 

The Do Terra essential oil seem to be helping everyone, I highly recommend the diffuser.  We have used most of them so far with great results. We are awaiting contact from our guide and enjoying the down time.

 

Off we go, thanks Scott and Pearl for the lift. Beautiful day. See how we feel tomorrow. Missing  everyone already. John David says he is excited that we will be traveling with a toddler on the way home so we can pre-board.