A New Day!

The last 12 hours will be among the most memorable of my life!  And I slept for 6 of them.  After soothing Maisey and getting her a little more comfortable with us, she was finally willing to eat.  We were getting a little concerned as she normally eats at 5:00 according to her caregiver, and it was nearly 10:00. 

We gave her a sippie cup with some rice formula and she drank the whole thing.  She even let me feed her some rice cereal, although she wasn’t really that interested. She did a bit of FaceTime (video chat) with her brothers, both of her grandmothers, Uncle Scott, and Aunt Lori. 

We then put her in the bed with us so she could see us while she settled into sleep.  With the king bed there was more than enough room for her, and she slept like a champ.  For the record, Lisa had her first good night’s sleep since April 16^th (the day we knew Maisey was matched to us.)

As I sit up at 5:00AM Beijing time, I’m reading though all the comments and words of encouragement from our friends and family.  I’m overwhelmed.  I was literally moved to tears when I received a photo from our friends at church of the whole bunch of them cheering in front of a photo of Lisa and Maisey from our blog.  I feel that they, among many others, have gone though this with us at least in part.  It made it so much easier knowing that so many people shared our moments of hope and heartbreak. 

So now we enter the next phase, the mission.  All the pre-work, paperwork, inspections, interviews, the travel to China, the touring, all of it, have been a run-up to this moment!  What’s next?  Well this is not the end of our blog, and certainly not the end of this story.  Stay tuned.

Liftoff!

Maisey is here!!  We have a new daughter, and a beautiful, intelligent one at that!  At 4:40 this afternoon,  a group from the Social Welfare Institute came to our hotel room in Nanchang City with our  gift from God himself.

We are overwhelmed with joy. Maisey is overwhelmed too, not sure if it's joy though.  The group left very shortly after, and we have spent the last :45 minutes getting to know this precious little one.  More later, photos for now.

Thank you everyone for the prayer!

Zero!

Last day before we finally meet Maisey!!  Let’s get you all up-to-date.  We arrived in Beijing Capital Airport at around 1:30PM on Friday (1:30AM EDT Friday.)  We met our ride and traveled to our hotel where we met our guide Xia Jing (called Grace.) She told us not to sleep until normal bedtime in Beijing, as it would be easier to adjust to the time difference.  Good advice, except for the fact that I can’t sleep on an airplane and I’d now been awake for over 24 hours!  Lisa did get some sleep on the flight, but she was also exhausted. 

On our guides recommendation we went to a local grocery store, Wu Mart, to buy bottled water.  In China you can’t drink tap water without boiling it first, so we bought 6 bottles to get us through the 2 days in Beijing.  We had dinner at the hotel and went to our room for a good nights sleep.  When I got to the room, and literally flopped myself on the bed, ouch!  We soon realized that the Chinese prefer very hard mattresses.  Not firm, HARD.  If I weren’t so tired it would have been difficult to sleep.

We started our first full day in China with a breakfast buffet of Chinese and Western food, and then got on our bus with the one other couple traveling with our agency.  They are Lee and Sarah from Seattle and they are adopting their first child.  They are wonderful people and it was nice to finally talk about the process with someone who was going through it at the same time.

Our first stop was to be Tiananmen Square.  But before that we learned one very important thing.  The drivers in Beijing, in the opinion of everyone on board the bus, are among the worst we’ve ever seen.  Fearing for our lives we finally arrived at Tiananmen Square, which is the center of the Chinese Government like the US capital.

As we walked though this enormous plaza we noticed something that should be quite obvious.  Beijing is full of people!  There were tens of thousands of people in Tiananmen Square, and there were thousands waiting in line to see the preserved corpse of Chairman Mau.  We didn’t do that but we did walk down the square to see the Forbidden City.  We entered though the first gate under Chairmen Mau’s enormous portrait and into the outer court of the city.  The Forbidden City is huge and very ornate.  It was built under the direct of the Ming dynasty and was completed in only 14 years. Which seems impossible when you are standing in its vastness.  We learned a lot about the ancient Chinese all the way though the last emperor, son of the famous concubine, the “Dragon Lady.”

After the Forbidden City we got on the bus for another white knuckled, teeth clenching ride to a Jade Factory where we had lunch and took a tour.  After the tour we purchased a gift for Maisey to be given to her when she’s older.

From there we held on tight for our ride to the Great Wall of China.  Let me say in all honestly “Great” is an understatement.  It was magnificent.  There were lots and lots of steps, but truly an amazing life experience. 

We returned to the hotel for dinner and went to bed.  We could not sleep at all, it may have been the mattress, but I think it was mostly the anticipation of meeting our sweet Maisey.

See Photos and update following.

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE:

We left for Beijing airport later than expected, when we got there our flight was full, no we no longer had a seat.  Praise to God, they bumped us up to first class!  Not the big seat, but the seat that turns to a bed first class.  I actually napped.  Thank you Lord.

We arrived in Nanchang another huge city, which was built from what was farm land just 10 years ago!    Amazing.  We got to our hotel, one of the better I've stayed at.  God is taking good care of us.  Best of all?  Maisey will be here at 4:00, just 4 hours from right now!  Alleluia!!

More to come.  Stay tuned.

3,2,1...

We start leg one today!!  We fly from Newark Liberty Airport to Tokyo, where we layover for only an hour.  Then we depart for the 3 hour flight to Bejing.  We are so excited, although the 4am wake-up (1:30 for Lisa) was tough.  We depart for the airport shortly and will so sad to say goodbye you wonderful boys. Although we are very comforted by the fact that Nana (Lisa's Mom) will be taking the boys.

UPDATE:  FLIGHT DELAYED 3 Hrs 40 Mins. with connection being missed!  Thank you to United Airlines for getting us on  a direct fight to Beijing!!!

I'd like to take a moment to say Thank You!  Thank You for all the prayer, encouragement, listening and support.  This moment may not have come without all the support from  our family, friends, and co-workers.

I'd like to thank Almight God, you have shined the light unto our path, walked with us, carried us, and your fingerprints are all over this adoption.  Thank you Lord!

6, 5, 4...

The days are moving so fast. It has been amazing to see what can be accomplished in such a short time. All of the flights are booked and the itinerary is all set. So here it is:

8/9 Leave on the plane for China at 11:05
8/10 Arrive in Beijing at 6:10pm
8/11 Tour of The Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Tiananmen Square
8/12 Leave Beijing for Nanchang at 7:35. Then, at 4pm, we will meet Maisey!!! This is Gotcha Day!!!
8/13 Paperwork at the Civil Affairs Office
8/14 Go to police department to do passport paperwork
8/15 Tour the orphanage
8/16 Sightseeing
8/17 We receive Maisey's passport. Then, we leave Nanchang and fly to Guangzhou
8/18 Maisey gets her visa photo taken and a medical exam
8/19 Sightseeing tour to Chen Family Temple
8/20 Sightseeing tour to Yuntai Park
8/21 Free Day
8/22 We visit the American Consulate and then go to our Oath-Taking Ceremony
8/23 We get Maisey's visa, then take a train to Hong Kong
8/24 We leave for home with Maisey!!!

10, 9, 8, 7...

As with any dramatic space shuttle launch, the countdown is what most people see.  To the folks in the Mission Control Center, it is the result of months of tireless work, not just a dramatic 10 second countdown.  For the astronauts, the countdown marks the next phase of what will be the most important part of their work, the mission - their entire reason for all the preparation.

Adoption is a similar experience.   There are fire, explosions, and lot's of paperwork.  You may feel like you're in zero gravity at times (due to the free fall of stress.)  What people see is our dramatic countdown, but we know whole story.  It is a story that started in 2008 when we decided to expand our family through adoption.  From that moment, it has been a constant goal with many milestones along the way.  In 2008 we chose an agency, which is not an easy decision as it is one you'll live with throughout the process.  You cannot just switch agencies without losing a lot of money.  For the record we have had a consistently good experience with our agency "Great Wall China Adoptions." Once you have an agency, you open the door to your entire life to nearly anyone who asks.  You gather a lot of information to build a dossier which is, more or less, a formal application packet for the Chinese government.  It contains personal details about you, your spouse, and your financials based on a number of interviews, home inspections, financial checks, background checks, etc.  It is essentially a profile of your entire life.

I don't say this to discourage anyone, quite the contrary. I'd encourage any of you with the heart for it to take on this mission.  Once your dossier is accepted,  the long hard wait begins.   For us, this was the longest part and the hardest part.  For us, this wait was nearly 4 years since we had begun.

On April 16th 2012, we received our referral!  The days since then have been the most exciting and fun.  We were able to call our girl by name and see her picture.  She was more beautiful than we could have imagined!  We also were able to buy clothes and decorate her room, which was a lot of fun. But most of all, we were finally able to let a wee little girl, who was a half a world way, into our hearts forever!

As we sit here today, we look back on all the work, stress, waiting, and wanting.  We also look back on all the prayers, support, encouragement, and genuine friendships that have carried us through it all.  We have seen God's hand in so much of this.  For example, we should have been away in the Caribbean the day we got Maisey's referral.  We should have waited 8 months, not 4, once matched.  We were planning to be away for a missions trip last week, but about a month ago we had to withdraw because we had to send our passports away to get out Chinese visas.  The timing was amazing because the week of the trip was the week we got our travel referral.  So let me end this post with a BIG thank you to God, and to all the friends and family who have help us through this process.  We can't wait to share the details with you, and have you all be part of Maisey's life!

Details, details...

Shopping, planning, making lists, finishing small projects, babyproofing, making flight arrangements, and on we go. Steve found this amazing app on the ipad to keep it all going. It is called Things, and it is doing a great job keeping us all on task. I took a trip to Babies R Us yesterday, and I must say I think I looked a bit overwhelmed and confused, so I fit right in. For the record, it was every bit as confusing the third time around as it was the first two. I did get everything I think I need, until I meet Maisey and have to go back and change it all. We also took a detour to take the boys to the CT Science Center. It was starting to hit them yesterday that we will be gone, so lots of extra hugs and reassurances were in order. I am so thankful for all of the family support we have and know that they are in excellent hands, which is a great comfort to us.