2 more days!

I’m sure our blog is not exactly in order.  I had everything posted in order and they all came back to me. I just started sending them in any order to get them there.  Sorry!  I will fix it when I arrive home.

Today we had a “free” day.  Mom and I went shopping for about 2 ½ hours while Brian kept the girls.  I didn’t spend too much money but did get Amelia’s chop along with a few other odd and ends. Brian was ready for a break when we returned.  We all went to lunch at Lucy’s again.  The girls (except Amelia) love eating here.  The girls got grilled cheese and chicken enchiladas.  Amelia stuck with the steamed broccoli with butter sauce, and the refried beans off of my bean enchilada.  She is not liking anything that resembles a tortilla or even a regular baked potato with sour cream.  WHAT?  She did eat our tomato and cucumbers off of the plates. They put these on the plates instead of pickles. We ordered watermelon for dessert.  She loves it!  Brian and I had cheese cake and Ariel had apple pie.  (Kayli was with my mom and Amelia ate a few bites of ours)

We came back to our room and took a nap.  It rained quite a bit today. The girls were a little bummed that they couldn’t go swimming because of the rain. 

Later we walked around the hotel. There is a beautiful waterfall in the lobby and fish in the pond. It is quite nice. 

Amelia has had a few fits today.  We know this is to be expected as she is testing her boundaries and trying to figure out our family life. 

We had dinner in the room again. We ate lentil soup, noodles, peanut butter and crackers.  We finally found some descent white crackers.  We ate almost the last of our food that we brought.  We still have 1 can of black beans left.  I’m sure we will finish that tomorrow. 

We are so looking forward to our return. We are going to get someone to tell Amelia that we will be on 3 long plane rides before we get home.  I hope that there is another person that is bilingual on the longest flight that can talk to her for us. She seems to understand more and more every day.  Today she said the girls names, thank you, and please.  Two days ago she said that her belly hurt, hello, and bye bye.   

Tomorrow we have our exit meeting with our agency in the morning and the swearing in ceremony at the US Consulate in the afternoon. 

 

We have met a lot of nice families here in Guangzhou. One family is from California.  They have 3 bio children that are grown- I think.  They have adopted 5 children from China. They are very nice.  The one that they just adopted is 14 years old.  This was her last chance to be adopted. Children older than this are not adoptable and must be released from the orphanage.  This beautiful girl has a hearing impairment.  They hope to get her some cochlear implants after arriving home. 

Another family brought their 5 bio children on the trip and adopted a little boy.  All of their children are younger than 9.  I was pretty impressed that they brought everyone.  They were also very nice.  They mentioned selling things in order for everyone to come. 

Other families have waited for 4 ½ years to adopt.  WOW!  That is a long time!  Most of these folks have no other children. 

Two of our families that we traveled with had issues with the TB testing.  The chest x-ray for one of them was ok in the way of TB but now say that they have found a mass of some sort on her heart?? Our prayers are with this family.  They have given them the option of  changing their mind or staying here to have more test ran. They are going to take her home without running additional test. Please pray with us that there is nothing significantly wrong.

 

Off to sleep!  Everyone is beating to sleep again!