MIA

Sorry I've been MIA but we been doing some very important things!  We just returned home with our newest daughter Faith!  She is amazing!  She is almost 2 1/2 and just six month younger than her bigger sister Hope.  We left for China on the 13th and first visited Xian.  We met Faith on the 19th.
You can see visit our website at www.myadoptionwebsite.com/faith.  Today we had our first post adoption placement visit and Hope's 1 year.   We decided to venture off to the park afterwards to get out of the house.  The kids had fun and I was able to get a few pictures to share.

Playing with babies

Big sister has to do everything little sister does

Showing me how she can climb the stairs.  The children are always so interested in the stairs when they first get home and we usually have to put up a gate after week one home

Doing pretty good for how little she is

At the top and happy with herself

Playing in their room or shall I say dumping everything out that mom just cleaned up

She loves this tent

Showing me the book that has our picture in it from when we sent it to Zoe

Hope have a meltdown

Gotta love the twos

Getting ready to go on our walk

Hope showing us what she can do on the playground

Beautiful baby girl

Not to sure of the slide

Zoe

Climbing up again to go down the slide

My attempt at a picture of these four.  We will take our family picture on Thanksgiving

Traveling soon!

We leave in 19 days for China.  And right now I have a horrible cold and can't do much.   I had three days off in a row and now these days feel wasted since I'm so sick.  Here is the itinerary below:

10/13 Evening flight out of Portland
10/15 Arrive in Xian
10/16 Tour Xian
10/17 Tour Xian
10/18 fly to Wuhan
10/19 Gotcha day
10/20 Adoption day
10/21 tour
10/22 tour
10/23 Fly to Guangzhou
10/24 Medical apt
10/25 Free day
10/26 Free day
10/27 Consulate apt
10/28 Free day
10/29 Free day
10/30 Fly home

We have Travel Approval and travel dates!

Wow what a whirlwind of a week.  Monday we got article 5 pickup.  Thursday shockingly we received our travel approval and today Friday we got our confirmed Consulate appointment date.
We leave for China on the 13th of October, meet Faith on the 19th!  I will be starting our website soon and will share it once it is completed!

Adoption update

It's been awhile since I've updated on our current adoption.  We are currently waiting for our Article 5 to be picked up.  I will be picked up on Monday the 24th and then we will be officially waiting for our Travel approval from China.  When we get our travel approval we can start booking our trip to China.  We plan on leaving around the 14th of October and returning just before Halloween.  Gotcha day will be the 19th of October!

We are adopting again!

Yes you read that right!  We are in the process of adopting again. We are also already matched and in the process of redoing our homestudy.  How did this happen you ask.  Well we are just as shock as you are because we really were not planning on starting this soon.  We knew that we would probably adopt one more time but thought it would be a few years down the road.  In January I emailed the staff at Holt with just a simple inquiry about reusing our dossier.  It seemed easy and a lot less painless than doing a whole dossier over again.  So I took a look at Holt's photolisting and seen a little girl that was 6 months younger than Hope.  I clicked to read more about her and learned that she had dwarfism but was otherwise healthy.  The next day we requested to review her file.  Our social worker didn't grant it right away and we spent the next week researching dwarfism and talking to other families that have raised children with this SN.  We finally got to see her file and were in love.  Yes she was tiny but oh so adorable and healthy.  She is in a foster family and located in the same city that Hope is from.  We spent the long weekend deciding whether to move forward.  Then on the Tuesday after Martin Luther King day we submitting our application to Holt and told them of our desire to adopt her.

We have told most of our family but are still keeping it a secret and will reveal in the early summer or later spring.    We are in the process of doing our homestudy, then will submit for our i800 extension, then it will be ready to log in.  At that point we will be officially waiting for our LOA.  We think we will travel in either November or December.  Holt requires a year between placements so it will be after the date we adopted Hope.  We can't share her picture yet but as soon as we have LOA we plan on sharing on the blog.  So stay tuned!!

We are HOME!

Yesterday we arrived home from China.  We had a long day and a half home.  We spent three weeks in China and had a great time.  But in the end we were so ready to come home.  If you missed our journey you can look at it on www.myadoptionwebsite.com/hope

Here are a few random pictures from the entire trip.  Hope is amazing and has transitioned well into our family. 


So a little on our trip home.  We left at 8 am from the hotel.  We were hoping to get an earlier flight out of Guangzhou since they changed our flight to later the night before and this left very little time for us to making our connecting flight home.  Our guide spent an hour and a half going no where.  She was the same guide that took us to the orphanage the night before and she was very passive and you could tell not confident with handling these situations.  So in the end we were left with our same flight that left at 1 pm from Guangzhou.  Once we arrived in Beijing we had to get on a bus to take us to the terminal.  There were two buses and it was confusing which one we needed to get on.  We finally were on the right bus.  We arrived at baggage claim and had to wait about 15 minutes before our bags arrived.  Meanwhile we were trying to figure out what we needed to do next.  Noone spoke any English and so we got no clear answers.  Once we got our bags we tried to go through the international area and they told us we had to go back around.  We didn't know where to go. We finally found and American who told us the general direction.  However when we got out we were in the main exit area and lost.  At this point I started crying, I knew we were going to miss our flight.  The same American seen us again and guided us in an elevator up the stairs.  We went up and then headed down to the international area.  We had to check our bags in again and they had to enter all of our passports.  This took FOREVER and then they asked for Hopes paperwork.   Also our luggage set off an alarm and we had to show them the souvenir swords in the bags.  After what seemed like forever she let us move on.  We had to go through another security check point which again took forever.  Conor had to have a more thorough check over since he had a pump on and so me and the little kids ran on.  We made it to the gate and Chase asked them to please wait for his dad.  The others came soon after.  Everyone got on board just in time for the doors to shut.  What a relief this was to make this flight.  One thing I forgot to mention was that we had to leave our stroller in Beijing because it didn't make it off the plane in time.

Once we made it to Seattle we had someone waiting for us to help us through customs and immigration.  Our flight to Portland was delayed so we had to wait another five hours to board our last flight home.  My parents, aunt and brother and sister in law were waiting for us when we landed.  We were so happy to see them.  We are not home and trying to settle in to the new flow of things.

Travel approval and Consulate Appointment!

It's been a busy week this week.  On Monday morning we received our Travel approval!  The very next day we had a confirmed Consulate appointment and were able to secure our International flights.  We are still in the process of working on our in country itinerary and should hopefully have it all done in the next few weeks.  We have lots to get done before we leave in 45 days!   We leave on 11/3/14 and return on 11/22/14.  Conor will celebrate his 16th Birthday while we are in China.  We are also in the midst of completing our travel website and I will be posting the link soon so that everyone can follow our time in China!

Were in Guangzhou!

We flew from Beijing to Guanzhou yesterday afternoon and our now settled into our room at the White Swan Hotel.  We will be our daughter tomorrow at 2:30 pm.  We
are really excited and can't believe it's actually time already.  We will post some pictures tonight from around the island that were on called Shaiman Island. 


Love you boys!!!!

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Update pictures of Zoe

We recieved an email today with four new pictures of Zoe!  She is so cute and her hair has grown longer.
We will meet her in less than four days!!!  Also check out our other website www.myadoptionwebsite.com/zoe
for updated pictures from today's visit to the Great Wall.

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another picture from Hard Rock Beijing

Heres another picture from the Hard Rock Cafe

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FW: Hard Rock Cafe

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 We'll we decided to venture out today even though we didn't have a guide.  We took a 30minute taxi ride to the Hard Rock Cafe to eat
lunch/dinner.  Our friend Debbie had told us about it from her adoption trip and we thought we would check it out too.  The driving is crazy here
our driver on the way there drove fast and honked the horn a lot, there were at least five times that I thought we were going to get hit.
The driver also acted like he didn't know where he was going, so we were very relieved when we pulled up to the Hard Rock Cafe.  We bought all
of the kids the souvenirs we promised and then went and ate lunch/dinner.  I got nachos and Steve got a mushroom burger our last "American" meal for the next
few days.  The ride back was smoother and we went through a more run down section than before.   I got a few pictures on the way back since we were stuck in traffic.
We start our touring tomorrow so check back tomorrow for the Forbidden Palace.

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We made it to China

We are here and safe!  We had a great flight and are very tired so we are crashing for the night!    check out the new post on http://www.myadoptwebsite.com/zoe

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Leaving for Portland

We are leaving for Portland and fly out early in the morning tomorrow.  You can all follow up on our website www.myadoptionwebsite.com/zoe
We will have the first post once we've landed safely and our in our room in Bejiing! 

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Our Itinerary

November 15th fly out of Portland
November 16th Arrive in Bejiing
November 17th Day to relax
November 18th tour Bejiing
November 19th tour Bejiing
November 20th-tour Bejiing
November 21st Fly to Guangzhou
November 23rd Meet ZOE!!!!
November 26th Orphanage visit
November 30th Consulate Appt.
December 3rd Ride train to Hongkong, tour Hongkong
Decmeber 4th Come HOME!!!!!!!!!

Video of Caiping

A nice family took video of our Zoe while visiting the orphanage and mailed the video to us. This is the part where they are saying goodbye, it is so precious!!

Shopping for trip to China!!

We decide on sunday to take a ride up to Salem and go to bestbuys and purchase a video camera for Steve and a new lens for my camera. I'm in love with this lens, I'll be take more pictures this weekend but here are a few from last weekend.