It's Official!

I'm a little late in posting this, but on Monday morning, our little girl became Hallie Elizabeth Godwin for good! Her adoption is complete, and that happened a day earlier than we expected because they brought her to us Sunday afternoon instead of Monday morning, which meant that the mandatory 24-hour (i.e., overnight) probationary period ended on Monday instead of beginning then. It was really good for us to have her just four hours after arriving in Jinan, and I think that it's going to make her transition easier. She was very placid and complacent Sunday. In fact, she slept for about twelve hours that night. On Monday morning, we had to go to Civil Affairs, the police station, and then the notary's office. At the first two stops, both of the caretakers from her orphanage came with us, and the one who seemed more attached to her spent most of the time holding Hallie and taking care of her. It seemed like she needed the time to say goodbye even more than did Hallie. At the notary's office, only the other caretaker came in with us; I don't know where the other girl was. She didn't hold Hallie at all in the office, but that wasn't so strange because she hadn't held her much at all at any of the times that we've seen her. (We learned later that she was only there to take care of the papers from the orphanage. She wasn't actually Hallie's caretaker, at least not to the extent that the other girl was.)

Hallie was really hungry by the time we finished up there (about 11:30), and thankfully we were able to get some clarification on her eating habits. They'd told us Sunday, through John (our coordinator here in Jinan this week), that Hallie liked to eat cheese. We asked him to ask the taller girl what kind of cheese to get, but it turns out that cheese is an inaccurate translation. The only kind of solid food that she eats is crackers/cookies mixed with milk. They left some of that with us when they brought her to the hotel on Sunday, and so Kristie mixed some up in a bowl and fed it to her for her lunch once we got back to the room. For the first time, Hallie really fought back. Even though she liked the taste of the food, she didn't want to do it on our terms. The realization that she is now in our care, not that of her usual caretakers, seemed finally to dawn on her. So, Kristie spent the better part of 20-30 minutes holding her still while feeding her one spoonful at a time. She finally did eat most of the bowl, and then after crying some more, she settled down for a good afternoon nap.

We ventured out that night to find some Western restaurants done Chinese-style. The Pizza Hut that we found looked almost like a half-Pizza Hut, half-bistro restaurant, and let me tell you, it's a good deal nicer than the Pizza Hut/Taco Bell combos that we have back at the States. Dinner there was really good, and we got back to the room exhausted, but very grateful for the fact that Hallie is now officially ours. What a great way to end our first full day in Jinan!

Hallie being held by her caretaker, along with the other worker from the orphanage.

Chinese knot given to us by the woman at Civil Affairs. This knot means "good fortune."

The picture below is of her in the van, as we drove from Civil Affairs, where her adoption became final. Apparently, adoption is tiring not just for the parents, but for the kid, too. :-)

At Pizza Hut

China Trip: Day 1

We are finally on our way to China! We dropped our kids off at my parents' house Thursday evening, and they seem to be settling in very well. My parents have all kinds of fun activities planned for them, and I think they are going to have a great time. We went back home to a very empty house, packed up the rest of our stuff and then attempted to get some good sleep. I fell asleep immediately and slept very deeply at first, but was wide awake by 4:45, and never got back to sleep at all. We finally got up about 6:30, and had plenty of time to get ready before our pastor arrived at 12:00. He took us to CVG, and we made it through security so quickly, that we ended up with two and a half hours to kill before our plane boarded. The plane was packed, and they asked for a few volunteers to check their carry-on baggage to their final destination at no extra cost. Greg and I both agreed, because we thought it would be nice not to have the extra pull-behinds and strollers as we navigated the LA airport. The flight from CVG to LAX was uneventful, and we arrived here with no problem. We grabbed some dinner, and then went to check in at the counter to print our last couple of boarding passes. That's where we ran into our first major snag. It turns out that the carry-on luggage CAN'T be checked all the way to our final destination, because we didn't pay the extra fees, so they need to pull those items off and have us carry them on. That wouldn't be any problem, except they can't seem to find our bags at all. They have been looking for them for an hour now. They told us to come back at 9:00, and we really hope they have found them by then, because the plane boards at 10:00. We are both so tired already, and we know that the hard part of this journey is still ahead of us. We just keep trying to focus on Hallie, and knowing that we will meet her for the first time in about 48 hours. (We are obviously focused on Isabelle too, but since we don't get to meet her for another week still, it is more helpful to focus on Hallie right now). We are so thankful to be at this point in our adoption, and so grateful to God for everything He provided to make this possible for us. Right now we are just really tired. And we miss our kids. Three weeks is a very long time to be away from all of them. The internet connection at LAX is pitiful, so probably by the time I actually get this posted, we will have resolved the situation with our bags and everything. But please pray for us anyway. Pray for us as we fly that God will keep reminding us why we are doing this and that we will rely on Him to sustain us. Thanks!

Kristie

Travel plans

I just realized that I have been updating everyone on my travel plans by means of Facebook, but haven't posted anything here for those of you who are not Facebook friends. We got our TA, we got our consulate appointment, and everything is completely set for us to leave. We have booked plane tickets, made hotel reservations, and have our whole schedule set.

We leave Cincinnati at 4:00 on Friday afternoon, and fly to L.A. From there, we will fly to Guangzhou, and then on to Jinan. Our plane is set to land in Jinan at 10:15 Sunday morning, which will be 10:15 Saturday night here in Cincinnati. We should get custody of Hallie on Monday morning, and sign the papers to complete her adoption on Tuesday. Then we have a few days of peace and quite while our contact, John works on getting Hallie's birth certificate and passport. We should have those by Friday evening, so on Saturday the 17th, we will fly down to Guiyang. Then we should get Isabelle on Monday the 19th. Our last week will be in Guangzhou, working with the U.S. Consulate. We fly out of Guangzhou on Friday Aug. 30, and land home in the afternoon of Saturday the 31st.

We are so excited to be just over a week away from meeting Hallie for the first time, but we are also feeling nervous about being away from our other children for three weeks. We expect this to be particularly hard on Mikaela and Matthias.

Today was a big day for Mikaela, since it was her fourth birthday. She has been looking forward to this for weeks, and has insisted that she wanted cupcakes instead of cake. By yesterday afternoon, she was so excited about the cupcakes, that whenever anyone asked her a question about her birthday, she yelled, "CUPCAKES" without bothering to listen to the actual question. "Mikaela, how old will you be tomorrow?" "CUPCAKES!" Silly girl. :-) Most of the time, I don't even think about the fact that she is adopted, but on days like her birthday, I always stop and think about what our life would be like without her. She is such a blessing and a treasure, and I can't imagine how empty life would be if she weren't a part of our family. I am so thankful that she is!

So much exciting news...

Greg and I just celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. My parents kept the kids for us so that we could have a little weekend getaway before the trip to China. We had a lot of fun, and accomplished many of the things that were on our list of things to do before leaving. One of the things that I accomplished was to write a long and detailed blog post explaining all of the things that have happened since my last update. Instead of posting it, I saved it to let Greg have a chance to look over it first. Last night, I went into the blogging app to post it, and it was gone. I don't have any idea what happened to it, or why my usually reliable blogging app decided to delete my post without my permission. Thank goodness it wasn't any thing more important than a blog post. We do have lots of wonderful news to share with everyone, and I am going to try once again to type that information up in a post.

When I last posted, we had just gotten our LSCs and were waiting for approval from the US department of immigration. We have gotten our provisional approvals and sent those on to the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China. They have processed our papers and issued our Article 5, and we are now just waiting on our travel letter from Beijing. We are hoping very much that will come next week. As long as it does come by next Friday, we think that we will leave for China on Friday, August 9th. If the travel letter comes later, then we will have to wait until August 16th to leave. Either way, one month from right now we should be in China. We think that we are going to finalize Hallie's adoption first, and then travel south to get Isabelle. A month still seems like a very long time to wait, but we know that it will go quickly. We have a lot to accomplish between now and then.

The other wonderful news that we have to share is that our adoption is fully funded!!! We can still hardly believe the wonderful news. Several friends of ours made very generous donations, and we did receive one more grant. We have enough money to pay for the adoptions and the 6 post-placement reports that are required for Chinese adoptions. We can continue to accept donations to help with their medical expenses etc, but we have every bit of the money that we need to bring the girls home! We both keep reminding ourselves of this again and again, because it just doesn't seem possible. We knew when we started this adoption process that God would provide everything we needed, but knowing that He can provide is different than actually seeing Him do it.

I mentioned earlier that we had spent a good bit of our anniversary weekend preparing for the trip. We both feel a lot less stress now that we have accomplished so much, and in addition to that, we had a lot of fun running those errands. It is fun to shop for our new girls! They now each have a new doll with two extra outfits, a little ball, some books, snacks, and I don't even remember everything else. We didn't have to buy them very many clothes, but we did get a few new things. We also bought some small gifts for our children who will be staying here. We hope that having my parents give them little gifts from us periodically while we are gone will help make the separation a little easier for them. And we had to buy birthday presents for Gabriela and Mikaela, my sister Shannen, and my brothers Ethan, and Owen, since all of them have birthdays in July or August. It was pretty crazy! But so much fun! We even managed to find time to hit the dollar theater to see the new Star Trek movie. It was our best anniversary ever!

Please join us in thanking and praising God for providing everything that we need to bring Isabelle and Hallie home where they belong. We will never be able to express how much we appreciate all of the gifts and support from people during this process. Please also pray for our little girls. We are asking God to work in their hearts to prepare them to be part of a family. They have never known the love of a family, and it will be an unfamiliar and frightening thing for them. Pray that they will adjust, and that God will give us patience to love our girls when they don't want to be loved, (even if they fight against our love at first), and that He will teach them to love us back. Our next update will probably include definite travel plans.

Good News!

We have some good news about our adoption. We learned today that our Agency received our Letter Seeking Confirmation, or LSC. This is the next big step in the adoption process, and we are thankful to be that much closer to bringing our girls home. Our agency is going to overnight that to us, and once we have it, we can submit the paperwork to USCIS for our i800. Sometimes it seems overwhelming that there are still so many steps to get through, but it is really exciting to be past another major milestone. In ten to twelve weeks, we should be in China! I can't wait to get my girls home!

We have started doing a little bit of our shopping for the trip, and that is so exciting. We bought a baby doll for each of them, and a little hat, and a pair of sunglasses. We want to try to find some good touch-and-feel books, but we haven't gotten any of those yet. We still have plenty of time, but it feels really good to be close enough to start picking up some of these things. Question for other adoptive families: What was the best thing you brought along for your child? We would love to learn from the experiences of other families.

Kristie

LID and our Jimmy John's Fundraiser

I just realized that we never updated everyone about our LID. We learned at the end of the month that we had a log-in-date of March 21st. So the day of my last post, when I was feeling discouraged and disappointed, we actually had been logged in; I just didn't know it yet. I think it is really cool that we were logged in on World Down Syndrome Day! We were told to expect travel four to five months from LID. That still seems like a very long time to wait, but we are trying to be patient. We know that God's timing is best.

We also heard back about our Jimmy John's fundraiser. We were greatly encouraged to learn that we made $434 for our girls' adoptions! Than you very much to everyone who participated. Our next fundraiser will be in May at The Cone, and we will pass more details along as we have them.

In addition to praising God for the good news about our adoption, we would appreciate prayers for our family. We have been very sick again, and both Greg and I feel more tired than we can ever remember feeling before. It is easy to be discouraged when we feel so run-down. Please pray that God will remind of us of his incredible faithfulness and that we will have a season of rest soon. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Kristie

World Down Syndrome Day

I don't really have much news to share at this point, but I do want to make sure that I acknowledge the fact that today is World Down Syndrome Day and express how blessed I feel to be the Mommy of a little girl with Down Syndrome. I can't wait until I am the Mommy of three! I am posting a few pictures of Mikaela in celebration of this day. The first one is her dressed as a princess for Halloween. The second is a shot of her with Josiah and Gabriela showing off the outfits that they got for Christmas. Next year, I will make sure to have shots of Mikaela with Isabelle and Hallie.

Several people have asked how our Jimmy John's Fundraiser went, but we don't know yet. As soon as we hear something, we will post about it. Many, many thanks to everyone who participated! It was an encouraging evening for all of us.

We really hoped that by this point we would have had our LID (Log-in Date - the date that our papers are officially entered into the Chinese Central Adoption System). We sent our papers to our agency near the beginning of February, and they sent them on to China right at the end of Chinese New Year. We thought it would only be a week or so after that before we had our LID. Unfortunately, our agency just discovered that one of our papers had been misplaced in China, and no one had let them know about it. Nothing has been done with our papers at all! They were able to straighten everything out, and are very optimistic that we will have LID soon. Please keep praying.