We had a long flight over after seven and a half hours at O'Hare in Chicago. We had 13.5 hours of flight going over lakes Michigan and Superior, Hudson Bay, into the arctic circle, the north pole, and Siberia before reaching Beijing. getting to the hotel from the airport was ugly and I would just as soon forget about that part of it.. Spent a lazy day today and will head to Zhengzhou tomorrow. Both of us are missing Emily terribly. Can't believe how hard it is to be away from her.

The Return to China

September must be our month to be in China.  We will be landing in Beijing three years to the day since we first met our daughter.  This time we are returning to get our son.  We will spend one full day in Beijing and then fly to Zhengzhou in Henan Province.  He will join our family on September 9th.



Emily's Court Date For Re-Adoption

Yesterday we had to go before a Judge here in our county to domesticate Emily's foreign adoption. This wasn't mandatory since her adoption was completed in China, but it will enable us to now file and get a birth certificate issued from the State of Georgia. We weren't sure this was going to go off as originally scheduled. On April 27th, a couple of weeks after we filed her papers, an EF4 tornado hit the town and leveled a good portion of it. Thankfully our immediate area didn't receive much damage, but sadly there were 8 fatalities in the areas that were. This included a family of 4 whose home was in the direct path of the storm. Our town is now in the process of rebuilding.

Emily continues to grow and we are amazed each day at just how far she has come since she joined our family.

Enjoying A Nice Spring Day At Home and the Tennessee Aquarium

Happy Halloween!!

Emily is still too young to really get into the activities of our churchs Fall Festival, but who could resist dressing her up anyway. Hope all of our friends and travel companions are having fun during the holidays with their precious family additions!

Happy 1st Birthday Emily!!!

Today was Emily's first Birthday!! We are so happy that we were able to celebrate it with her. She had a very full day. We started out at church this morning and then had a "Happy Birthday/Welcome Home" celebration this afternoon. We've had her for about 5 weeks now but it seems like we've always had her. She enjoyed her party even though she wasn't sure about the cake. All in all it was a great day for us and her.

Recovering after a few days at home

We arrived home almost a week ago now and things are beginning to settle down and allow us to rest and recover from our journey. Emily is doing great. She actually slept all night last night in her crib. This was the first time we've been able to get her to do this since we got home. She has met many friends and family since landing here. We are so blessed to have her in our lives and we're still in awe at what transpired during the two weeks we were in her homeland China. Our plans were to post here about the trip, but China blocks most blog sites so it was just too difficult to try and upload photos. We were able to use our other site to keep everyone informed and show them all the sites we were experiencing. It was a once in a lifetime trip and we will never forget it.