We are still alive...

We greatly apoligize for the lack of posting, but it has been crazy around here. We are in Guangzhou now at the White Swan. It is a very lovely hotel and our room faces the river. Jennifer has been very sick since we got here and is now on the mend after seeing the hotel doctor last night, so the last two days have been Daddy and Gracie time. We spent the day at the Zoo and have lots of pictures to share.


This one is my favorite :) How many times in your lifetime do you get to feed a white tiger cub! It was not until after the picture was taken did I think what Jens reaction would be!

So all of the paperwork is done and we are spending the next couple of days shopping for Gracie. We will post a few more pictures tomorrow, but we need to get a fussy one year old to bed. Take Care!

A few more...

Thanks so much for all the comments guys, its great to know we have so much support! Here are a few more pics. We are starting to calm down a bit on the traveling, so now we are catching up on our sleep and play time. Gracie is doing wonderful considering the change that she has been going through. She is happy and quick to smile, unless she is tired, and she will let you know when that is! We will post more details and stories about our little Hua-Hua (her nickname)soon.

We got her!

We are so sorry it has taken so long to post, but we have been going non stop since we got our Gracie last night (Monday) around 7 pm. Everyone is happy and healthy and tired! We will post more details later, but here are the first pics!!!

Hutong Tour

This reminded me of the poorer parts of Mexico. There was a nice lady who invited us into her compound. Basically, a hutong is like a little village with compound after compound. Each compound consists of several small buildings with a courtyard in the middle. The nice lady who showed us hers said it was only one family in her compound--but 8 people. Many compounds have several families. There are hundreds of hutongs around Beijing, and at one time (before the 1940's)our guide said that Beijing was mainly the Forbidden City surrounded by hutongs. Now, the hutongs are being demolished to build high-rises. The lady who showed us her compound said that she was going to hang on to her compound as long as possible because property values for them are going way up. She said her son will inheret it when he marries.

Doesn't Chairman Mao remind you of the Mona Lisa?

We had a great time at the Forbidden City--walked our feet off! It is huge! We walked along Tianammen (sp?)Square and paid our respects to Chairman Mao. The Forbidden City consists of hundreds of buildings. You will only see a few in our pics, but they are all decorated pretty much the same way. Each building has a significance, which our guide explained, but my retention is very low right now--lol. We went here yesterday (Saturday), then took a hutong tour, ate lunch (all the food is fantastic!), then to the silk factory, and lastly to an acrobatic show and dinner. Today is the Great Wall, jade factory, Olympic sites, and kung fu show. And tomorrow (Monday) we are off the Nanchang to get our girl!!!

The Temple of Heaven

Gorgeous, like the Summer Palace. We saw these on Friday.

Ni Hao!

I hope this goes through..had some troubles before. So we are here in Beijing! This city is huge and amazing. There is so much to see and do--it can be overwhelming. We have had a wonderful time so far. Our flight was long and achy, but ok other than that. We had no problems with finding our luggage--all the signs in the airport are in English, thankfully. We were exhausted, so just crashed that first night. We arrived at our hotel (Hongkun International Hotel) about 7 pm and we had been up over 24 hours. The next morning, we were wide awake at 4 am--lol. We went to the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. Both were beautiful! The artwork on the buildings is incredible--very detailed. Above you can see the pics. These are of the Summer Palace. I am limited to the number of pics I can post, so my next post I will put the Temple of Heaven.

Last night in the US....

We were lucky enough to have dinner tonight in San Francisco with John (Jennifers Brother), Mitch (Jennifers Step Brother) and Natalie (Mitch's Girlfriend). Had wonderful italian at a small family owned restaraunt in a questionable neighborhood, but it was very good, along with the company. We called it an early night since we are leaving for the airport at 5:30 am, but im sure we could have found more things to do here if we had more time! (You may have to download the picture and open it full screen to see what I mean) And sorry about the picture being a bit blurry, all the flashing lights played havoc on the auto focus...or it was the wine.

Let's Play Where in the World are Jen and Steve

If you guessed San Francisco, then you're right! We left early this morning with no problems. Our flight was very uneventful, which is always great when you're flying. Steve and I had fun walking around the wharf-especially watching the sea lions (they are the grumpiest animals--and loud-lol). We will be leaving in a few minutes to meet our brothers John and Mitch and friend Natalie for dinner, so check back for pics of our dinner. Steve and I are acting like regular tourists with our camera:) Tomorrow we are leaving the hotel at 5:30 to get to SFO by 6-these early hours are killing me! But then we will have a loooong flight to sleep on. We will post in several days from our next destination. Until then, I hope everyone is well and we can't wait to come home with our Gracie!

Love,
Jen

Two more pictures of Gracie's room

Gracie's Room

We had to move the crib into our room, but we are keeping her pack n play in her room for nap time. There are several things in her room right now that will not stay there--such as the car seat and the stuff in it (must have car seat protector and gear), and her stroller. The 3 pictures on the wall was an inspiration I had to copy pages out of a Winnie the Pooh book and frame them. The little wood cutouts on the wall have velcro on the backs of each piece so that Gracie can pull them off and move them around. I hope she enjoys them--as long as she doesn't eat them! At a year old, I am sure she is really teething. We are just in awe of the fact that we will be in Beijing in less than a week and in less than two weeks we will have our girl in our arms!

China or Bust!

Or our luggage may bust...check out our picks. And this does not include our clothes or personal items. We have used our spare bedroom as our loading dock. I suggested that we just pile what we want to take with us and then we will see what we can actually handle. Too much, you say? Awww, pshaw--Steve is a strong fella-he, he.

The countdown has begun...and a surprise!

So, depending on how you want to count it, we have six days till we leave for San Francisco, seven days till we leave for Beijing, or 13 days till we have Gracie in our arms. Right now we are going through our list and getting things done before we leave. With so many things in the air, thank goodness for lists! Ours has become smaller and we delight in crossing things off each day. We haven't added too many things, so it stays manageable.

One of the things we did have to add to the list was repacking Gracie after my co-workers at ACS threw me a SURPRISE baby shower in New Jersey! My two teammates, Jocelyn and Sandra apparently have been planning this for weeks! How they accomplished this, and what lengths they went through to do this for me speaks volumes as to the kind of great people they are. I am so lucky to be a part of a great team.


This is me at the shower, which was held in our hotel conference room. Notice the decorations that Jocelyn brought with her on the trip!



These are some of the project managers I work with in New Jersey. They are all a great bunch of people that took the time to come to a baby shower after work. Its hard enough to get guys to a baby shower, let alone after working a full day with me bugging them constantly! And we didn't even have to bribe them with alcohol! Jocelyn is to my right in the picture and Sandra is to my left. I cant thank you guys enough for all you have done!

So in less than a week, we will start having pictures of our trip up here, so check back often!

We Have CA and Itinerary--Oh, happy days!

We have scheduled and rescheduled so many times, but we finally received our consulate appt. and that was the key date we needed. So first let me say that these dates are not 100% confirmed because we sent them to our director this morning and he has to give the green light before we can actually purchase them. But here it is:

Tuesday-Oct. 30--DFW to SFO in A.M.
Wednesday-Oct. 31--SFO to Vancouver and then Vancouver to Beijing
Thursday-Nov. 1--Actually arrive in Beijing at 3:05pm Beijing time
Nov. 2-4--Tour Beijing
Nov. 5-Leave Beijing to Nanchang, Jiangxi Province
Nov. 5 or 6 will be Family Day--we get Gracie one of these days
Nov. 8--Gracie's 1st Birthday!
Nov. 6-11--Paperwork in Jiangxi and tour Nanchang
Nov. 12--Leave Nanchang to Guangzhou
Nov. 13--Gracie's physical
Nov. 14--Consulate Appt.
Nov. 15--Pick up paperwork at Consulate
Nov. 16--COME HOME!! 12:50 pm from Hong Kong (we will take a 3 hour train ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong)---8:31 am SFO and then 10:40 SFO--4:04 DFW.

We will be gone almost 3 weeks! It could be shorter if we didn't stay a night in San Francisco or tour Beijing, but we can't pass those up. We will post to this site while we are travelling, but we have been told that internet service, while free of charge in most hotels, is still very sketchy, especially in Beijing. I thought I would mention that because if you don't see posts for several days, it isn't because we aren't trying.

We will have more specifics when the travel agency books the domestic China flights and all of the activities. We know the Great Wall and Forbidden City will be included and hopefully a hutong tour, so check back-there is more come. In the mean time you can scroll down and look at our little cutie--we do all the time:)

Jennifer

Updates on Gracie!!!

We are so happy that we received updates on Gracie Monday! She seems healthy and happy, except the crying picture. I was amused that it was part of the pictures--maybe they are trying to prepare us as first-time parents---here is Gracie crying with a messy nose-lol. We were thrilled that we have a picture of her
ai-yi (foster mother or nanny) and one of her foster sisters. The last picture is of Chloe, daughter to one of our travelmates, and Gracie is to the right of Chloe.

Here are the stats we were given for Gracie:

At 11 months she is 17.6 lbs., 2 ft. 2 inches in length, and has 4 top teeth and 4 bottom teeth. On the American charts she is small, but in a good range-10th to 20th percentile. Many of the babies don't register on the American charts, so we are happy that Gracie is doing well. We just wish we could have her now to love her and hold her.

So when are we traveling? Our dates aren't set in stone yet, but, our director,Mr. Wu, believes that our schedule should be close to this:

Arrive in Beijing (if we want to go there, which we do)-Oct. 31-Tour Beijing
Arrive in Nanchang-Nov. 4--Gracie Day may be Nov. 5, then we stay there until local gov't clears all paperwork-about 5 days
Arrive in Guangzhou-Nov. 9-Tour Guangzhou Nov. 10th and 11th
U.S. Consulate Appts.-Nov. 12 and 13th
Leave Guangzhou-Nov. 14

These dates could change because Mr. Wu is waiting on our Consulate appt. dates to be confirmed. Right now is National Day--which is actually a week long--and the U.S. Consulate is closed.

As soon as our dates firm up, we will repost. We didn't think it was possible to get more excited, but I think we are there:)