Christmas is everywhere!

We don't want anyone in our family to forget it is Christmas. We miss Eliza and are excited to go home and show her our new family member.

Steph: I took this picture before we left, thinking it might be nice to see Eliza with the tree. Isn't she just as cute as can be? I do miss all our holiday traditions together, but we will still have a Christmas when we get home even though it will be New Year's Eve!

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve

Well, now it is nightime and really Christmas Eve. We went out to eat at Papa Johns and splurged. We had a lot of food and were very much a center of attention. Then we went over to McDonalds for ice cream. It is cheap there. Grace isn't much at eating and walking, so we stood around and ate the ice cream. We were very much the most interesting thing anyone had every seen.

Oh, and the chicken man. Heck if I know what he does, but he is always there tooting his horn and selling little chicken eggs. Odd to us.

Christmas Eve

Zach looking over the Pearl River

Eating at the Cow and Bridge again!

Kirk outside a store. We thought they sold surplus mushrooms at first!

It is early in the morning Christmas Eve now. The last two days were easy going days. We needed to stick around the hotel while the paperwork for the US visa was being processed in case there were any questions. Our guide takes care of the presentation, but in case of questions we need to be available. It was colder than before-- mid 50s. Grace "passed" and so we went to the consulate yesterday afternoon for the swearing in ceremony. It was fairly quick, but only Zach wanted to go with us.

Afterwords we ate dinner with the CHI folks and Connie. I'm not sure that the real Cantonese dishes Connie chose went over so well. My family doesn't like seafood, so the jellyfish salad and shrimp rice weren't appreciated. The ketchup covered beef wasn't too good either. The lemon chicken was better when I poured some sugar on it. We passed on the pigeon and swan!

Today we are going to look around here a bit more and try to find some small Christmas presents to have. There is one CHI family left (Vicky's) that we may meet up with to wander the streets. The others leave in the next few hours to be home for Christmas. Our frequent flyer flights required us stay until the 30th.

Tomorrow we are probably all going to Hong Kong. Now that Grace has a US visa, and is within the seven days of leaving China, she can go to/from Hong Kong without problems. We have multiple entry visas so that is also good. We are deciding what to do there, but will probably end up at Disneyland. It's small and has less attractions, but it is still fun. Or we may just tour Victoria Peak, etc. Or, maybe we'll just stay here. The train takes about an hour and a half to get there and they have one of the best subway systems in the world, but it is still expensive. It would be their Christmas presents. It is fun to be flexible at this point.

Kids playing Uno together. Grace understands most of the concepts, but the wild card throws her a bit still.

More Guangzhou pictures...

On the rooftop garden at our hotel
Zach loves the crazy mice at the pet market
Playing at the exercise park on Shamain island. Olivia made some friends. It seemed to be a new experience for Grace. I think this was her first time on a teeter totter. It's going to be good for her to play at recess and get stronger. Poor girl, we've been wearing her out!

Zach before his injury...he banged his thumb nail on one of the pieces of equipment. It hurt pretty bad and bled a bit but it isn't too bad. The cute little girl in this picture came over and started singing a Happy New Year song to us in English. She was adorable! Our girls sange a little Chinese song the Kirk taught Olivia and she was impressed. Her mother was very proud.

Olivia and Emily, from Texas. They looked similar with their clothes and glasses and were about the same age. She chatted with this new friend quite a while.

Zach digging in to the Masaman curry at the Cow and Bridge. It has great Thai food and we decided it would count as Zach's birthday dinner. He had his special dinner after all! And it was his favorite type of food.

I'll post more about today, Tuesday, later but thought I'd at least get some of these pictures of the last few days up. Take care all!

Stephenie

Bladerunner

As we went down the street this evening to eat, I felt like I was on the set of Bladerunner. Before all the decay, but still a very busy and exciting feel to it. The stills and video were shot very close to our hotel. It's interesting because the other side of the hotel has the pet and wet markets. They are very dirty and old looking and then there is this side. I think Stephenie will post more about today and the street, but look at the video!

Beautiful Morning in Guangzhou!

I will add some pictures later, but before breakfast I thought I'd report on our first day here. Since we arrived late Friday night, Saturday was our first full day here. The weather is just beautiful and with all the reports of snow back home in Utah, we feel pretty lucky!
Grace had her medical check yesterday and they talked to us about her eyes, which we knew about of course. She desperately needs glasses. We will be taking her right to the doctor when we get home and get that taken care of first. Otherwise, she is quite healthy and just needs some good food and exercise so she can be healthy and strong.
We also did some paperwork prep and visa pictures so we'll be ready for our Consulate appt. The rest of the day was free so we expored the area and shopped some.

Right outside this Shifu-Holiday Inn is the pet market! The kids loved walking by all the puppies, rabbits, turtles, fish and birds. They have all kinds of animals in cages and pens. After the pet market is the herb and spice market. There's all kind of weird stuff and I can't recognize everything but they do have lots of fungus and mushrooms and even dried snakes and seastars! I don't know what they do with them and I'm not sure about the live scorpions we saw later either.
We head to the Safari park today with our CHI group which the kids should enjoy. It is Sunday so I was thinking I'd put together a Christmas program for our family but invite the rest of the group since they are probably missing going to church as well. The Sunday before Christmas is my favorite service! We will have to sing some Christmas hymns and the story from the scriptures. I'll have the morning the figure that all out though.
More later...

Stephenie

Goodbye Xi'an, Hello Guangzhou

We arrived safely in Guangzhou and are in our new hotel now. We said goodbye to many new friends and we have a lot of good memories. Zach and Kirk loved playing Kick the Can with their friends next to the city wall in Xi'an (built 1300 years ago). Amanda was wonderful and we gave her the rest of the donated money from Kirk's Eagle project.

Grace was a bit nervous on her first flight, but was only scared when we landed. I think she thought we were crashing. We made it, however. Tomorrow (or I guess today now) we get her medical done and all the paperwork.

Our last meal with Amanda. Zach is "enjoying" the split duck head.

A couple more picture from Xian: 2 are from Amanda's Starfish home. Amanda is standing with Elisa, who is another friend we made through Amanda. The boys had a great time playing with Elise's 3 sons who are close in age to our boys. Brook is shown with one of the babies. She just finished a Chinese program through BYU and is from Springville. She was there volunteering for a week before heading back to Nanjing. We had such a great time with all of our new friends in Xian. We were really lucky to find such good people from our church there who helped us out in so many ways. Elise's family was just a few minutes from our hotel, so it made it easy for the boys to get together. We hope we will be able to visit them all again someday! I suggested a reunion in Utah!

I don't know if we ever posted one of these pictures of our first meeting with Grace. Tori was our guide and she was just wonderful. Grace was a little scared, and I found out she wasn't sure about leaving her Mama back at the SWI. Actually, those are pretty good signs, I don't think we'll have many problems with attachment.

Tomorrow, our group heads to the Animal park. It is supposed to be pretty fun-we'll see!

Drum Tower, Bell Tower, and more (Lots of pictures)

Let the pictures and videos tell the story.

A couple of comments

We have been asked about Grace's eyes, so I'll tell you what I know. She seems to see quite well, but has problems with depth perception and focusing on some objects. She can be quite tentative around stairs and escalators, but has developed ways to work with both. When we watch TV, or if she is looking closely at papers, she will turn her head and look sideways. I suppose that helps her to use one eye or the other better. She doesn't seem to favor either eye that I can tell. She seems to get along very well mostly and knows all of us by sight. When we get back we will take her to our optometrist quickly, as well as the pediatrician. She is very healthy and happy. She has mechanisms she uses to get around her sight problems and hopefully with good care, they will be taken care of in the states.

Having fun in X'ian

Wow! Yesterday was an exciting day at the Muslim Market. It is so fun to have someone who knows the people and the area to take us around. Amanda is my kind of person, she always plans for a meal and food when we are out! We found hot chocolate at McDonalds, which Zach was excited about. Mike took this picture from outside. This was a great McDonald's advertisement since many people almost got whiplash staring.

We went through many little stalls looking at items. I'll post a few of them here.

Muslim market

Today was a free day and we spent much of it with a new friend we met in Xi'an. Amanda has a foundation here that takes care of many orphan children and Kirk's Eagle project was bringing donations to her. She has taken us to many locations in the city we would never have found on our own and has been wonderful to be with. She is originally from Africa and has now lived in China for the past four years. She is a member of our church and she has introduced us to other members here. She loves the children and is one of the kindest people I have ever met. If you get a chance, go to her websites and check out what she does, (She is the one in the red jacket). (http://www.thestarfishfosterhome.org/http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com/ chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com).

We went through the Muslim market today and it is a shopping extraveganza. The children (and I) were very tired by the end of the trip. Here is a small video of a street scene. Everyone knows Amanda, so we got some very good deals there. We tried some of the street foods and many were very good. Some, not so appetizing, we didn't try. This is a picture of Zach buying some sugar cane. You chew on it and get the sugar out and spit out the rest.



The girls and I came back to the hotel because I needed to make sure the documents were all in order for the adoption. The boys and Stephenie went with Amanda to the Starfish home to help out and see what was going on there. The boys have a few friends that are their same age from the church here and they have really enjoyed being with each other. These kids don't see many contemperaries and so they have liked being together. They swam and had pizza last night and today they are getting together at their apartment for more time together.

We are becoming pretty good at the taxis and getting around now. It is fun, exciting, and sometimes death-defying getting out here. It is a blast.

Oh, we saw a cat in the Muslim market sleeping on some silk articles. At first Stephenie thought it was dead or skinned, but it was a real live breathing cat. Our kids loved patting it and it just stayed put enjoying the attention. We've seen a lot of dogs, but only a few cats around. Down in Guangzhou they probably know to stay hidden!

Just a couple of pictures

Sisters speaking "sister". The talked and talked, but never said too many words the other really understood. They had a great time.

We are now seven

We went to meet Grace at the Civil Center, but when we arrived the director wasn't there and the office was locked up. Our guide told us we could wait in the van or outside, so we stayed in the van... for about thirty seconds. Then Stephenie looks out and says, "There's Grace!" After a shocked few moments, we piled out to see a scared little girl with her companion. She was shy and a little sad.

After waiting for a few minutes, it was obvious no one was coming to the office, so we all went back to our hotel. We signed some papers and they showed us information about Grace. She held my hand as we went into the hotel and opened up as we sat down. She named us "mama" and "baba" and watched the family. Zachary gave her a Starburst which she very much enjoyed!

She is very adorable and very small. When Stephenie asked her what she thought of her new family, she replied, "Beautiful". She played with the kids in the room until it was time to go eat, and she and Eliza have something in common! She ate everything on her plate and loved it all. That could also have been because she ate very early and was hungry, but she was very happy to eat. She patted her stomach after and was very satisfied.

I'm sure Stephenie will add more soon, but I thought I'd take a few minutes and put something here.

In Xi'an

Well, we arrived around 2 pm today in Xi'an. It is much warmer and greener here. Around 50-60 degrees. We changed our rooms from two connected rooms to their "family suite". It costs more, but we get free Internet in the Executive Lounge, breakfasts, and a cocktail spread. It is nicer to have the three rooms, but it is more expensive, about $60 more per day. I think it will give us much more room and be easier to work with, however.

We meet Grace tomorrow afternoon. We meet our guide in the lobby at 4 pm and we drive to the adoption center. We don't know if other families will be there also, but we will. We are supposed to be there at 4:10, so tomorrow's the day. We're excited and scared, but I think everyone is feeling much better about everything.

Anyway, the kids are getting pizza for dinner and Stephenie and I are still deciding what we are going to have. And we are trying to get hold of a contact here in Xi'an to go to church with and give Kirk's Eagle Project donations to. Hopefully that all works out as well.

The Pearl Market

Today, we decided to visit the Pearl Market. It is just a few harrowing street crossings and one over-the-street bridge to get there.