Grateful

There are no words to express how grateful our family feels this holiday season.  Everyday we look at our family James and I can't believe what we see.  Andersen and Paige are huge piles of love and Parker and Xander love to be loved and love to laugh.  When we started this adoption journey there was no way we could have ever guessed how perfectly two more kids would fit into our family.  Each day our house is filled with a wonderful chaos of kids being monsters and chasing each other, to Parker pushing Andersen around on a rolly toy (yes, Parker pushes Andersen) to Paige teaching the boys how to give the best hugs and tickles and trying to teach them how to read :-)

Andersen and Paige are doing great in school and are enjoying their new roles with 2 new brothers.  Xander is doing wonderful.  He went to the Scottish Rite Hospital to have his hand checked out in October.  First, can I say what a FABULOUS place that is!  The doctor took some x-rays and decided to wait and see how his hand grows over the next year or so and wait and see how he uses it before we decide what treatment he will need, if any.  We were very pleased to hear that they were not going to do any surgeries just yet so that we can make sure we are making his hand work the best way possible for him instead of rushing into surgery to "fix" his hand.  Xander's favorite things to do are play with Andersen's toys and be chased around the house.  He also enjoys standing on Kirby (our dog) while trying to reach Andersen's toys.

  

Parker is also doing very good.  He had a birthday earlier this month and is now 2.  He is still very cautious of new people but is happy to hand out high-fives and knuckle bumps as long as you don't try to hold him :-)  He loves to hangout with Paige in her room and listen to her read books.  He also loves to dance anytime he hears music and he is super ticklish.  We are looking forward to his appointment at the Scottish Rite Hospital at the end of December.

We hope your Christmas is full of love!

Update

We are in a groove!  Life has seemed to settle in to a new normal and it is wonderful.  We have figured out how to get up and dressed in the morning with everyone fed and happy, I almost think we are more efficient in the mornings then when we just had 2 kids.  The boys are adjusting great to being surrounded by animals and brothers and a sister and new faces.  They love to explore inside and outside and they love the water.  They are both finally on a more normal sleeping schedule and are on the mend from RSV.  Xander has an appointment at the Scottish Rite in October and Parker's appointment is in December.

Here are a some pictures of the boys:

                         

HOME!!!

We were so excited to walk through our door!! It was fantastic to finally bring the boys into our house and just relax! We drove up and found an awesome banner on our garage door from our youth group at church. You guys are my favorite!! Then we walked in the kitchen and found welcome home signs from our fantastic friends the Mertz family, along with brownies...yum! And our freezer had a dinner from the amazing Stern family. Have I mentioned how much we love our friends? I can't even find the words to explain how completely loved all of our friends and family have made us feel throughout this entire journey. Thank you doesn't seem like a big enough statement to express the gratitude we feel for all of your love and support.

So we arrived home and all of the kids went immediately into a bath to get the travel funk off. Then Andersen had 2 long awaited peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Paige had cheese! (Cheese was very hard to come by in China) Then we had to head out the door to the kids school where their teachers were sweet enough to let us come to the school at the end of the day and let the kids see their classrooms and drop off their school supplies. Then we headed back home and did our best to stay awake past 5:00...we lost that battle.



We decided the only way we were going to keep everyone awake would be to get out of the house so we ran a couple of errands and then returned home and were all in bed and asleep by 7.

The boys had a rough time sleeping. Parker might have slept better if Xander would not have screamed from 2:45am until 5:30am. But the next morning Andersen and Paige were up and ready for their first day of school!




They had a great day and school and were glad to see all of their friends again. Andersen's friends had so many questions that his teacher had him stand at the front of the class and answer all of their questions about his trip.

The boys had a rough morning but after their naps in the afternoon they were full of smiles. They are even enjoying Kirby (our dog) and Parker even spoon fed her from the table during dinner last night. Kirby was in heaven and I'm sure was not excited that we told Parker that the doggy does not get to eat at the table.

We are looking forward to our weekend with no appointments or schedules!

Location:Flower Mound,United States

Travel Adventures Wrap Up

The kids all did great on the flight after the long delay in Hong Kong. We were able to reserve seats that had bassinets for the boys (I didn't even know those existed!) so they slept for the majority of the 4 hour flight as did Andersen, Paige and James. When we arrived in Korea we found out that our next flight was also delayed but only for an hour and a half so we found a good play area for the kids, had some lunch and just enjoyed stretching our legs.













Then it was time to board the looong flight home. The kids all did great on this flight also! Andersen and Paige started off the flight watching a couple of movies and then enjoyed some naps and other activities the rest of the time. The boys, napped, played and ate their way through the 13 hour flight. James and I tried really hard to avoid prolong crying from either of the boys because the flight attendants with this airline come running (almost literally) at the first sign of any baby noise. They come ready to "help" by making faces and noises at your baby and trying to reach to take them from you if they are not quieting quickly enough. They stay at your seat until your baby is calmed just in case you need them. We watched them do it on all of the other flights with other babies so we tried really hard to make sure they didn't camp out with us :-)

We were relieved to arrive back in Dallas and after a little slow down processing adoption paperwork in immigration we were greeting by the most awesome friends and family anyone could ask for. They made us banners and came to welcome our family home, we felt completely surrounded by love.

I didn't have any extra hands to get my camera out to take extra pictures of everyone who came so I don't have any to post. But here is a picture of our wonderful send off to China. The day we left for China we walked out our front door to find our fantastic friends the Mayes family, standing with signs and waving pom poms...how great are all of our friends?!!

Travel Adventures Day 1

We have started our very slow journey home. Our van driver was caught in traffic so the company sent a back up to drive us to the Hong Kong border. This was great except both boys finally calmed down right about the time to change all of our things to a new van and fill our immigration paperwork for the border. The van section of the journey took about 3 1/2 hours of mostly comfortable travel. We arrived at the Hong Kong airport to find out that there is a typhoon in Korea that has delayed our 12:45am flight to 4:30am which means instead of a 3 hour wait for our flight we now are waiting 7. So the good news is that should shorten our layover in Korea. It was supposed to be a 6 hour layover so I'm hoping it will all even out somewhere in the middle.

Here is how we entertain ourselves at the Hong Kong Airport:













James and I decided we should sleep in shifts so that we could be sort of alert parents. Since I am more of a night owl he took first shift...



Then Paige gave in...



then Parker...







and Andersen...



Xander is wondering what happened to the party, it's only 1am...


finally, Xander...

Last Day in China

There is an island near Guangzhou that most adoptive families used to stay but the main hotel there is under construction so not everyone stays there now. But the island is known for fun shopping for tourists and we heard it was very pretty so we decided to give it a try. Both rumors were true, we found some great treasures and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. We enjoyed watching all of the photographers take pictures of brides and other occasions that we didn't quite understand. Our guide told us that the locals like to take day trips to the island because it has a much slower pace, it's less crowded and its beauty. The Haas family is staying on the island so they showed us their favorite shops and restaurant.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

This is a picture of us with the Haas family and our guide "Judy"



There are several status around the island but a lot of adoptive families take this picture so we did too...

Xander had a messy lunch and lost his pants :-)










These are a couple of the other statues:











Here are a couple of other quick pictures we took while leaving...

Missing in Action

Hello! Sorry we have been behind on our blogs lately, I came down some some kind of nasty sinus infection that had me in bed if we were not at an appointment. James has been successfully manning the troops while I have been useless. Our guide was able to get me some stronger medicine yesterday morning and this morning I woke up feeling like a new woman! I'm still not back up to normal but I am at least able to get out of bed, hooray.

For some reason I'm not able to pull up our previous blogs so I can't remember where we left off but I'll try to catch you up as best we can. On Monday we had our appointment at the US Consulate, it was very quick and well organized. We went through security when we first got there and they took our cameras to hold until we were done and then we basically just stood and took a citizenship oath on behalf of the boys and then gave them our paperwork so they could process their visas.

Here is a picture as we were leaving:




After the consulate appointment we went to the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum, you can read about it here for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Clan_Academy

It is tradition in China to have chops made with the kids names, they are stamps. Our guide said this is the place the locals come to have them made so we decided to do the same. We enjoyed walking around the museum while we waited for the chops. Here are some pictures:












After the museum, I went to bed for the rest of the day and James took all of the kids swimming and played in the hotel room the rest of the day.

On Tuesday, we went to the Safari Park because we've heard there were pandas. The Safari Park was really beautiful with kind of a tropical feel with all of the greenery. There was a dinosaur exhibit that the kids enjoyed with life size dinosaurs living in the trees and hills. We also enjoyed the giraffes, monkeys, pandas, koalas and lots of other animals. I didn't take a ton of pictures but here are a few:

















Tuesday was also Xander's 1st Birthday!!! The hotel brought a cake to our room for him so we had a little family celebration.



















And some fun giggling:















Now we are all caught up. Today we are headed out to explore for a bit and then our driver comes to take us to Hong Kong at 6:00pm. And our flight leaves Hong Kong at 12:45am on Thursday and arrives in Korea at 5:15am on Thursday and then we fly from Korea to Dallas!!!!