As many of you know we were not able to access our blog in China. A little creepy but we seemed to make it. We just emailed our family and I will post updates and photos later. The trip was WONDERFUL and Kai is absolutely perfect! As soon as I get all of the pictures down loaded I will post pictures.
Shannon
Well after I roamed around in my ambian altered sleep, I figured I might as well try to go back to bed. I mean we are about to embark on a 30hr travel adventure! So, I did what any girl would do, found the bottle in the dark ( without waking Sean) and took the other 1 /3 of the original pill, that I had taken earlier in the evening which kept me asleep for exactly4 and 1/2 hours! Now just how long do you think this 1/3 kept me asleep????? You guessed it, 4 hours and a little change!!!!!!! I would say a little prayer here for ambian by it might come ac cross flip, when I truly am as serious as a mama with 8 hours of sleep can be!!!!!!!!!! See in LA!
Hey Mom and Dad I sure have missed you guys! Hope all is well! We love ya and will be praying for you! See ya soon.
Shannon
Well it is 2:23am....... I was sure that sleeping pill I took would at least get me to 3:00 or 4:00am...... YUKKKKKK! Know I just cruise the net and wait for everyone to get up!
We will post from LAX later today and then from Guangzhou ( ummmm that is at 6:20am on Thursday) . We are 12 hours ahead of you guys here so when you are getting ready for be we are pretty much getting up. After we board the cruise we probably will not have wireless access to it may be Monday before we are in Wuhan in a hotel where we can post again.
Please pray peace, blessings, and safety for our entire family.
Shannon
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We finally have our flights nailed down. We will be leaving on Sept 11 and returning on Sept the 29th! We will spend 5 days and 4 nights on a cruise down the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges Dam! For all of my homeschool friends this is the largest dam in the world. Have the kids check it out, it is way cool! We will be in Wuhan at the Best Western Mayflower Hotel from the 17th till the 25th. On the 25th we will fly to Guangzhou ( we will be staying at the Victory) and will depart Guangzhou on the 29th.
I don't think I had any idea how crazy this part of the process would be. It is very stressful! Trying to think of all of the little details is making me a crazy women,LOL! I am not a detail kind of gal. Gotta go add some more stuff to the list of things to buy before we leave.......geeezzzz I am going to be broke when all of this is over,LOL!!!!!!!!!!
Did I ever show the picture of Olivia's unfortunate dog encounter? We were at my bil last Christmas and he had some friend over with a dog. Olivia went to hug the dog..... and well..... you see that did not go so well. UGGGGGG! It has healed but she has a raised scar on the side of her nose. Now, you would think that would make her a little more leery next time but not my baby girl! She is not afraid of anything ( umm... not true, she is afraid of bugs and rain,LOL). She will STILL run up to totally strange dogs and try to love all over em!
We finally received TA ( travel approval) on Thursday! We are so excited! Now we just have to wait for our consulate appointment ( should get it on Monday) and we will be able to book our travel. We have tentative dates of Sept 1oth - Sept 28th. Just 15 or so days from now!!!!!!!!!!!! Wooooo Hoooooooo!
Hey Kelli! Hope you find our blog. It was so good to see ya yesterday! Her is a shout out to all of the B family!
Shannon
Ok, Ok...... We have had Miss Alexandra's name picked out for a LOOOONG time! Years actually! Hence the title of the blog Alexandra Li. Soooo when we first saw her Chinese name we loved it ( Kai, pronounced Ki, rhymes with tie). We then decided to name her Alexandra Kai Li. So when all of our family and friends ( us a well) starting talking about calling her Kai instead of Alexandra it was a hard mental switch! Both of our girls have very traditional names and I just don't ever want Alexandra Kai to ever feel like she is the odd man out, but yet it is a BEAUTIFUL name and it reflects who SHE is. I'm afraid I will scar her for life if we call her the wrong name! Don't laugh! I am serious!!!! I lay awake at night worrying about this! I think I need some kind of anxiety pills, but then of course I couldn't go get my daughter!LOL!!!!!!
PS. For all of those not in the know, China has recently said you may not adopt if you are on any kind of anti depressant!!!!!!!!
First of all thank you all so much for all of the comments! You guys are great! In all of my excitement on referral day I forgot to put down what orphanage Alexandra Kai Li is from! She is from the Daye SWI. It is in the city of Daye and is about 50 miles southeast of Wuhan.There are very few referrals from this particular orphanage, so information is limited. We know that she is or has been in foster care. If anyone has any info on Daye, the city or the orphanage please share! I am dying to know more!
In other news, we received the translated information about Alexandra! She is described three times as naughty! Cracks me up! One says " Naughty little Ye Meng Kai"! Soooooo funny!
Shannon
Ok, so we are finally on the down hill slide! We have a LID of 11/17/05 and are expecting our referral in the next two weeks! I am getting up every morning doing hair and makeup and looking for the "perfect outfit", so when the time comes, I am READY! Lights, camera, action! We have waited for this for SOOOOOOOOOO VERY LONG, it will be so nice not to wonder WHEN any more. Stay tuned!
Well , It looks like it has been a year since my last post! It has just been so hard with the wait stretching out from 6 months to who really knows! It is looking like we will get our referral sometime between April and May. I have decided I really need t start blogging again so I will began to postmore often! Alexandra Li
We FINALLY have a LID, what is a LID you ask? Well, that is your log in date, the date that China logs in your dossier into their system! This makes you official and the count down starts from this date! So, Nov 17, 2005 will be one of the most important dates of our journey to our sweet baby girl! The wait is looking like anywhere from 8 to 10 months but could speed up ( I am praying for that one) or slow down at any time! It seems that in one of the provinces that many internationally adopted babies come from, has had an issue with baby trafficking, so they have halted adoptions from that paticular province till they can have a resolution am not clear on all of the details just yet but hope to sort it all out and document it for Alexandra to have when she gets older. I am in the very early stages of starting a life book (similar to a scrapbook)for Alexandra to document our journey to her and to document her journey to us!
that's all for now, must go partake in my drug of choice these days, shopping of course! Hope you all have a very merry Christmas!
Ok, Ok, I know I have not bloged in a while but honestly I just have to sometimes pretend it is not really happening, the adoption that is ( call it self preservation)! You see, what we thought would be a 6 month wait, has turned into an 8 to 12 month wait! We were hoping to travel in late spring or early summer and it is looking more like fall or even winter! Sooooooo, in order to cope I have to put it in the back of my mind or I would totally loose it!
It seems the CCAA ( the powers that be in China) have slowed down the process a bit and depending on how many people you ask, you will get that many different explanations! So, I have passed the time with Christmas shopping!
Want to hear another Olivia story? We were in the car last week and Olivia says" Mom, do you feel married?" Me " Do I feel married?" Olivia, " yah, do you feel married?" Me " Yes, I do." Olivia, " I do too." Victoria " What is she talking about!" Me " I have no idea!"
Another one you say? Olivia " Mom where do babies come out?" Me, huge breath " well, they come out of your vagina." Olivia " what's that?" Me "Your tee tee." Olivia " Ohhhh, that's funny!"
Ummm, funny is not how I would describe it, but I did not feel the need to go into great detail on birthing babies with my 4 year old! That's all for now!
We are officially DTC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are soooo excited! Friday morning around 6:00 a.m I was down stairs in the living room doing my Bible study. I could hear little foot steps coming down the stairs, then Miss Olivia came around the corner with her blanket over her head ( this is an every morning ritual, she covers her head with her blanket, we pretend to be scared, she takes the blanket off and says " its just me! Olivia!" and we say "Ohhhh you scared us!") she crawled up in my lap. I told her we were going to Pei Wei tonight for Chinese food to celebrate. She looked like she didn't remember Pei Wei so I told her it was the place with the chop sticks. She looked puzzled for a minute then she said " Oh, the place with the crackers". I was trying to figure out what in the world she was talking about when she said " you know, the sweet crackers with tags in em!" Sooooooo, sweet!
We put up our Christmas tree Friday as well. I know its 80 freaking ( freaking is not a curse word is it?) degrees but I figured it was a great way to celebrate being DTC! Victoria broke out the Christmas music ( of which she listens to ALL year!) and we got busy! We decided to make our smaller tree in the dining room a Chinese tree! We have decorated it with chop sticks and with some of those sweet crackers with tags in em! It is so cute! Victoria makes little ornaments with notes to Alexandra on them! one said " To my Chinese sister, good luck!" I love her so much, she is such a sweet girl! I told her the other day that we would try to visit China when Alexandra is older and she wanted to know if we could get another baby when we went!
Well, it has been kind of quite around here. We are hoping to be DTC tomorrow so it is another one of those hurry up and wait days! BUT, on a much happier note we are going to celebrate being DTC tomorrow by going out to eat at Pae Wae (sp) with the "P's" and the "E's"! I am so excited! After dinner we are going to go back to "Harriet's" ( come on "Harriet" you know who you are!) house for coffee and cake! Well, I better get to cleaning! The laundry continues to multiply somehow and ignoring it is not making it go away!
Ok, I know I am probably a bad mom. Last night it was somewhat cool and I really did not feel like taking the kids trick or treating so I did what any good mom would do. I went to Blockbuster rented Robots, came home ordered pizza, turned off all of the lights, went upstairs to our daughters room( she has a DVD player in her room, we do not, note to self: steal Victoria's DVD and give her the VHS), and told my 4 yo that Sat. was trick or treat day ( went to church fall fest). We all squished into Victoria's full sized bed and celebrated the fact that we had received out I-171 and that we would hopefully be DTC by Friday! We are one step closer to our new baby girl! Lord, please keep her safe and well.
