The Wait Is Over

This morning went very well and Owen is so beautiful! He has been perfect so far. He is fighting a cold but he has not cried much and seems to be opening up as the day goes on. He can walk a few steps and is trying to talk (just making some sounds). Melissa claims he has already said, "mama".

Just look at this face.........

As you can see this little guy is adorable and we are showering him with love and attention.

Note to Elliot: I have not been able to upload a video on here "so you can see him move". I will try to get it done for you asap.

Just A Few Hours Away!

It is 5:33am in Kunming and we are leaving to go get "Finn McMissile" in just over 2 hours. We are both ready and can not wait to meet the little man. We went to bed early last night hoping to get some much needed sleep. I think we turned the lights off about 8:00pm. I was wide awake at 12:49am. I went into the office and read my book. Melissa woke at 1:30am and she has been up since - while I was lucky enough to catch about one more hour of sleep before giving up. We are debating if WalMart is open this early so I think we will give it a shot and walk the half mile to find out.

There are several families in our hotel that are adopting children this week. Our agency has us and two other families so we met with them and went to dinner last night. One of the families Melissa had been comunicating with online so it was almost like we knew them. They are adopting their fourth child. The other family is adopting for the first time as they have several biological children with the youngest being 10 years old. They are the "older" people in our group but are listening to God and starting again with a 15 month old. We have been warning them that you can not stop at one!

Well we are heading to WalMart and will post new photos of Finn as soon as we get back to the room this afternoon.

The Forbidden City & Temple of Heaven

Saturday was another good day for us and we visited the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. The Forbidden City was amazing with the size and the details in the buildings. The Forbidden City is located at Tiananmen Square. It is very cold in Beijing in the winter but there were thousands of people out and about. THe Forbidden City was built in 1406-1420 by one million laborers. The emperor lived there until 1924.

We then visited the Temple of Heaven which is a majestic imperial temple and park where empoerors offered sacrifices. Basically it is a huge park whith people hanging out dancing, playing games, singing, and praying.

We did some shopping and that was an adventure. The sales people attack you with products and wanting to buy from them. It is several stories high and is almost like a flea-market with each booth having an aggressive sales person. We bought one item that started out at 480 rmb (approx $80.00) and we bought it for 60 rmb (approx $10.00). Never pay retail!

We left for Kunming about 6:00pm and we were both exhausted from lack of sleep. It was a miserable 3.5 hour flight and we both struggled. Once at the room we made a few calls home and went to sleep. This morning we are going to try and go to a Christian church we found on the internet.

One story we have to share. When we arrived in Kunming the airplane parked out on the tarmac and two buses were there waiting to take us to the terminal. Both buses were packed with people (standing room only). Just before our bus took off a Chinese man jumped off and ran just off the tarmac and went behind a small sign. It loked like he was releiving himself. The bus pulled away and then cirlced the plane to pull back around by the sign the man was using. Well, the man was not relieving himself like you would think. He was squating and going #2 right there for the entire bus to watch. The bus waited, and no one on the bus other than Melissa and I seemd bothered by this. He stood up and came right back onto the bus, grabbed a handle rail, and we went to the terminal. Unbelievable!

Please excuse any typing mistakes we make on the blog. There is no spell check and the screen is very small and hard to see. In China you cannot access blogs. So we have to go to anotehr site and then link into our home computer to post. When we do this the screen is very small.

Tomorrow morning at 8:10am we leave to go get Owen. Today we are going to WalMart to get some things we will need for him. We are excited to see him for the first time. As most of you know we received very little information about him so we are anxious to hold him and know more. It is hard to think tomorrow morning we will have 4 kids!

Melissa and I talked yesterday about the life Iris would have had if she had not been adopted. How would she have survived on here own? It is sad to think how many orphans there are in the world and how many of them will never get the chance to live a decent life.

The Great Wall

Today was a much better day (even though it is very cold which is not good for site-seeing). We both got some much needed sleep and a good breakfast. We started the day at the great wall which is amazing. The area we visited was all steps so we got a good workout and will probably be sore tomorrow.

We placed a lock on the railing with our name engraved on it. Still not sure what this means. The Jayhawk sweatshirt was a huge hit on the wall.

Melissa's favorite stop of the day was the Summer Palace. This would be a great place to visit in the spring or fall. There are gardens with a large lake and lots of steps to climb. We also stopped at a few other places before returning to the hotel.

Tomorrow we will visit the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven before heading on to Kunming. We are only a few days away from seeing Owen. We hope he is ready and not too scared.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles!

It is now 11:35am cst Thursday morning and we just arrived at our hotel in Beijing. I think that figures to be 32.5 hours since we woke up Wednesay morning. We did make it and we are exhausted. Going to bed nownd will post tomorrow.

And We're Off, Slowly!

The morning started off early with Jake picking us up at 3:30am. Arrived at terminal A in KC (as we purchased tickets through United) and they informed us the tickets are actually Continental (United purcahsed them recently)and their counter is still in terminal C. Once we arrived at terminal C we learned they cancelled our flight to Newark, NJ. So they booked us on a Delta flight which is in terminal B.

The bad part is that our orginal flight had us going to Newark and then straight to Beijing. Now we have already been to Salt Lake City and are now sitting in San Fransisco waiting a flight to Japan. From Japan to Beijing hopefully. This mess is also causing us to get to Beijing 9 hours later than originally planned (arrive at midnight). Long day? After all of that - they provided a $12.00 meal ticket!!!! Great deal.

The other item that caused heart ache is we purcahsed a new camera to take on this trip (a nice small camera - old one was rather large). The sales-kid at Best Buy told us to purchase a disk for storing pictures. So we handed us one and we threw it in the bag. So this moring after about 3 pictures of the great adventure the camera tells us the memory is full and to insert memeory card. Wrong size card! Luckily we were able to purchase the micro-SD from a store in the San Fran airport at only twice the cost.

I think we both relaxed and realized we are not getting frustrated today and we will get there eventually. We will hopefully post some good pictures in Beijing tomorrow.

China here we come.

We have travel plans. We are really going! The best part is that we will be home before Christmas.

WE leave for Beijing on Dec 7th, get into Kunming on Dec 10, get Owen on Dec 12th. Leave for home on Dec 21st.

Now I must go plan the other 10 million things I need to do.