Today is a very special day.....it is Arabella's Bambi's (grandmother) birthday. This year Bambi will get a new granddaughter for her birthday. Soon to be two new granddaughters. (Miss Carli). So we say a big....HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAMBI. We love you!! We will celebrate with you when we get back home.
Our orphanage visit went very well. It is rated one of the top ones in China. We believe it too. It was very clean and there is no doubt that Arabella was loved and taken well care of. When her caregivers saw her she would get a big smile on her face. Some would try to hold her and she wouldn't go to them. The ones that she did go to when she looked at me she would reach out for me. We got to see where she slept. They put two little toddler beds together. Ying Ying who is one of the three babies being adopted slept right beside her. When we got to go in the play room....it just broke my heart. There were so many babies in there. I was able to go and talk to them. Though they had know idea what I was saying they loved me holding their hand and stroking their hair. I couldn't help but want to bring them all home with us. There is a total of about 200 children living in this orphanage.
Remember on the "Gotcha Day" post I was telling you about a newspaper reporter being there taking a lot of pictures because he was doing a story on Arabella's orphanage? Well...all three of us made the paper! It means so much to have a copy of it.
The group also presented the gifts we purchased for the children. All the daddies even assembled them before we left. The orphanage was very grateful.
After we left the orphanage we went to Arabella's finding spot. We were able to take a picture to show her later in years. Just being there really gave us a sense of being a part of her life before we came to China.
It ended up being a very long day. Arabella had about a 20 minute nap so you can imagine how a 22 month old is without a complete nap. When we got back to the hotel it was dinner, bath, and off to bed.
We are so glad that we chose to go to her orphanage today. God allowed us to see so many of our prayers answered. God's has been over this process from the very beginning just like we asked Him to be. We just give Him all the praise and glory for our new baby girl!
