We made it to Nanchang, the birthplace of our daughter! The flight was 2 hours and relatively uneventful. A bit of turbulence but otherwise fine. Today is the day we get our daughter. In 5 short hours our lives will change forever. And we can't wait. We are at the Gloria Plaza Hotel. Very nice. The beds are hard as rocks though! The staff is wonderful. I again can't say enough great things about the staff of Harrah's. Our guides are just phenomenal. I don't know where or how they find these folks but we sure are glad they did!
At 4:30pm we left the hotel headed to the civil affairs office receive our children. We were to be last in line as they went alphabetical. We weren't sure what really to expect in the way of emotion. But when they handed Catherine to me I lost it! Mark as usual was solid as nails. She is simply gorgeous. A headful of dark hair. The biggest deep, dark brown eyes. And is she weighs 16-17 lbs we are lucky. She is a peanut. She didn't cry, fuss and seem distressed at all. She just looked at me so intently.
We went back to our hotel after receiving our daughter. We changed her out of her outfit and carefully placed it in a plastic bad to save. We just let her sit in her diaper as she was very warm and sweaty. She only had on one long sleeve outfit with a diaper. I expected layers and layers but, nope!
She loves James. And he is so in love with her. He wants to hold her, push her in the stroller, help bathe her, feed her, you name it. I hope this continues when we get home! It is amazing that this journey has brought us to this beautiful little girl. She is a perfect gift from God for sure. We kept our faith, prayed fervently and never lost sight of His will being done for our family. We are so blessed. We can't wait for all of you to meet her.
Tomorrow we do lots of paperwork and got to Walmart to get baby supplies and whatever else we want or need. We plan to spend lots of time bonding and enjoying these scared moments with Catherine.
We are STILL having photo problems but a guy in our group is going to help us later to download them. Please stay tuned to see the most amazing child!
We love and miss you all.
Hello to my students from West Nassau High School that are following our journey.
Love, Donna, Mark, James and Catherine Anne XiuJin
