Thank you for following our Third Great Adventure! We arrived in Detroit and hooked up with Grandma and Grandpa to catch our international flight to Tokyo. We boarded the plane and were told there was a mechanical issue with the airplane and we needed to wait for a part to be flown in from Minneapolis. We waited on the plane for four hours before it arrived. We couldn't exit the airplane due to "safety issues." The kids were great through it all, and Erin kept telling us today was a magical day!
The four hour delay caused us to miss both possible connections in Tokyo, so we spent the night in Japan. We stayed at a really nice Radisson and had a great breakfast. I walked around the grounds of the hotel, and they were absolutely gorgeous! The cherry blossoms were in bloom and the entire city was spotlessly clean!
April 5 - 6, 2009
April 7, 2009 Forever Family Day!
After about 32 hours of traveling we arrived in Guangzhou, China! We met our guide Cordelia at the airport and we were so incredibly happy to see her! She was also our guide in Guangzhou when we received Jaiden. It was like seeing family we hadn't seen for 2 years!
Cordelia took us to the van which took us to our hotel so we could wash our faces and change clothes since we didn't have any fresh clothing to put on after our night in Japan. We quickly freshened up, then it was back to the van for a drive across town to the Civil Affairs building where we would meet Christa Lan. I was super nervous! (My dad could not believe the way people drive in China!) We rode the elevator to the eighth floor and had a seat to wait a few minutes before they brought her out to meet us. There was only one other family there with their new baby who was doing really well. After reviewing some official documents, they brought out Christa Lan. She was dressed in a beautiful purple traditional Chinese pantsuit with a bright pink headband her nanny had given her. They handed her to me, and she cried for about 3 minutes. She didn't throw a fit, she just cried like she was scared and felt defeated. Erin and Jaiden kept talking to her, and she stopped crying and decided to eat the cookie we had given her. She made great eye contact with all of us, and stayed on my lap to take in everything happening around her. There were two women from her orphanage who answered all our questions about her likes and dislikes. They brought us a small photo album of her and a dog statue, since she was born in the year of the dog. She happily sat on her Dad's lap too!
We headed back to the White Swan hotel to take some pictures with some other families, then we headed up to the room where all three girls laughed and played for the rest of the evening. She is a great eater, and other than having a pretty bad cold, she is absolutely fabulous! She called me Mama within the first hour of being back at the hotel.
Her first/American middle name, Simone, means the same thing in Hebrew and in French, it means God listens. He truly does because she is absolutely full of love and appears to be very happy in her new family! Thank you to everyone for your prayers!!
