Pictures of our Adoption Group

Adoption Group at Jade Factory Lunch in Beijing

Ron & Carrie Matson, Sarah Croswell, Felipe & Cynthia Cruzado,

Felipe & Juanita Rivera-Tojrres, Me

Group at Chen Family Temple. Sarah & Isabella; Me & Kaleb;

Melaina & Anne Trent & Georgianne Obucina

Jonathan Zivan, Sarah & Isabella waiting for tour group to leave.

Cynthia & Hu Shi Yong, and Jonathan and Yi He Xi

Patrick & He Xi Wilson

John, Cherrie, & Jack Owen

Pictures of Guides / Orphanage Officials

Veronica, our guide in Guangzhou with Jack, Kaleb, and Melaina.

Nanny and orphanage official in Hefei with Kaleb.

Christina, our guide, in Hefei with Kaleb.

Michael, our guide in Beijing

Tuesday Night - St. Louis, MO

We're very thankful to all of you who have shared our adoption journey. We're especially thankful for your continuing prayers for Kaleb and our family. We see so many answered prayers in bringing him home with us.

I'll briefly update you on the completion of our trip. Friday morning in Guangzhou, Kaleb took and ENJOYED his first bathtub bath!! He did not want to get out. Now that was a quick answer to prayer :)  We took a fairly uneventful train ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. I did take Kaleb back to the bathroom during the ride and was surprised to find an 'Eastern' style toilet (i.e. squatty potty) that opened to the tracks! Kaleb was no stranger to this type, but it was a bit strange to see the tracks going by below us. I did remove one of his shoes to accommodate the necessary maneuvers, and we were both a bit jolted as the train slowed and stopped. His shoe about went out the hole! But thankfully did not :) He slept the last hour or so of the train trip.

Once we arrived at the Hong Kong train station, David exchanged some of our Chinese money for Hong Kong dollars and a portion back into US money. Then we went to stand in line for a taxi ride to our hotel. The taxi's loaded up 3 at a time in a fairly quick manner, and we were soon headed to our hotel at a fairly high rate of speed. I didn't know how high, but David later told me @ 110 mph. It's amazing to me how close their traffic comes to hitting each other, but we didn't see accidents.

Once we checked into our hotel we went down to one of the hotel lobby restaurants and then hit the hay for an early checkout and scoot to the attached airport the next morning. So much for seeing much of Hong Kong! Kaleb did really well for a three year old on a 13 hour plane trip. He ended up sleeping 4 hours in the middle and a couple more hours at the end. We landed in Detroit, where he officially became a US citizen upon touching down upon US soil! We went through Customs and Immigration without incident. But the lines were pretty long. I'm so glad we have an uncomplaining little guy.

The end of our flight from Detroit to St. Louis was fairly turbulent. I was praying as I saw the clouds and lightening and held tightly to Kaleb. God reminded me of the passage where He spoke into the storm and calmed it. I remembered that all things are in God's hands. This time He calmed me, and Kaleb fell asleep shortly before we landed. Which was really good, because we ended up sitting in the airplane out on the tarmac at the St. Louis airport for the next couple of hours about 30 feet from our gate. Due to all the lightening strikes, they were not allowing ground crews to load or unload planes. He slept up until the time that we got off the plane and were welcomed home by a very dedicated and loving bunch of friends and family. The combination of 24+ hours without sleep and the relief of seeing our daughters and friends at the airport at the culmination of this '6 year adoption journey' resulted in me shedding a few tears of joy. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Home at last!

This is Kathleen.  I'm currently sitting on a couch downstairs hanging out with Kaleb, who is contentedly sitting on my lap drinking a capri sun and watching me type while "dancing" to the music I have playing.  He is pretty laid back and doesn't seem to be bothered by anything here except the dog, who he avoids touching.

Mom and Dad got in safely last night around 4:04, and had a crowd waiting for them...unfortunately they were stuck out on the tarmac for a couple of hours due to a lightning storm.  They eventually got off close to 7 pm and I am glad to be able to report that all the tears there were happy ones...Kaleb has been unfailingly happy so far and has been enjoying all the gifts people have sent.  :)  Below is a picture of him with some fruit that he got, where he is making the sign the guide in China says means that he is happy, in case that wasn't obvious.  :)  Below that are some pictures taken by a friend at the airport last night. 

I'm sure Mom will be updating some time once she recovers from jet lag a little more, but until then, thank you again for all of your prayers. :)

Thursday

Headed out to our Consulate Appt. today before 8 a.m. and were the last people in our group to finish. The joys of being at the end of the alphabet.  :) At least that's my guess. Since we are I-600 and the rest of the Great Wall families at I-800, we have a bit different process and had an additional interview tagged on at the end. Just basic stuff, how things were going, how long have we been in the process, were we happy with our agency, if we had any questions. It seemed strange to have a separate interview for such inconsequential (in my opinion) questions. Kaleb bonded with another little girl in our group (the other Anne from MO's little girl) over sharing cereal on the bus this morning. Then he was excited to see her a bit later at the buffet breakfast and wanted to get out of my arms and run to her stroller to say hi. It was very cute.

At the consulate they had a children's play area. They had a little playhouse, and baby 'jumper' disk-like thing like they have in the church nursery, and a little tykes workbench. He loved the playhouse and watched bigger kids playing in it to start with. When he found the workbench, he had fun trying out the tablesaw. Then he wanted some water. David correctly guessed that he wanted to use it to pour in the little bowl like areas, so he wouldn't let him have it. When Kaleb realized he wasn't going to get the water to play with, he took a drink of it. Then he proceeded to spit the water into the bowl thing. David started laughing - he knows how to get what he wants one way or another.

Our time here seems to revolve around food and outings. We're going to need some serious exercise when we get back home. Some of our biggest laughs as a family have come while watching Kaleb's pants fall off as he walks. Poor little guy - I cinch them up with a belt as tight as I can without being uncomfortable, and tuck his shirts in to give him more bulk. But inevitably he needs to walk or run with one hand holding his pants up. We may look for some suspenders later. In the hotel room he seems to be able to entertain himself for long periods pouring water from cup to bowl to other container, and then to stir up paper, napkins, whatever he finds.  He's also getting better at crawling up on things to access whatever he wants. So things are getting put higher and higher around here.

We also went on the subway with our guide this afternoon instead of to the museum since no one else showed up for that. We went to find a grocery store and found some crayons and paper, some candy and crackers. No coloring books, but it's possible we went to the wrong store. It was pretty complicated with changing subway lines, etc. and David was distracted with Kaleb. So I doubt we'll try it again on our own. We may go again tomorrow morning with the guide though to the other store.

Well, off to supper for us! We'll probably get to write again tomorrow. Have a great day!

P.S.  We seem to be short of pictures of David with Kaleb. So this should help out.   :)
1.  Kaleb and Jack
2.  David & Kaleb racing Jack
3.  David & Kaleb Lychee Bay Park

Wednesday

Long day out touring today. First stop - Pearl Market. This is the place that many jewelry businesses around the world come to buy pearls and other jewelry wholesale. So the prices are very good. I had googled buying pearls last night and what to look for, so I knew the basics. But other than that, I pretty much listened to our guide and the salesclerk and told them what I was looking for, and what I liked. Then we went to Lychee Bay Park - a very large and pretty park with canal ways throughout and waterfalls, etc. A group of teenage girls came up to our group, and one of them asked David why we had Chinese children with us. After he told them, we had adopted them, they kind of absorbed it for a minute. Then our guide came up and explained a few things to them in Chinese, and they then went up to each family and said thank you, etc.

Afterwards we went to a Chinese Restaurant in a park near our hotel. Our guide ordered several different dishes for us and we had our own little buffet. Everything was really delicious and inexpensive - all 3 of us were able to eat a lot of food for about $13 US total. I've been trying to find a store that has stuff for kids to play with, but without luck. Just basics - coloring books, playdough, bubbles, etc. It's probably here right under our noses somewhere close. I may ask our guide about it later. She's pretty busy with so many families to take care of, and to get to their various appointments, transportation, - not to mention so many details with paperwork, etc...

Tomorrow we head to our consulate appointment where we go through some sort of ceremony where we swear to take good care of our children and never abandon them. Sarah (another mom in our group) went through her appointment a couple of days ago. Her friend came to the ceremony too, and they all dressed up. But she said that it was just someone behind a 'bank tellers window' sort of thing, that had people repeat after her, etc. - rather anti-climactic. She has adopted from the Ukraine before, and she said their ceremony was a much bigger deal there. I'm not sure that we have anything 'scheduled' for tomorrow other than our respective appointments. Then Friday we get Kaleb's Visa and take the train to Hong Kong, where we stay overnight and take a flight out on Saturday. We'll see how Kaleb does with a 13 hour plane trip to Detroit, then another 2 hour trip to St. Louis. We're very excited to see everyone back home!

Hope your Wednesday goes well. It seems strange to be finishing our Wednesday up just as you're about to start yours.

Tuesday

Kaleb is acting like he feels a ton better. He actually wants to get down and run around a bit instead of us carrying him all the time. Unfortunately his cough sounded quite a bit worse last night. His fever is gone though - so that is great! But since it's chilly and drizzling a bit today, we opted out of the trip to the botanical gardens.  We may take a short stroll to a local park if it stops raining a bit later. Another group that went to the Safari Zoo yesterday said that we should try to go there if it works out before we leave. They said it was similar to the San Diego zoo, but had lots more animals, and the train goes in through the animals. They had to stop and let a giraffe cross the tracks.

Kaleb continues to enjoy music. He starts dancing and singing when he hears music. He also pretends he's playing a trumpet, and does the drumming thing with chopsticks - which he is pretty adept at using to eat as well. We also found a 'Kiddy Land' on the 4th floor of the hotel. They have a nice outside playground and pretty pond area, and a small inside room with a kitchen play set, and legos, etc. He loved the big lego set. It kept him entertained for quite awhile.

Our guide was telling our group about the 'Han' people and their history the other day and mentioned the various minority groups as well. Then later at a shop, someone asked us if Kaleb was a minority. We said we didn't know. But he did seem to fit our guide's description of the people from the northern part of China. They tend to be very tall. I guess we'll see.  :) My guess is with the way he eats, we may see some major growth before too long.

The three of us walked to a restaurant for supper last night and had an older lady who latched on to David begging for money. Then she started pulling at my sweater. It's hard to know if people are pan-handling or have a real need. Our guide had told us that people here are very persistent and that we should keep walking. The woman was not happy with us.

David & Kaleb are currently drawing together. David showed him how to trace around a knife, etc. I guess we need to start thinking about things to keep him occupied during the flight. So far he's been pretty content during short trips.

Well, it's almost lunch time, so I guess we need to figure out what we're going to do today. Such decisions we have :)