GOTCHA DAY!!!

Here's Lily!!! She is the cutest and sweetest thing in the world!! No bias on our part at all! She cam walking into the building, she talks up a storm and has the most adorable face. As you can see she has wavy hair (she actually has hair!) and she was very loved by the Ayi's at the orphanage.

Right away she was smiling, laughing and kissing us. She called me Ba Ba and Christy Ma Ma. 

Emily and Lily hit if off right away. Emily had Lily laughing and playing with her. 

We took Lily to the hotel restaurant and she proceeded to make a huge mess at the table. She has a great appetite and eats just about anything you put in front of her. She if very good at communicating her wants and desires. It seems she's used to fighting for herself. When I put my hand in front of her so she couldn't grab at things, she pinched my hand, like, move it buddy!

I just put Lily down for a nap while Christy went to do paper work. She cried for two or three minutes then was out like a light. I hope and pray that she continues to do so well, we are just blown away at how well she is doing so far. 

I am confident that we can attribute a good part to everyone's prayers.

Tomorrow We Get Lily!

Today we flew from Beijing to Nanjing (2hr flight) and are staying at the Manderin Garden Hotel. Nanjing is a beautiful city, mostly new buildings and apartment complexes. It is supposed to be one of the more rich provinces in China. We found out today that our CHI coordinator here is Nancy who was our CHI coordinator 5 years ago in Guangzhou. She actually recognized us! We are all very tired and still have not gotten enough sleep. Emily has been doing great under the circumstances (lack of sleep), she only had one little melt down. We have really been enjoying the group we are traveling with. Most of us recognized each other because of our blog posts and pictures etc. The families that we are with here in Nanjing are all first time parents except us. Emily has really taken to Milena and Konstantin. They are both really nice people and they just love Emily. They are originally from Bulgaria but now live in New York. The others we are with are Pat and Wai-Ling from New Jersey and, Michelle and Daniel from St. Louis. 

Tomorrow we are supposed to get Lily at around 10:00 am. I say around because they are bringing the four children from four different orphanages and Lily's orphanage is one that is several hours from here and depending upon traffic etc. One nice thing is they will video tape our receiving Lily for us then give us a DVD to take home.....COOL! That's nice because nobody gets left out of the picture.

We've found it a little hard to post only because by the time we're back in the hotel room we're so exhausted it's hard to do anything. Hopefully since we are going to be here for 6 days we'll get some sleep and some more time to post.

Tomorrow is a big day, will try to post pictures as soon as we can, we know everyone in our family wants to see what Lily looks like now. 

Good Night for now!

Sight Seeing in Beijing

We arrived in Beijing on Friday at 11:00 pm after being delayed in Tokyo for an hour due to thunder storms. While we were in Tokyo we met up with several adopting families and Emily met Arianna, they instantly became friends.

On Saturday we visited the Forbidden City, here are just a few pictures.

The Great Wall is quite a climb. It is very steep and there seems to be no end to it.

Sorry for the shortness of this post. We are very tired and hopefully we will get better sleep tonight but we wanted to at least post something.

Leaving in the Morning

We are leaving for China in the early afternoon tomorrow!!! This last week has been quite a whirlwind of events but we are finally ready to go. We were especially blessed to be able to correspond with some volunteers at the Wuxi orphanage who know Lily. Her nick name at the orphanage is Ju Ju. They say she is very bright, outgoing and beautiful. We are hoping to be able to meet these volunteers when we are in Jiangsu but we are not sure of our schedule. We will be getting Lily on Monday, September 1st. 

We will try to post often, presuming no problems with uploading to our blog. 

Those In Wuxi

Christy and I would like to thank those in Jiangsu who volunteer at the Wuxi orphanage for commenting on our blog "Adopting our Lily". We so appreciate your information and your loving care for our daughter. To "Lori" we tried to email you but we could not access your email. To "anonymous" Thank you sooo much for the information, we did send an email to you.

Big Sister & Little Sister Outfits

Emily wants to be "Twins" with her little sister. She can't wait to wear these matching outfits.

Lily's Room All Ready.....Just need a Baby!!!

The kite is an authentic hand-made, hand-tied kite from China. 

Ginger has this look on her face like.....well, where's the baby? 

Lily's bedroom is actually an adjoining part of our master bedroom (this was a feature that sold us on this house), it used to be a dressing/powder room. It works out perfectly, she has her own little space and we maintain some privacy (hopefully!). Christy used some of the decorations from the shower to finish the room. It looks great!

Our son Aaron painted the closet doors before our daughter Emily came home from China in 2003. 

Baby Shower for Lily, August 2nd

We were extremely blessed by our daughters-in-Law who hosted an awesome baby shower on Saturday, Aug. 2nd. Lauren, Jennifer and friend Colleen decorated Lauren's parents house with Chinese lanterns, fans, Asiatic Lilys, paper goods etc. Christy was very blessed by the shower.