Dear Friends:
I can hardly believe as I type this, but we are finally on our way to China to adopt our beloved baby girl. We began this process five years ago, and submitted our paperwork to China in February of 2007. For those of you who do not know the complete story, our adoption agency contacted us in July about a little girl that they believed would be a great fit with our family. Her name is Qiu Chan Hu, and she was born on August 20, 2010. She was born with a heart condition known as VSD, which is a hole in the heart. She had surgery to repair her heart in April, and she is doing fine. She is described as a "noisy little girl," which will fit right into our family!
We recently received our final approval to travel to China to get her. Our plane leaves on Thanksgiving Day, which is also Gray's birthday. We leave Oklahoma City at 11:00 am for Detroit. We have a five hour layover in Detroit, and then we fly 14 hours non-stop to Beijing. We arrive in Beijing at 11:00 pm on Friday, November 25. The whole travel time is 21 hours....with a 5 year old....in coach seating. At 9:00 am the next day, we have a tour of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City....after arriving from 21 hours of traveling and getting in just 10 hours before! Our adoption agency made these arrangements, not us, so we will see how we function on this day!
You might be asking, what are you going to name your baby girl??? We have really struggled with names. We have poured over baby books for inspiration, with Lee throwing out the possible Brunhilda for a choice. But we think we have settled on Greer Charlotte, but might still change our minds when we actually meet her. This will be next Monday, so we better get hopping on this name business. We are still figuring out how to incorporate her Chinese name. It means Autumn, which is quite lovely.
I encourage you to follow our blog to stay up to date on the latest of our great family adventure. If you would like to automatically be emailed whenever we update the blog, please select so on the blog website. I want to give a huge shout out to my great friend JLynn Hartman who constructed this blog for us and has agreed to upload updates, photos, and videos during our trip. She is a great blog mistress, and she deserves a huge hug and maybe some green tea from China as a thank you.
Zài Jiàn,
We recently received our final approval to travel to China to get her. Our plane leaves on Thanksgiving Day, which is also Gray's birthday. We leave Oklahoma City at 11:00 am for Detroit. We have a five hour layover in Detroit, and then we fly 14 hours non-stop to Beijing. We arrive in Beijing at 11:00 pm on Friday, November 25. The whole travel time is 21 hours....with a 5 year old....in coach seating. At 9:00 am the next day, we have a tour of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City....after arriving from 21 hours of traveling and getting in just 10 hours before! Our adoption agency made these arrangements, not us, so we will see how we function on this day!
You might be asking, what are you going to name your baby girl??? We have really struggled with names. We have poured over baby books for inspiration, with Lee throwing out the possible Brunhilda for a choice. But we think we have settled on Greer Charlotte, but might still change our minds when we actually meet her. This will be next Monday, so we better get hopping on this name business. We are still figuring out how to incorporate her Chinese name. It means Autumn, which is quite lovely.
I encourage you to follow our blog to stay up to date on the latest of our great family adventure. If you would like to automatically be emailed whenever we update the blog, please select so on the blog website. I want to give a huge shout out to my great friend JLynn Hartman who constructed this blog for us and has agreed to upload updates, photos, and videos during our trip. She is a great blog mistress, and she deserves a huge hug and maybe some green tea from China as a thank you.
Zài Jiàn,
Sasha, Lee, and Gray
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