Ready to get our girl

 Leslie has all of Claire's stuff spread out for her to see when we get her back to the room. She has been working so hard to make it look perfect for our little girl. She just wants to convey to Claire in any way possible that we love her so much. T minus 5-1/2 hours. We are getting so close! By the time we get our girl, most of you will be fast asleep. It should be about 1:30 in the morning central time.

 

Well we are going to head down to breakfast with the Pellegrino's here in a few minutes.

 

P.S. - The arrangement of Claire's items as shown in the attached pictures has been rearranged and/or tweaked 3 or 4 times since I took these pics. I love my wife!

 

Chris

Day 2 - first full day in Lanzhou 1 of 2

Day 2, our first full day in Lanzhou, was a really good one. We got up and Skyped the kids, got ready and went down and had a pretty good breakfast. We then explored the hotel a little bit and came back to the room and made a few more calls. Then we decided to do a little exploring. We didn't go too far, and made our way back to the hotel to find the other Holt couple traveling with us. We got in touch with them and we all really hit it off. We all did a little more exploring, got some lunch together, and then expanded our exploration. We walked down to the Yellow River and saw the Zhong Shan Iron Bridge, which is a tourist attraction and one of the first river crossings. We made our way across the bridge to the foot of the mountains where they have restored some of the ancient Chinese architecture and we walked around that area for a while and took a lot of pics. After we had seen enough, we started making our way back towards the hotel and stopped in a little bakery and then ventured down a couple of side streets to get a real culture shock as you see just how some of these people live. We eventually made it back to the hotel for a break and to clean up a little bit and then we all headed out again for supper. By this time, the streets were packed with street vendors selling all sorts of things. We decided on KFC, which I shared with our small group, probably stands for Kentucky Fried Cat. :-) It was a great day and we are exhausted. Our new friends are from Maryland by way of New York and are really nice people. They are adopting their first child, who is a little boy that is only 6 months younger than Claire. We laughed and told stories all afternoon and we are all so excited to get our children tomorrow. The first part of this trip is completely differenet than our trip with Jack, but is just as wonderful. It is amazing the God works things out, and thus far, the trip could not have gone any better. Well, it is late and I have stayed up much longer than I wanted to while fighting with this computer to try and get this update out. I actually fell asleep once while I was sitting here waiting on this stupid thing. The next blog should be an exciting one.

 

Chris

Day 2 - first full day in Lanzhou 2 of 2

 

Shots in the hotel & from our window

Our hotel is very nice. As you can see from the view of our room, Lanzhou is typical and dirty. Lanzhou is bordered to the North and South by mountain ranges which you can also see in the pics. The Yellow river runs right through the middle of town. With the mountains and river, there is some beautiful scenery. More to come!

We Made it

 Hello All,

We are in Lanzhou, Claire's city, and we are beyond exhausted!  We traveled for around 28 hours straight through.  So, we will update more tomorrow, but the internet connection is terrible!  It's 10:45 on Friday night here, and we get Claire on Sunday at 2:30 in the afternoon our time.  We are ready!!

Thanks for all the prayers, please keep praying and for our internet connection, too!

Love to all,

Chris and Leslie

We have travel approval!!

GOOD MORNING ALL!!!!!
Whew!!  It has been an emotional few days here!!  Jack started kindergarten yesterday.  Of course, he loves it and is in a fantastic school with fantastic teachers, and we are so blessed.  Second, today is his 6th birthday, and we are just thrilled to share it with him and have the honor of celebrating HIM and all of his accomplishments and milestones!  And.....WE GOT OUR TRAVEL APPROVAL YESTERDAY!!!!!  We will hold Miss Claire in our arms on Sunday, September 2!!!!  Praise God!!!  He is so faithful and so good!  We will know specifics today or tomorrow, but we will probably leave for China in two weeks!!!!  Let's go!!  We are so ready for this travel journey to begin!  Knowing what is in store, though of course it will be unique and special, is comforting and exciting.  We will get her in our hotel in Gansu, instead of going to her orphanage, and we should be able to spend the first night not having to go place to place getting paperwork done, but just enjoy and begin to get to know our new daughter.  Which means I get to bathe her and love on her right away like I have dreamed of doing for a whole year!  A year ago today we took place in the phone interview to be considered for her family.  A year ago tomorrow our agency called us to say that there was no doubt in anyone's mind, and she was our daughter!  Look at what the Lord has done in a year!!!!  All of Jack's surgeries are completed (beautifully and he has healed beyond what any of us thought possible), and now he is a big boy in school and mommy has free time to dote on Claire and get her to all of her appointments.  His timing is perfect.  We didn't miss Jack's first day of school, or his 6th birthday. We didn't miss Cate's first day of middle school, Gracie's first day of high school, and got to watch Evan drive himself, Grace and the neighbor boy off to high school.  That is priceless.  Thank you, everyone, for your love, support, financial blessings, gifts, encouragement, and prayers!  We hold each of you dear to our hearts.  There are no words to express how much we value our support system.  We will keep you posted, and we will be able to blog again from China and post those coveted pictures.
Love to all,
Leslie

Article 5

We received our article 5 today! Last piece of paperwork that we needed before we get travel approval. We got it much faster than the adoption agency predicted, which is a blessing. We are so ready to go and get our girl. We are told that it will take 2 to 3 weeks to get travel approval, so we are praying that it doesn't take that long.