New Pictures of Happy Girls!

Happy Birthday America and 5 Years Ago Today!

Fu Hui Ying Today at Preschool Graduation

Referral Picture of Fu Hui Ying

Five years ago today, I attended a wonderful July the 4th celebration with some very good friends. We sat around and oohed and aahed over the most wonderful things, our referral pictures that had come the day before! We shared the tiny snippet of information that we had gotten the afternoon before when we had gotten the CALL. Oh, it was such a wonderful day! And isn't amazing how she changed our lives!

Happy Birthday America! This day will always be a day of double happiness in my mind.

Bad Blogger!

Well... I am terrible about posting now that I have gone back to work. I am hoping that I will get better at this. Everyone is doing great! Little Miss Annie Fanghua has settled right in and we could not imagine life without her. One of the girls' favorite activities is to have a sword fight with foam swords.

We have joined a community garden and today we spent the morning putting in our first plants. It was really nice. We have some friends from China who are sharing our plot with us. The girls had blast playing with their friends and running around in the dirt and water. We had to cover the car seats in plastic before letting them get in to come home.

A few more pictures from our homecoming

Continental Coach ClassFirst Meeting with Mimi and Mikie

Mimi holding Annie Fanghua

I am not getting into that carseat!

Hong Kong Disney

On the train to Hong Kong from GuangzhouKorean Dried Squid Snacks on Main Street, USA

Can we ride the space ship again Baba?

Tea Party Anyone?

Once and Future Ying???

We have had a lot of people ask about our trip to Hong Kong Disney. My only comment is "Do it!" if you get the chance. The girls all had a great time. We met all the princesses so Meimei was thrilled. Ying got a chance to try to remove Excaliber (the ultimate sword in her opinion) and ride in space ship and tea cup, and Annie Fanghua ooohed and aaahed over the beautiful fireworks at the end of the day. It was worth every penny of our money to go. It was definitely smaller than the one in Anaheim but there were some similarities and some big differences. We also enjoyed sitting down to a dinner where we could eat the food and drink drinks with ice and not have to worry about a thing. They also made these wonderful fruit juice drinks that were great to have after a long day of riding the rides and walking the park.

How Annie is adjusting... and First Day of School

First Trip to the Zoo in TXThe Tiny Hiney Club!

First Day of SchoolGardening with my teacher on the first day of school

We are all so happy to have this vibrant, beautiful little girl in our family. She is a total joy to be around. She loves her sisters and is having so much fun being part of our family. For the last couple of weeks, she would wait by the front door waiting for her sisters to come home from school. If they were later than 5:45, she would start asking for them. Sometimes she greeted them fully clothed and other days it was in the buff. But, no matter what she was wearing or not wearing, there were always squeals of delight. She is also starting to cuddle more with Patrick and will let him do things with her. When she is tired or hurting or just being crabby, it is only Mama who will do. But, now she is starting to hang with Mr P more often.

She had her first week of school last week and it went surprisingly well. We were concerned after the first day when we dropped her off and she had a total melt down as we walked out the door. Apparently, it only lasted for about 20 minutes. The next day, the fit was for 10 minutes and by Wednesday, we had complete turn around. Wednesday morning, Miss Tiffany her teacher called to her in Chinese to come over. Annie Fanghua ran over, motioned to be picked up, and then turned to us and said, "byebye Mama, byebye Baba." We are so blessed to have had a child who had been in preschool in China and to have a teacher here who took the time to learn a few phrases to make the transition easier. She finished the week off by an early dismissal on Friday and a picnic in Herman Park with the girls, including Mama and Mimi. She thought she was in heaven to eat fried chicken and get to run around and chase birds! We ended Friday by a trip to my dad's community garden plot where Miss Annie Fanghua got to pick veggies including her beloved green beans.

We have learned that this child is full of life and in excellent health. The only big transition issue has been that no one has ever told her "No". And if you tell her no or she does not get her way, she pitches a rip roaring temper tantrum that can last up to an hour. Hopefully, these will end soon.

HOME!!!

We made it home! We made it home! We made it home! We are so happy to have made it home. Late Saturday night we arrived home after literally 24 hours in the air! Mimi and Mikie were waiting for us in baggage claim and it was so nice to see them. We had a some what eventful time getting Annie into the car seat. Yep, her first ride in a car seat was dramatic to say the least. But, we made it home without our eardrums being shattered. Everyone took a bath and boy, was it nice to be in non-stinky water. We are all still trying to adjust our clocks but so far, everything is going well. Little Annie is having a ball. She had a great time at her Mimi's house yesterday and even got brave enough to ride her trike down the sidewalk without Mama. Today, she found the Nerf swords and all three girls had a sword fight. Miss Annie can hold her own!

I will post a little bit about our trip to Hong Kong Disney tomorrow but I wanted to let everyone know that we are home and doing well.

A few more pictures

Hefei Girls on the Red Couch
Sisters
I love hair things!
Our Special Friend Ann from Red Thread China
Ying, QunQun, and Meimei
The Group at Dinner
Ying and QunQun
Sleeping Beauties

The Anhui, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Jiangxi Girls on the Red Couch

Only two more wakeups!

Meimei's look sums it all up!
Getting out of the rain instead of trying to slog through Yun Tai Gardens.
Watching the cooks!
Baba and Annie
Some special Chongqing friends we met at the International Toy Market


We are ready to go home. Actually we have been ready for over a week. We have had a wonderful time making new friends like the Gerbers, Qun Qun and her family, the Maitlands, and our special friend Ann from Red Thread China. Anne helped us send care packages to Annie and we were lucky enough to spend an afternoon with her in Guangzhou. Qun Qun is a beautiful little girl who we met in Hefei who has found her forever family in the US. Ying adores Qun Qun and it was nice to spend some time with her and her special family in Guangzhou. Our travel group has made this trip bearable. We could not have done this without our friends the Gerbers and Maitlands. Having friends to share the joys and some times trials of this trip have really helped us. For some reason, this trip has been our hardest. The past two trips were sort of bitter sweet towards the end. This trip, it has been more like, we are done with this and send us home! In the last shop we were in tonight, I told Patrick that we should just go. We really did not need any of the stuff there and we could do just fine without it. We will be forever grateful to China for our beautiful daughters. We love this country but we are ready to head to our own country and our own home.

Tomorrow, we board a train in the morning for Hong Kong. We hope to spend the day in Hong Kong at Disney, go to sleep in one more hotel, and then head home the next morning. I don't know if we will have internet access tomorrow night so this might be our last post from China.

Easter Chinese Style!

Christ Church Shamian Island
Easter Dresses
Happy Girl!
Ice cream in the park
I love Ice Cream!

Sunday was Easter. We slept late, had a big breakfast, and went to church. We went to the longest Easter service I have ever been to, about 2 hours. It was a combined Chinese and English service at the Christ Church Shamian Island. We probably understood about 1/4 of it but it was nice to be there on such a special day. After church, we went and walked the Island. Overall it was just a nice day to relax. For some reason, this time, getting to Guangzhou has been a relief. I think because there was not much to do in Hefei. And, it is much warmer here, so no big heavy coats to carry and drag with us. I also came to realization. I love Sichuanese food and Cantonese food. I am not so sure about Hefei style cuisine. I have no trouble the last two times in Chongqing finding Chinese food to eat. In Hefei, I struggled. I just did not care for it. Last night we went to a nice Cantonese food. All the dishes were familiar to me from all of the banquets, etc... that we had been to in the States. I ate something more than just rice and soup.

How Annie is adjusting...

Annie loves Mama. Annie loves Jiejie Ying. Annie loves Jiejie Meimei. Annie loves Grandma Judie. Annie likes Grumps. Annie sort of likes Baba. Annie is slowly warming up to Patrick and Grumps. Grumps was able to hold her for about 2 minutes without any screaming. Patrick has been able to hold her a little bit if Mama is right there. Patrick can be with Annie while Mama goes potty right now but if Mama goes somewhere like a store and Annie can't see Mama, she screams. She has got some lungs on her. Hopefully the ice with thaw with Patrick and soon.

A few more pictures

Come on Folks, we have to go upstairs!
Sisters eating Haw together.
Look Mom, here is my bed. I am going to eat some more Haw now...

A little bit more about our visit to the Hefei CWI

We had a great visit. Hefei CWI is an amazing place. Annie was very comfortable with us going and she took my hand and led me around. She walked right into one of the other children's home like she owned the place so clearly all the girls interacted with each other during school hours and then afterwards. We met her foster mother who was just amazing. It was clear this little girl was loved and cared for. Annie took my hand and led me to her bedroom to show me her bed. We spent about 10 minutes at the foster parents' apartment and then we went to the play ground. All the staff including the nannies on the baby floor recognized her and the two other little girls in our travel group as we were walking to the play ground. The preschool classes were coming out to recess. We had a great time meeting all the little kiddos there. So many precious children. Here are some photos of our visit.

Pictures from the Hefei Zoo

I tried to post these in Hefei but the internet connection was too slow to upload them.