Claire Day!!!

Well what a wonderful and emotional day we had!!   The day before "Claire Day"  (we are going to call that "Forever Family Day" because this is the day that we became a family of five) we took a train from Hong Kong to GZ to meet our guide.

 We happened to be sitting right next to a couple who is also adopting, and they happen to live near us! What a small world that is!  I'm hoping we can stay in touch once we get back to the states!  They took a picture of us on the train.

 Our hotel room.  We requested a suite which is really nice-very big. 

 We had the entire afternoon to ourselves after we were dropped off at the hotel so we walked around and took in the sites around GZ.

 That night we both hardly slept and we had until two before we met our guide so I took the time to start unpacking everything.  I think I brought enough food for us all! :)

 All the cute leggings and bows!

 I got all the toys packed up and ready to go...

 along with presents for her nanny and the director of her orphanage.  We weren't meeting our guide until 2 so we had all morning and early afternoon to just sit around and be nervous.  SO nervous.  I was so excited but also so nervous.  It was very similar I think to giving birth... I was so excited to finally have the boys there but I was really dreading having to go through labor.  This was the same, SO excited to finally meet her but not looking forward to her being so sad and confused.

 Here we are waiting for Claire!  There were quite a few other families there waiting for their children, I'd say at least 10 families.

 Then all of a sudden they said, "she's here!"  So we walked around the corner and there she was!!! I was very teary-eyed walking into the center but it was so quick when they handed her to us that I didn't even have time to cry! :)  (Our guide is in the background video taping)

 She was so so good.  She was so overwhelmed and scared, I could feel her little heart beating so fast.  She only cried about 1 minute, the rest of the time just looked around at everything going on around her.

 She actually made eye-contact with us right away which I was so happy about!  Sometimes everything is just so overwhelming for the children that they shut down and don't look at you for awhile.

 We were able to sit there and get to know her for probably 10 minutes and then her nanny came over and we were given the opportunity to ask her some questions and take a photo with her.

 Then we were done!  We left as quickly as possible-that's one nice thing about not traveling with a group, we don't have to wait on a big group.  Although it would be nice to have others going through it with us!  Luckily we have still met other very nice families.

 We went to a huge grocery store to get a few snacks, cereal, and baby food, then went back to the hotel and fed her.

She ate right away!  She does NOT like the formula I brought but will drink water/juice so at least she's getting fluids.

 The entire rest of the day we just spent hanging out with her.  She didn't cry at all, just looked around and kind of interacted a little bit with us.  We were able to get her to stand but she's very wobbly and weak.  She mostly wants to be held by us.

 She took a few steps with daddy holding her hands. 

 I didn't want to change her out of the outfit she came to us in so she'd  stay as comfortable as possible, but I did find a flower to match the outfit :).

She was so tired that at night we bounced her a bit, layed her down, and she was out for the night without a peep!  She slept until 6 am, it was amazing!!!    It was a wonderful first day with Claire, and we are so so thankful for her!!

Our Trip So Far

This is our last photo of a family of four (and a half!)!  Can't wait to post a picture of our family of five!  We took this right before we left for the airport.

 See how good our food was on the plane?  YUM!

 Our flight path!

 We landed in Hong Kong around 11pm and had a driver waiting to take us to the hotel.  This is the view from our hotel window.  Hong Kong is the city of high rises for sure!

 Pretty far down!

 Our first full day in Hong Kong...

We rode this trolley car up a very steep hill to Victoria's Peak.

 In front of the trolley car.

 The view from the peak.  Unfortunately it's been very cloudy/rainy here so it's pretty cloudy and hard to see.

 After Victoria's Peak we rode the Ferry Pier to Kowloon.  I had to take a picture of the giagantic duck in the harbor for Cooper and Jackson.  Boys isn't that funny?

After we walked Kowloon a bit we took a taxi to Nan Lian Garden and Chi Lin Nunnery.  It was beautiful.

 It was also raining, which makes it hard to enjoy an outdoor garden!

Luckily they were selling umbrellas so we were able to at least walk around and view the garden.

 This is a nunnery so there were lots of buddhas here for people to worship.  They didn't allow photos of them but it was interesting to see.

Day Two:

We rode a double decker bus (I was so proud of us for figuring out which bus to take!  Actually I should say I'm proud of Ryan because he was the one who figured it out!) down to Stanley Beach.  It's a big touristy area with a market and lots of restaurants.

Here is the start of the market.

 Shops...the aisle between the shops was SO narrow and everything was crammed very tightly together.  Interesting but we weren't really wanting to buy anything.  Plus the prices weren't as cheap as I thought they would be!

 Then we walked to the restaurant and beach area.  It was beautiful!

 I thought this was funny-obviously no one paid attention to the sign. :)

 More shops!

 We stopped and ate a slice of pizza (we are SO adventurous aren't we?) and Ryan tried a Japanese beer.

 We then took the bus back to the bus station and rode the subway to Lantau Island.  Hong Kong is fairly easy to get around-everything is in English and symbols.  We went to Lantau Island to ride these cable cars and see the biggest Buddha in the world. 

 Again though it was really cloudy so that was kind of disappointing.

 Half-way through we were completely surrounded by fog, it was almost funny that we were in this cable car trying to see the beautiful surroundings and just completely surrounded in fog!

 At the top.

 Can you see the Buddha at the very top almost completely surrounded by fog?

Afterward we came back and are now getting ready for bed!  Tomorrow we get up and catch a train to Guangzhou! 

We Made it to Hong Kong!!

We are here!  We've actually been here almost twenty four hours, after about 24 hours of travel!  The long flight (13 hours), went much better than it could have thanks to our awesome friends Heather and Jason. They gave us some of their flight upgrades so we were able to fly business class!! It was so nice. The seats folded almost completely back so it made sleeping really easy, and the food was actually good!  We just watched a few movies and slept.  When we arrived in Tokyo we had a four hour layover so we were able to hang out in the Admirals Club which was another great perk! Then we had almost a five hour flight to Hong Kong.  We arrived and had a driver waiting for us, then went straight to our hotel and went to bed!  Today we just did some sight- seeing in HK.  It started raining after lunch so we headed back earlier than we had planned and we're looking forward to our next day in Hong Kong.  I am somanxious to go get Claire, I wish we could just do that tomorrow! Unfortunately we still have two more days.

We are missing the boys so much!!! Saying goodbye was so so hard and I have been thinking about them the entire time we've been here.  Luckily we've been able to FaceTime twice already. I'd love it if you all could pray for them and my parents... Cooper came home sick from school the day we left and my parents had to take both boys to the dr the next day ( that makes it twice this week for poor Baby J!)  I think they're on the mend but I would love to be there snuggling them tonight!

I'll try to update again before we meet Claire and actually add some pictures next time!