Gotcha moment!

The call came about 2:15 and we had to be in the lobby at 2:30 to start the drive back to the government building for the second time. When we pulled up our facilitator pointed out that their car was there already. We got our cameras ready as we climbed the 3 flights of stairs. When we got up there again we could see that the room we had been waiting in earlier had some people in there. Hearts pounding we were all walking pretty quickly. As you can see from the photos its a room of glass windows. As we got closer I could see he was sitting in someone’s lap and his little head with knit hat was bouncing. When we got even closer I got a quick peak of his sweet little face and I could not believe my eyes! His little lip was repaired already!!! We had no idea they had done surgery. Below are the few pictures that we had of Hudson before we met him!

Here is the very first picture of our son that I ever saw! The day his referral was presented to us this is the photo I saw when I opened the email. We thought it was adorable that he was laying on a soccer pillow since we are such a soccer family.

This one you can really see how open his palate was.

This was my favorite picture that we got. Now that I have met him it really does look the most like him.

When we got into the room he was happily sitting in a man's lap. The boys and I walked over to the couch where he was sitting. Tom graciously catching the moment on the video camera. Hudson looked us over as I sat next to him and then started to get a little upset. When I reached to hold him he started up into a full cry, sad, loud cry. He didn't stop for what felt like a VERY long time. We think it was almost an hour before he calmed down.

We tried everything. Toys, snacks, walking, rocking, playing ball, singing... no luck. The boys started to give up and play catch with the ball that we had brought for him. Once when Trevor tossed it pretty hard at Garrett he mad a big "ugh" sound. That made Hudson laugh a little. So the boys continued to toss it at each other and dramatically catching it pretending they were hit hard. Each time Hudson laughed a little louder. Finally! He stopped crying and started smiling and laughing. That was it then, the boys won him over. Then they played and played. And this time when we left to go back to the hotel... WE GOT TO TAKE OUR HUDSON WITH US! Praise GOD!

First attempt... Going to meet Hudson

We were finally able to see the city as we drove since we came into town late at night.  The visibility wasn't much better as there was a heavy fog/smog.  We are right in the heart of Chengdu which is a city of about 11 million people in Chengdu proper and the surrounding area.  We arrived at the adoption office at the scheduled time and immediately could tell something wasn't right as our facilitator spoke on the phone and we could tell she was frustrated.  She said Hudson and the team from his orphanage were stuck in traffic due to the fog after local authorities stopped all traffic coming in from the south east.  They thought it would take about 1 hour so we waited in the room.

 We were so excited to be going to finally meet Hudson not knowing that it would be delayed. We were taking pictures in the van of our excited faces on the way there.

Super exciting to see this sign again! We are finally here at this exciting point!

We had butterflies in our bellies on the way up the stairs. I was ready with the camera just in case he was already there waiting. No such luck… this time anyway! (foreshadowing, dunt-da!) So as Tom said they were delayed because of the fog and eventually they completely stopped traffic and they were still an hour away. 

We were all over the top excited as we waited for Hudson to enter the building. Garrett was especially anxious and kept peeking over his shoulder to see if he was coming down the hallway. He's just making a silly "I can hardly wait" face here.

Here's Tom waiting in the room. We had already gotten out all of our toys and snacks to win him over! Didn't know that we were going to have to pack it all up again and head back to the hotel without the baby. :(

The room was filled with teddy bears to purchase. We all found this one really funny! Its wearing lingerie! So funny!

OK.... seriously! Now we are getting tired of waiting!

They had a four hour drive so I suppose some issues were to be expected. So they decided it would be best if we went to get lunch and rest at the hotel until we heard that they had started moving again. Since we wanted to be ready the minute the call came we decided to do something quick. We hit our first Chinese McDonald’s this trip. Only the second day! Last time we made it 6 days or so, but we are traveling with some kiddos this time. They were pretty excited to see this perspective of McD. So after a quick lunch we went down into the shopping mall area (also a fun look at the culture). We got lots of looks too. We picked up a few things at the grocery store, some coke, baby snacks and a case of water, then headed back to the hotel to wait.

Day 2 - Chengdu Hotel

We got to our hotel so late and we were all exhausted.  That didn't keep our internal clocks from waking us up after a few hours of sleep.  We fortunately had an an extreme excitement of going to meet Hudson for the first time that sleep was the least of our worries.  Here are a few pictures of our hotel:

Garrett and Trevor outside the Sichuan Hotel

Trevor, Garrett, and Tom in Sichuan Hotel lobby

View outside the door of our hotel in Chengdu

Getting Ready...

We got as much ready the night before as possible thinking that we would be sleeping until the last minute and have a hard time waking up. However, since we were still on Chicago time even though we were exhausted we still woke up really early. I was bummed about that because then the wait to meet Hudson seemed even longer... little did we know that the wait would increase as well! More on that in our next post.

We got some breakfast for the day. The first meal here in China. The boys got to experience the way the Chinese eat in the morning... much like they do the rest of the day! Its hard for my body to want to eat "dinner" foods for breakfast but Trevor, who I thought would be the hardest to please with the food here, loved it. He tried all kinds of things. Garrett did pretty well too but once he discovered what he calls "Chinese Cheerios" That has become his staple. Before bed he even gets excited about eating them again in the morning. He also likes the noodles and rice with the ham and peppers in it.

Breakfast of Champions!

As many of you know we have to bring gifts for the notary and paperwork officials. The challenge is to bring something made in the USA. Last time we ended up bringing "Charlie & Stetson" colognes and "Ghirahdelli" chocolates. This trip we decided to bring Tootsie Roll products. Since Tom grew up right near the factory and grew up smelling it when they were making more. Then to go with that I made some hand made greeting cards (since I didn't have anything else to do right!) Well, I didn't completely finish so I was quickly finishing up the cards that I needed for the first day of paperwork.

Last minute gift preparations

1/6/2013 – Day O’ Travel

We seem to have missed an entire day with the long flights and time change.  We left our home at 5:30 AM CST for a short flight to Washington DC (yes we flew east to go west).  After our flight to DC we changed planes and quickly boarded for a 14 hour flight to Beijing.  The boys enjoyed watching movies on their individual monitors and none of us seemed to sleep very well.  We arrived in Beijing very excited for our final leg to Chengdu.  There was about a three hour layover in Beijing followed by a three hour flight further west into China to Chengdu which is in the Sichuan Providence.  None of us were very excited about either getting on a plane or sitting at the gate waiting.  Luckily we found four reclining chairs and we were all able to lay down for a short rest.  During our rest we were approached by a couple from Nevada who were on their way back to Chengdu where the husband worked at the US consulate.  Unfortunately we didn’t get their names as we were beyond exhausted, sleep deprived, and not in a talking mood. 

After our short rest we boarded China Air for our flight to Hudson’s providence of Sichuan.  While we flew we were all absolutely exhausted.  I noted a couple next to us leaning over to look at the boys and smiling.  I then looked at Trevor and Garrett and they were asleep with their heads pointed to the air and their mouths wide open.  They looked like a couple of koi sticking their heads out the water begging for food.  After the flight we had to wait about 45 minutes for bags.  Once we got our luggage we walked out to the lobby of the Chengdu airport and were met by our facilitator Nora and our driver who drove to our hotel, the Sichuan Hotel.  We arrived at the hotel around midnight on Sunday in China so that brought our total travel time to about 29 hours!  Here are a few photos of us in the Beijing airport and also getting ready to fly to Chengdu.

Just a quick picture to check how things are posting. This one is from the plane in D.C. heading to Beijing on the way here. We had prepared the boys for a long flight that would likely not have individual TV's but a few shared screens. They, well WE, were all thrilled to see that we all had our own TOUCH screen with tons of personal choices. Thank you United Airlines!

Packing, Paperwork, and Planning

Brock exploring all the things we are taking to Hudson. Very curious about all the snacks and toys. He told me while he was looking through everything that he is going to share his cars with Hudson when he comes home. I was so happy to hear that he was thinking that way. Lets hope its a reality when Hudson actually wants to grab at Brock's toys!

Brock told me that he wanted to "help" me pack. Lets just say he wasn't the biggest help but it sure was fun to hear him chatter about all the things he was seeing being laid out to pack.

It was pretty crazy getting ready to leave. We just moved back into our home after the fire on the evening of December 3rd. At the time we thought we were leaving on December 28th. Things didn't work out for that so we ended up making plans to leave January 5th. There was still some finishing work being done on the house so there were workers at the house. plus, Service Master was delivering things that they salvaged from the fire, boxes and boxes of randomness to sort through. Lots of things to unpack and figure out where in the world to put it. In addition to all of that trying to get ready for Christmas and decide what necessity things we needed to buy like towels and sheets. Prior to moving out of the rental we had all of those things provided by the rental company so once we moved home we were without a lot of those things. We also had the normal care for our family of seven like meals, dishes and laundry. Then add in the communication with the Living Hope, our adoption agency to get all of our travel set up and locating all the necessary paperwork that needs to go with us to China. A few things we had to dig out of a box that we had set aside after the fire. It was ruined in the fire but we kept it just in case. Glad we did, we had to pack up one document that was moldy and smelled like fire. We just sealed it up into an envelope to take along.

Tom mentioned in a post how incredible our friends have been. This has been a VERY overwhelming year! We had so many come and help us from the moment the fire happened until we were getting settled back at home. We really have no idea where we would be without them. The out pouring of care, encouragement and support has been amazing. Pretty sure we'd be in a looney bin without all of these wonderful people in our lives.

So, here we are at a point where we are finally back at home getting settled and "nesting" to add to our family again! Another step closer to being a family of eight!!!

T-Minus 7 days and counting

We purchased our tickets, reserved our hotels, have our consulate appointments, and are packing.  One week from right now we should be with Hudson and he has no idea as to what he is in for.  On Saturday January 5th we take an early flight to Washington D.C.  From there we have a flight to Beijing and from Beijing we fly to Chengdu.  We will be in Chengdu for 5 days and then leave for Guangzhou.  After our appointments in Guangzhou we take a van to Hong Kong for a direct flight to Chicago.  Believe it or not I am tired already and we haven't even flown yet!    Trevor and Garrett will be going with us this time and they are totally excited.  Garret has already said he is very nervous about the flights because he doesn't want to feel the pressure on his ears.  I assured him that he will mostly feel the pressure during ascending and descending.

When in Guangzhou we wont be able to stay at the hotel we had first time around.  Its been under construction for a very long time and isn't taking any reservations.  This led us to take advantage of a lot of Marriott points and get a hotel paid for by our frequent stays during my work travels and our fire displacement. 

We have been overwhelmed by what we have to do since moving back into our house and also planning for this trip.  We have had friends John and Brenda that have showed up almost every night the last week to "encourage" us to keep making progress.  Without them we would probably be sitting in a pile of unopened boxes.  Today John helped me clear out the last items from our MiBox portable storage unit.  This was a huge help as we want our driveway back!  Hopefully the great guys at MiBox can get us on the schedule early this week. 

I will through in a shameless plug for MiBox.  The guys there were great to work with.  When they heard that we had a fire they quickly got two large portable storage boxes delivered to our house so we could fill them with the contents of the house that didn't go to service master. 

FIRE!!!

Our family was rocked on May 4th.  I took Brock and Garrett to a soccer game while Beth entertained a houseful of kids with freeze pops.  Soon after I left the house Beth had to leave to take Trevor to soccer practice.  As Garrett's game started I received a phone call from our neighbor Bruce Larson.  Bruce told me that the house was on fire and calmly asked if anyone was inside and how they could get in.  I pulled Garrett off the field and rushed home with the two boys then called Beth.  At this time she had already received calls from other neighbors and we both were in total shock.  Beth had just had a houseful of kids and left a short time sooner, how could the house be on fire?

When I arrived home there were cars, trucks, and people everywhere.  It sounds strange but I had an overwhelming calm come over me as if people were already praying for our family.  As I walked up to the intense scene the only thing I could think was "its all replaceable".  My family was safe, no one was injured, we were insured, and we had a huge group of friends standing there with us fighting back tears and ready to help. 

Telling family and friends about North Face

Well, we kept the secret as long as we could.  Lindsey has known that we were planning to adopt a son from China for months.  Given her age we continually had to remind her that the adoption was a secret.  For the majority of 2011 Beth and I had detailed conversations regarding the adoption process while around the other kids but always referred to our newest addition as North Face.  (I think I covered this in a previous post but we referred to the baby as North Face because Beth and I purchased North Face coats in China during our adoption of Lindsey.)

So getting back to telling the kids.  Our timing seemed spur of the moment for me.  I wasn't necessarily ready to tell everyone but we had just sent our dossier to our adoption agency and we were both very excited.  Friday evening February 10th Beth put together a little devotion about prayer for the kids.  The devotion basically highlighted that God answers prayers in His time and in His way.  Sometimes his answer is no, sometimes its yes, other times he may not answer in our lifetime.  I was dead set against adding to our family because things already seem chaotic but Beth and the kids continually prayed for my heart to be changed.  Well we shared with the kids Friday night that God answered their prayers and that we were moving forward with an adoption. 

We recorded their reactions and they were all very excited.  We had Lindsey tell them we were adopting again and initially Lindsey didnt want to tell because it "was a secret".  We finally got her to talk and all her brothers and sister were excited.  Mallory instantly said she wanted a girl because she doesnt like being outnumbered.  She got over it quickly.

Sunday morning I had a hard time telling friends at church because I was running around with a bunch of responsibilities.  We told the kids that they could share with friends and they did.  Before I knew it I had people coming up congradulating us.  We left church and started calling family so that they didnt find out because of Facebook.  In the afternoon we went to Grandma and Grandpa T's house and told them.  They were both very excited, Grandpa cried a little.  It was a great moment.