Photos on Blogger

It worked!!! Mommy loaded a photo!!! Yay!!! She's been pulling her hair out all week trying to do this. Now she is so happy! Me too!
*Mommy could use some advice on what to do with my hair - it has split ends already! My bangs hang all the way to my nose and I love to scratch and pull at my hair when I am tired (thus the pebbles look is the only one I let stay in my hair)Mommy has a fun time wrestling with me and catching my head when she tries anything on the sides or in the back - I out maneuver her every time!

Thank You Connie!!!

Connie the Fridge DJ came today! It is an awesome toy! Jaiden has not been introduced yet (late here and don't want to get her all excited before bed) but our 5 year old has "tested" it out and found it "way cool!" He loves to play with it too - he had the leap karioke when he was 2 - I'm sure he will teach her how to use it well and it will be a mega hit for a long long time! Thank You so very much!

Settling In

We are happily home and starting to settle into a routine somewhat. Still not sleeping through the night (Mom or Jaiden)our sleeping pattern is all out of whack! We slept so good in China! Not sure what is going on there. Jaiden is starting to get into her normal sleeping patter again (9pm -6am, 9am-10, 1pm-2pm)She's a good sleeper when she does sleep but she's grump when she's tired! (Just like her Momma!)

Thought I'd add some interesting tidbits we've learned about Jaiden thus far:

Within minutes after referral we found out she sweats profusely when tired and will tear at her hair, ripping out barrettes and mangling her beautiful hair into a wild mane! Explains why her hair is such a mess in the referral photo!

She is very curious; love to touch and "feel" everything
Very observant; she watches everyone and everything and will snap her body around to find the source of a sound.

She has a ready smile - and for some reason when I go "Pop" with my mouth it makes her laugh hysterically (only me, Scott can't get the same response)

She is very tickelish - her back is the most tickelish (again just like her Momma)

She can be quite ornery when tired (again like her Momma?)

She likes music and toys with motion - her favorite toy is a strobe light that vibrates and plays music. She holds it to her mouth and lets it massage her gums.

She has no teeth yet but has a swollen spot on her lower gums, can't feel a tooth yet but it is pretty swollen up so hopefully one will push through soon. It's giving her a lot of misery right now.

She is very vivacious - her energy level is EXTREMELY HIGH - we put her in the jumparoo and she about goes nuts bouncing and squealing. She has great potential to be a Cheer captain someday! She prefers to jump in our arms though but it is very hard to hang on to such a wiggly squirmy little thang!

In the first days, she would get so excited her whole body would vibrate and wiggle...wish I'd captured that on camera.

She's got an amazing deep laugh that is very contagious and we haven't unleashed the belly laughs yet but we continue to try :)

Jaiden is such an amazing sweet child and we are so blessed to call her our daughter. Each day is a new gift and the memories we are making are priceless.

Home at Last!!!

Our journey to China is complete. Jaiden is now home and fitting into our everyday family life like she has always been here. It is amazing to watch the kids together and see how well they have bonded in such a short time. She has quickly become very spoiled too with all the attention and constant holding. She doesn't care to be out of anyone's arms for more than lunch. So that makes blogging a bit difficult ;) Right now she is sitting right beside me in her exersaucer loudly complaining at me that I am not holding her and being her jungle gym. There are worse ways to spend a day but not much gets done when you are carrying around a 17.5 pound flopsy doll. She has no body strength other than her legs so I can only assume that she was carried around a lot. She hates being on her stomach and topples over when she sits for very long. Developementally she is a little behind on some things but is very smart and knows how to maneuver the soft spots with Mommy and Daddy. Life is glorious and we are so very happy with our sweet baby girl. You can read all about the story of our journey to China or view photos of our daily life.

Our Day in Tonggu

We had the most amazing day today! I will tell all about it in the a.m. We just got in and it is late - we've had a very full day! Check out the photos.

I've really loved reading the comments about the photos, it gives me a lift each day when I log on and can see someone has visited us :)

Jaiden is just amazing!!!

This child has been sent to us straight from heaven! Our day has been awesome beyond words. Please view our photos at the link below.

Photos of our trip....?

Ok, blogger just isn't going to cut it - I can't seem to load photos on this site so I will load them onto Jaiden's website and just follow along from there - I will try to put together a slideshow in the meantime...

Ok, it's late and we have a BIG day tommorrow and then I need to write an update for Jaiden's journey so I am off to bed now. I am trying to add photos but nothing seems to be working tonight. Try this link hopefully it will work with some photos for ya.

We made it!!!

Hello from CHINA!!!! After two days of travel (I think we lost a day in there somewhere) we are finally at our hotel in Nanchang, China. We are staying at the Lakeview and oh is it ever awesome!!! The poor photos I was able to take of the view doesn't come close to doing it justice. It is HUGE! We are on the 14th floor and we are not even close to the top! It gives me shivers to look down because everything down there is sooo tiny. We are right on the lake and if today wasn't rainy I'm sure it would be really an awesome site.

Where do I begin to explain this place? China is amazing! Unlike anything I could have ever imagined. I had heard about the driving but until we experienced it - I could not fathom it. Bikers, buses, autos, walkers and mopeds all zoom around in the same space like crazy and they don't use turn signals they use their horns! Actually our driver had his blinker on most of the way from the airport to the hotel but I don't think he ever realized it and I didn't want to say it and be the bad American backseat driver.

Right now we have a MAJOR party going on in the middle of our hotel - the ballroom. I suppose it is a prom or something but they are JAMMIN and it is about 8pm here so I'm hoping they will call it a night soon because we have been traveling for two days and would like to sleep before we see our daughter at 11 am tommorrow!!! It is still amazing that we are going to have a daughter! I have an empty crib sitting right here in the corner that will be full of baby in just a few more hours!

Scott and I had an awesome dinner in the hotel dining room. We have breakfast and dinner buffet included in the cost of the room, as well as internet and lots of other perks we haven't discovered yet :) We've never stayed in a 5 star hotel before so tipping is a new concept for us - we've learned to always be prepared and have some urumbie? on us at all times.

The most exciting part of our two day trip to get here was the lady in front of me at Frankfurt (an elderly gramma) had a kitchen knife in her purse - that was kinda weird and a lady had an inflight emergency when we were flying over Russia and we were all getting worried that we may have to divert. The lady was sick to her stomach and I guess they must have gotten her over it somehow because we didn't divert and made it to Shanghai around 10:00 am China time. The air on the plane was extremely dry and we were all dehydrated by the time we got off the plane so I wasn't feeling so great either but we made it to our connecting airport and had a nice lunch (soup & tea for me) rice and veggies for Scott. Not sure what all we ate for dinner from the buffet but it was really good! I had steak, fish, veggies, and two kinds of cake w/coffee - guess my appetite is returning already!

Well, it has been quite a day x2? And we see our baby girl first thing in the morning so we have some homework to do getting prepared. I will try to post more as soon as I can but after today things may get a bit busy around here.

I will try to post some photos too and see if they work or not

We're on our way!

We are seeing the boys off to school today and then heading to the airport. We are finally on our way Jaiden!

0712 - Cody is off (first tears, it is really hard to see the boys go when they should be coming with us)

Next is Jared - my baby boy - I will be a wreck! We are taking him to school today.

Ok, this is the last post for a while - we are packing up the computer now.

Thank You Blog friends for following our journey!!! I don't know if I'll be able to blog from China or not but we have a website that will have photos updated daily (the moderator is in our group) Please follow along at this link:

Oh, and please keep us in your prayers! Thank You! Thank You!!! We'll "see ya" on the other side!

We're really going to CHINA!

It's still sinking in that we are indeed traveling to China to bring our daughter home! I was sitting out in my sunroom this morning looking out at the tomatos and thinking to myself "before those green ones ripen, we are going to have a daughter!" OH MY!!! I'm getting very emotional already, just thinking about leaving the boys behind brings on tears. It is my first time away from Jared for this long and I know I'm leaving one baby to bring another home but my heart wants them both to be there with me. I know the boys will enjoy their time at the Slaters and they will be great SIM parents in our absence but I am going to miss them so much!

Here's our itenerary:
11 Sept 5 pm - CHINA here we come!!!
12 Sept 9 am - arrive in Shanghai
12 Sept - fly to Nanchang
13 Sept - Nanchang
14 Sept - We MEET OUR DAUGHTER!!!!
15 Sept - Nanchang
16 Sept - Orphanage Visit (tentative)
17 Sept - local sightseeing
18 Sept - Nanchang
19 Sept - Go to Guangzhou
20 Sept - Consulate appt 10:00
21 Sept - Guangzhou
22 Sept - Homecoming Day!!!

We finally have confirmation of travel...

I don't think I will breathe again until they place Jaiden into my arms, but for now we seem to be on track to go get her.

As of late, late last night (Germany time) we STILL didn't have tickets confirmed. Why? Because it takes 24-48 hrs for the airline to process the tickets and our bank, well it seems that no matter what we say to them to authorize the payment, they can't seem to get it right. So after multiple calls back and forth between our bank and the airline we FINALLY got them to process our ticket and take the money from our account. I just don't understand why you can't just tell your bank that you want x amount of money to go to a company and have it done no matter how long it takes for the company to process your request. This 24 hr window almost killed us with the time changes between our countries...So word of advice for anyone doing this in the future - make sure your bank will authorize the funds! I understand they are trying to protect us from theft (wish they'd had this feature when someone stole our credit card and cleared out our bank account a few years ago) but I wish that you could have more flexibility over your own finances in times like these - we didn't really need the added stress of not being able to purchase tickets!

So now we're off to figure out how to pack everything into under 44 lbs! That is all the weight we are authorized each on this trip...and we have more than that in baby gear! So I guess any shopping done we will be eliminating clothing and other items as we go...or maybe just take one change of clothes and shop there! :) Ok, that may get pretty old wearing the same jeans day after day - maybe I can do laundry in the room and dry with a hairdryer??? Oh, this is going to get interesting...

Falling back into place

We have new (e-tickets) to Shanghai

FedEx is coming today with our passports

Our money is being wired to China

Our TA is being sent ahead to China

Paperwork should be finished today *Notarized docs

Maybe we will even get a day to spend with the boys before we go! The past two days have been chaotic and they have not seen much of me other than racing around the house like a crazed person trying to make all the calls that had to be made. I'm so thankful that everything is starting to come together again and the small heart attach yesterday cleared the fog and now I am focused on what lies ahead :) Our beautiful baby girl awaits!

*Thank You for your prayers and encouraging words during this time - knowing that we are surrounded in prayer is the greatest gift a person could ever recieve!

What a day!!!

Just when we think it's all coming together...

- We find out our tickets were not confirmed because we need to contact the bank and increase our limit - it seems they will only allow so much of OUR money to be spent at a time without their permission :(

- We get our fingerprints update today :)

- We get our employment letters notarized :)

at 1205 - We find out that FEDeX has our passports on their truck and on their way to our house :)

- We are not at our house and no one is home :( so Scott races home only to have missed the truck by about 5 minutes...:(

- We contact the bank and they extend our withdrawal amount so we can purchase tickets only to find that Air China needs a paper ticket and there is no time to get it mailed to us before we travel so we need to make a 4 hour drive to the airport to purchase the ticket before the hold expires...but someone has to be here when FedEx arrives tommorrow :(

- Our agency calls and tells us we cannot travel without TA - which they have not sent to us yet and will get it in the mail today and it would arrive MAYBE on Monday (the day we scheduled to travel) and also we cannot wire money at this time because it takes up to 3 weeks to wire funds to China!

So we have no tickets, we have no money, we have no TA and we have no passports!

*and my little world that was once spinning like a top came to a complete and totally devestating crush point just now so I feel broken into pieces and don't know what to do. Can we still make it to China this week? Will we meet our daughter? Please pray with us that everything that has fallen apart will fall back into place again. Miracles happen! We truly need one right about now.

We're going to CHINA!!!

In just 4 days we are going to CHINA!!! I can hardly type this...I was up till midnight booking tickets so I don't know how I will function the rest of the week :) With a big dopey grin on my face I'm sure!!!

We're going to China in 4 days!!!

*Almost forgot - our passports were in New Jersey as of 0730 am yesterday and should arrive to our house TODAY :)

Thank God!!! Everything is falling into place!

5 days!!!

In 5 days I will have a daughter!!!

I feel quite drunk and dizzy...is the Earth spinning or is it just my mind? Dusty emailed me today and said she'd gotten a midnight email from her agency and we have finally recieved our CA!!!!

Our CA is 20 Sept!!!

This is going to be a whirlwind trip for sure - we return on 22 Sept!

So much to process and do in such a short time - where are our passports??? Must go find out where they are...

The latest news

It seems that TAs are here and Adam is working our CAs this week (all this info comes from the grapevine not our agency) From what I hear we (our group) could get our CA on Friday and leave on Sat or Monday!

Since we do not have passports or visas yet (they should have left Virginia on Tues) and FedEx normally takes around 4 days - we are not going to be ready to travel when our group is ready to go...this is very depressing news and my stomach is all in knots now waiting for everything to fall into place. I still can't believe we are so close and yet so far from knowing a single thing about our trip...

By the Grace of God we will survive this and someday (soon maybe?) we will have a beautiful daughter in our lives and all this emotion will be forgotten. We will see that we worried for nothing and everything was falling into place before us all along, all I really had to do was Let Go

Playing around with movie maker

Hope this works! I am working on a video for Jaiden while we wait for CA/TA to arrive. Bear with me, the videos are only 2 min each so they may cut off instead of fading away but I am only an amatuer...this is my practice session :)



Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing


Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing


Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing

Where is our CA????

"wanp wanp wanp wanp - wanp wanp wanp wanp"

I hear the news but I just don't understand it....We STILL don't have our Consulate Appts and they are now closed until Tuesday!!!!! URGH!!!!

How long does it frickin take to make an appt??? I can't believe I used that word, but I am very very annoyed and frustrated right now!!!!