Latest Update

Hello Everyone! Our sincere apologies for such a long time since our last update. We've had a couple visitor's, a couple doctor visits, and a 1st birthday!

Also, Gracie is now scooching along and getting around the living room with relative ease. We expect it won't be long before she will be crawling and shortly thereafter, walking! She loves to clap her hands and smile. Just today, she started saying "dog" after a long time coaching from Daddy and Mommy in honor of Chelsea. Lately, she's been saying "cat" and "cake" and, of course, "mama" and "dada." She loves to play and particularly likes to "read" her books. She'll often begin a game of peek-a-boo with us by hiding her face behind something then peeking out resulting in giggles. Since we arrived home, she has had a second top tooth cut and currently has one bottom tooth cutting.

The weekend after we arrived from China, Grace's Grandma Hartman came for a visit. It was pretty exciting. Grandma Hartman had sent a welcome gift that had arrived before she did. We also went shopping at Babies R Us for an activity play center.

Here's Grace opening her very first wrapped gift. Actually she had a little help from Daddy. She hadn't learned to tear paper yet. Something that she's well acquainted with now.














Grace's first time in her new Activity Center. This one is a little different than the usual ones with the seat in the center. This seat revolves around the table. She really gives her legs a good workout. When she's outgrows the seat and can stand on her own, it detaches leaving just the table. It's a gift from Grandma.
















She really likes it as you can see.













Gracie posing for the camera in her pretty dress.















Our 2 kids posing. Grace is wearing her patriotic outfit on the 4th of July.














On the 4th, Grace also got her very first swimming pool. She loves playing in the water. Mommy got in it with her later, but under pain of death, I'm not allowed to show them to another soul.

Now, Grace's First Birthday!

Grace turned 1 on July 10. Several of our friends have small children and came over for the happy day.

Here's the Birthday Girl. She's smiling now, but threw one heck of a fit while we tried to get the top button done. It wasn't tight around her neck. For buttons, the dress has a loop made of the same material and on the other side is a knot that you shove through the hole to secure it. The knot was just too big for the hole and she ran out of patience with both Mommy and Daddy.



Mmmm. Chocolate cake with butter cream frosting.
























Mommy stripped her down to the diaper and shoes.










"Can somebody toss me another piece of cake?"













"What do you mean we're out of cake!?"

Just kidding. There was lots to go around.











"Now that all those presents are out of the way, it's time to get down to the real fun: tissue paper!"










Now this next picture here was of Grace when Daddy woke her from a nap. I've have never seen her with bed head this bad before or since. She had been sleeping on her stomach and when I walked into her room, she popped her head up and turned to see who it was. I couldn't stop laughing. I had Mommy snap a few of these for blackmail later.


"Man that was a wild party!"











Here are some of her other pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Photos from Guangzhou

Hello again. Here's some more pics.

Grace in the outfit that her G-Grandma Breitwieser sent her.

Here is Grace with her gift from the White Swan Hotel and Mattel Toys. It's comonly refered to as the adoption Barbie. It's given to all the adopted children that stay in the White Swan.

Here she is with her very own Panda Bear.












Mommy heard there was a Starbucks near the hotel, so we had to get her a fix.

We went to dinner one evening with some very good friends that we made while we were there. Grace has been teething and doesn't take the pacifier very often, so the only thing that will quite her when she's fussy is to chew on the nipple of her bottle. Poor thing fell asleep while chewing on it.

Here are those very good friends: Warren, his wife Cristin, and their new bundle of joy, Mandy. They were sitting in front of us on the flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo. They overheard us talking to another lady across the aisle from us about adopting a little girl and that's how we met. They are using the same adoption agency as we are. On the next flight, from Tokyo to Beijing, they sat behind us. They left Beijing and flew to Guangzhou where they spent the rest of their time in China. We caught up with them again when we got there. They're from St. Louis. Our agency has an annual picnic in St. Louis every summer, so we are hoping that we can get together there sometime.

Here's Grace at her medical exam on Monday.

Here we are getting ready for the group picture and the traditional photo of the babies on the red couch. The red couch photo is as organized as it got. Once one or two babies started crying it was like dominos. There were a few babies with dry eyes when it was all done, including Grace.

Here she is on the flight to Tokyo. Our row had 3 seats. Ours were the window seat and the middle seat. There was a gentleman sitting next to me on the aisle. Grace was true to form. Right after we got on the plane, Mommy got a whif of something. We were in the middle of changing her when a really nice flight attendant asked the gentleman if he would like to occupy a seat in one of the exit rows so that we might have more room. He obliged, which gave us plenty of room as you can see.

This was a real treat. Before landing in Tokyo, the pilot came over the loud speaker telling us that out the left side of the plane we could see Mount Fuji. Lucky for us, that was our side. Really cool!

That's all for now.

Here are Some Photos for your Viewing Pleasure

Here are a few photos from Wuhan. These were taken Wednesday, on the day we went to the Hubei Provincial Museum.






Ready for bed that evening.







On Thursday, we visited the Yellow Crane Tower.


Here's an interesting picture. Take a look at the power lines in the center of the picture. Scary.










Baby girl's first plane ride heading to Guangzhou.

Photo Dilemma Update

Great news!! I managed to get ALL of the pictures and video off of the laptop a little while ago. I have a CD here of an operating system called PCLinuxOS that you can boot your computer without installing to the hard drive. I've used it in the past and knew that I could read windows files with it. I was able to connect to my main PC and copy over everything. So far it doesn't look like anythings messed up. I've randomly opened some of the pictures and the look fine. Today, I'll work on getting them posted to here.

We're Back!!

Hi Everyone!! We made it back yesterday. We touched down at 3:40 pm. All the flights went well. The flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis actually left EARLY!! Never heard of that before. That flight was a little over 10 hours. Grace did very well with a few little naps and one that was a couple hours long. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that one. Charlene was on my right, Grace cradled in my arms and a little Chinese lady sitting on my left, all of them asleep. Minneapolis airport was a royal pain though. When we checked in at the airport in China, the guy said that the bags were checked through to Omaha. I checked the little luggage sticker they put in your boarding pass envelope and yes it said to Omaha. In Minneapolis however, we had to go through immigration, Grace had a stamp put in her passport to make her an official American citizen!! It was nice, they had a special line for adoptions. There were a several of us on the plane that had adopted. We were second in line to go through Immigration. The other lines were packed. After that, we had to collect all of our bags (3 large suitcases) and go through customs. I don't know how many of you have flown a 747, but there are a tons of luggage. Our first 2 bags came out fairly quickly. I got worried about the third one. It was a cheap bag we picked up in China. It wasn't very good quality. It was kind of flimsy. When we packed it, we put things in there that we could afford to loose along with dirty laundry. The baggage carousels were jammed with luggage. They had airline people out pulling bags off of the carousels to make room for more. There were probably around 100 suitcases on the floor, the carousel was still packed, and more were still pouring out. Finally our last one showed up.

Then we went to customs. We didn't have anything to declare, but, you'll probably hear about this from Charlene later, I had a package of beef jerky in my carry-on. I didn't have to say anything, but the customs form asked if you have any meet products. I was honest and said yes. This is a package I bought before we even left here to go to China. Lucky for me, I hadn't got around to opening it and I even had the sales slip in the grocery sack still. So there was no problem. Just a few minute delay here.

Next, we had to re-check our bags. I turned the corner into this area and it was almost chaos, I'm sure it was going to get a lot worse. There weren't that many people waiting, but the belt they use to take the luggage back out to the planes wasn't working so there were bags piling up on the floor. The ladies there said that if you have to hurry to catch a flight, just leave your bags and go. We had a little more time, but people were beginning to stack up behind us. At the baggage check-in, one lady told me to just leave the bags. So I did, crossed my fingers, and we all headed through security.

When we arrived in Omaha, we were met by our friends Ruth, Cori and there son Ryan. We weren't expecting anyone. We looked awful after all that time. We had been up and on the go for almost 24 hours, but we were glad to see them.

We were very exhausted by the time we got home. It was probably around 4:30. The first thing I wanted, was a pizza from Pizza Hut and some "American" Diet Pepsi. For those of you that have not traveled overseas, some things, like soda, do not taste the same as they do here. Some are re-formulated for the locals. It's not that it tasted bad in China. It was ok. I just wasn't what we "liked". We had Pizza Hut one day there. It was just a pepperoni and cheese. It was ok. I was dying for a deep dish supreme though.

At the house, I think Chelsea was surprised to see us. I went to go take her out before Charlene and Grace went in. She didn't even make a sound when I came in the house and she was waiting at the top of the stairs just looking at me. Usually she's shaking her rump all excited. She didn't move until I said hi to her. Then she got excited. I think she was very surprised to see us.

Everyone has been so nice to us here. Ruth, Cori, and Ryan had some pink and purple welcome balloons on the table along with a card. Those are the colors we used in Graces bedroom. Our friend Angela made some meals and they were ready in the freezer for us. She also had some chocolates with Grace's picture on them along with her birth date and the day we got her. Cori's sister Lori made us some cookies. Charlene's dying for the recipe. They had chocolate chips and bits of cherry in them. Boy are they good. Lori's the one who stayed at the house while we were gone and took good care of Chelsea for us. Ruth and Ryan have been stopping by and helping with Chelsea too. Our neighbors behind us mowed our grass for us while we were gone. I already had it in my head that I was going to be mowing today. Everyone has been such a big help and we really do appreciate everything!

Last Day in China, Wednesday - 23 May

On our last day in China all that is on schedule is a visit to the US Consulate. Their offices used to be right next door to our hotel, The White Swan, but they've relocated across town. So it was a nice bus ride. Our last day there and we finally got to see the sun. It had rained pretty good on Monday. Got soaking wet coming back from Grace's medical exam. We had an umbrella that we borrowed from the hotel. Charlene was pushing the stroller and I was holding the umbrella to keep the two of them dry. At first the rain was light but Grace was still getting a little on her legs, so I gave the umbrella to Charlene, took Grace out of the stroller so Mommy could carry baby. They stayed mostly dry. In less than a minute, nothing on me was dry.

Anyway, everything went smooth as silk at the Consulate. They just needed to verify our identities with our passports. The last thing was to take an Oath of Citizenship for Grace.

Latest Update - Monday, May 21

We're truly sorry for the long delay in updates. Our laptop died on us Thursday evening. It tries to boot into windows, then we get the dreaded "blue screen of death". It's funny, the error message says that Windows was prevented from loading to prevent harm to the computer. If you continue to get this message, try disabling anti-virus, blah, blah, blah. Hard for me to disable anything when I can't even get to it. Oh well. It is very distressing. We had ALL of the photos that we had taken up until Thursday downloaded to the laptop. They are the only copies. I even thought to myself earlier that day that "maybe I should back these up to CD in case something happens". Ahhh. The power of hindsight!! Should have listened to my inner voice. I hope they are still there. I've got a chance to see if I can get to them this evening. As soon as I get the laptop up and running (if I get it running) I will post a ton of pictures.

Anyway. Everything is going very well. Mommy and baby are doing very well. We did some sightseeing during our last days in Wuhan. Saturday we flew to Guangzhou. It was only a 1.5 hour flight. Grace did extremely well (almost) during the flight. About half the way through the flight, Charlene thought she smelled something. Sure enough. Poopy diaper. I was on the aisle seat, so yours truly, daddy, had the task of taking care of my second solo poopy diaper in the teeny tiny bathroom. Poor Grace. I tried to be as careful as I could, but when I put her down, her head was under the towel dispenser. She didn't seem to care for something hanging over her face. So I picked her up to turn her around, bumped her head on the towel dispenser. That started the crying. When I went to put her down, she threw herself backwards and arched her back just as I was about to lay her down. So she hit her head again. She was very MAD this time and I hadn't even got her pants off of her. She was screaming bloody murder. I finally got her cleaned up, and it was messy. Front to back and side to side messy. I don't understand how it stayed in the diaper with all her thrashing around. She wouldn't even let me put her pants back on her, so I took her back to mommy and let her hold her while I slipped her pants on. I was pretty embarassed coming out of the bathroom. The flight attendants back there probably thought I was trying to kill my kid. She survived and all seemed to be forgiven after a few minutes.

We've been in Guangzhou for a few days now. It's very nice here. One of the co-ordinators that joined up with us here said that it had been very hot here. It rained before we flew in and it's been the most pleasant, if damp, since we've been in China. The area where we are has very European style buildings. We're in a deluxe hotel with a great view overlooking a huge river. Lots of boat traffic.

Grace had her visa photo taken yesterday and today (Monday) she got a physical exam. She's been absolutely the best baby. The only time she fusses is when it's time to eat, get a diaper change (when it's wet, when it's dirty she likes for us to find it out on our own), or when it's nap time. This afternoon, we are going shopping with our group. We've rented a bus that's supposed to take us to a really good shopping area.

Well, with any luck, we'll have photos this evening or tomorrow. Cross you fingers. Catch you later.