Road Trip to Des Moines!

Our friends, Brian and Jen Gibson, have been in the Haitian adoption process for 29 months and they came home today with their three kids!! We just had to be there for this momentous occasion! We left our house at 7:20 am and drove to Des Moines. Before we went to the homecoming at the airport, we had lunch with former Minnesotans Chris and Linda Wilde and their daughter Ellie. It was fun seeing them, too, and they really enjoyed meeting our comic relief, Olivia.Here is the sign I made (made with more love than artistic skill) Here we are with Gibson's beautiful son, Christopher, who is friends with Patricia and Philippe. All three Gibson kids were from P and P's orphanage. We didn't count how many people were there to greet them, but I would guess 75 or so!
Here we all are! It was such a joy, such a blessing and such a miracle to witness this lovely, long-awaited for, prayed-over event!! It was our first airport party for a Haitian adoption and it brought us great comfort to know that Haitian kids DO COME HOME!!! WAHOO!! So happy for you, Gibsons!!!

Olivia did great the whole day. We knew she would after doing so well flying from Hong Kong to Tokyo to Seattle to the Twin Cities with hardly a fuss. She had breakfast and her morning nap in the car and her afternoon nap and dinner in the car, and she had a great time playing with Mama in the backseat.

Here is one of the many goofy faces...

Olivia waves hello and goodbye, gives high fives, does "SO BIG" and now, plays peek-a-boo.

Laughing, or shall I say squealing with delight over this wonderful game :)

And then, no less than two seconds after this picture -

Hmm, this looks like a good teether...
We got home at 7:20pm, exactly 12 hours to the minute from when we left! We had a great day and a fun drive. Olivia had fun crawling around for a while and playing with Daddy before she was ready for bed. She crawled over to me and wanted up and that was that! What a sweetie. Have I mentioned that we loooooove her??

ONE MONTH!

The 13th marked one month since we got our baby O! Time goes alot faster on this side of things... It is interesting that our Gotcha Day was on the 13th since that was our Log In Date!

We celebrated by going out for Chinese food, our first meal out with just the three of us. We had a great time but one goofy thing happened. The owner of the restaurant (whom we have met before, but...) scooped her up and took her into the kitchen to meet her husband. It was a bit disconcerting to have her go out of our eyesight, even for a second! (This happened in China, too. A store clerk grabbed her out of my arms and starting walking away from me. I nervously followed and tried to take her back as soon as I could. She just wanted to show Olivia to her co-worker, but again, it was unnerving!)

Anyway, we couldn't be more thrilled with our "match". She is a pure joy!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

In China

On the way home

A nap on Patricia's bed, while Mama unpacked on the floor

In her own bed, sporting a faux-hawk

Thank you, Jesus, that our house isn't so quiet anymore and when I go up to bed and walk past that room, our baby is IN HER BED. HOME.

Psalm 27:14
Wait for the Lord;be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

More "Welcome Home" and The Many Faces of O

Our super sweet neighbor, Mary, did all this work on our driveway to surprise us as we came home from China. It must have taken a loooooong time to do all of this! She did it the Tuesday evening before we came home because she had to work on Wednesday. She was so happy when she woke up on Wednesday and it hadn't rained! Unfortunately, within the hour of us pulling in the driveway, it poured and the rain washed it all away. It literally rained for a matter of minutes and was done by the time we got home, but it was too late :( Thank you, Mary, for the thought and effort and we are SO glad you took pictures!

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And now for some of Miss O's different expressions...

P & P Update Photos!

Here are the most recent photos that we received of Patricia and Philippe.



There were families visiting Haiti while we were in China and our online friend, Katy, read the kids the letters we sent explaining that we were picking up their little sister. We have video of it. Katy also printed off pictures that we emailed from China, including this one.


The day of the video was Philippe's birthday and he seems pretty happy, but we were told that Patricia had a very hard time understanding why we weren't there. You can see in the video that she is not very responsive, but she often behaves that way when she is sad, taking in new information, or when she is the center of attention, and in the video it is all of the above.



We miss our kids so much and can't wait until they are here for good!

Our Wonderful "Welcome Home"!!

We keep getting requests for more blog posts and more pictures and updates on how our sweet Olivia is doing. We admit that we are totally behind on blogging! In fact we still have China pictures and videos we want to post, but if YOU had this little sweetheart to play with would YOU want to blog? :)


To answer your questions, Olivia is doing amazingly. When we think of how significantly her life has changed in the last three weeks we can't believe how well she has adjusted. She has a big personality in a little 17 lb. body! She is over her ear infection and doing great. She is a peanut in size 6 month clothing!! We hardly had anything that small so most of her clothes are a bit big on her. I hit the thrift stores so she has a few things that fit now! :)

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Charlotte, whose dad took many of these great airport pictures, and Isaac and Ava (my great-nephew and niece) had fun playing while they waited for us to get there (special thank you to Val and Kirk for your photos, too!)
So sweet....watching for us to come down the escalator. It is this sight that made me choke up - there were even more kids lined up at the glass...
Here we come!
We completely blocked the area where people read which baggage claim is theirs! :) Our god-daughter, Kiah, with her sign


My precious Mama, meeting Olivia. With our friend's photos, we got it from both angles!
Words can't express my joy that my mom was here for this moment! What a miracle and a blessing!

We flew home on Lee's 40th birthday

My niece, Jenny, brought birthday cake!

Jenny, meeting Miss O

Our friend Sirene gave us beautiful flowers

And a balloon from the Emanoffs
Grandma Marsha holding Miss O for the first time!

Grandpa Wilson holding Miss O. They have become good pals!

Now this one tops everything...Our dear friends, the Brennans, are in transition - currently staying with relatives in Indiana. Fred was a meteoroloist for NWA which is now owned by Delta, and they just sold their home in Bloomington, soon to be relocated to Atlanta. They ALL flew in on standby just to be there for our arrival. They have been great mentors to us and we love the entire family. We miss them so much already and are still trying to get our brains around the fact that we can't just pop in for pizza and lay around on the floor playing games, telling stories and end up laugh-laugh-laughing. LOVE YOU, BRENNANS! Dang Delta!!! Stink!

Miss Sandy got to hold Miss O since she flew all the way from Indiana!!
Miss Tracy got to hold Miss O because she drove all the way from Eagan.... :) She was threatening to babysit in a week or something crazy like that! :D
Isaac and Olivia meeting for the first time...

Corene got a smile from Olivia

We LOVE our baby! We can't believe it, even now, that she is home. She exceeds our wildest imaginations for everything. She is a great eater, sleeps through the night, has a fun personality, and seems to be super-dee-duper-smart. We can't believe how we are blessed. Our friend Jenna said it better than I could (for you grandparents, click on "Jenna" :) )

First time in the carseat. She fussed for a minute and then stopped. Probably because she was looking at me and listening to me cough all the way home!

Thank you for all the cards, emails, facebook notes, gifts, calls, visits, and all the love, prayers and support for this long journey to Olivia. She has been prayed over and longed for - two years before she was even born. The painful wait for Olivia is what brought us to our Patricia and then Philippe. I will say again that having Patricia and Philippe in our hearts helped us get through the last year to O and O will help us through the last year to them. God knows what he is doing as he knits the tapestry of our family together. We have learned to be content with each day, each stage of waiting for our family, even while watching the families of those around us grow. While we look up at the tapestry from the underside, all we can see is the knots and strings going every which way. We can't see the picture!! What is it? What does it look like? We know that God's plan is better than anything we could have come up with and that the complete picture is very clear to Him.

We Are Out of Parquet!

We made it through the next office!! We got out in just under a month! We are so amazed, but shouldn't be as God knows what He wants to do and when He wants to do it!! We are now in step 4 of 6! Who knows with the rest - it can still take forever...

Here are the steps (IN BOLD IS WHAT WE HAVE LEFT):

1. First Legalization
   
2. IBESR (Haitian Social Services)
   
3. Parquet (Civil Court)
   
4. Second Legalization (Ministry of Justice) - Maybe another 1-4 weeks