Zoo, Last Post from China, and 13 years!

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It's 7:18pm on Tuesday March 13 in China (6:18am on March 13 in Houston).

13 Years ago today, Jessica and I were married!  We celebrated by going to the Zoo.  And the zoo was amazing! So much good video that I'll post when we get back to the U.S.  Zoe even held and fed a baby Tiger!!!!  I didn't get any photos, but their is some nice video of that.  They let you get super close to the animals at this zoo, and we got to see Tigers

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Zoe and Alex have loved this!

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So how are Zoe and Alex doing? They are loving China! They want to move here and live in a hotel. A really nice hotel in a really nice, new part of Guangzhou. The part of Guangzhou we are staying in has all been built within the last 10 years. There are no motorbikes, no honking, and everything is very clean and well organized. It is the very opposite of Hefei.

Zoe and Alex have been amazingly helpful at times. They've pushed the stroller for us, held Ava's bottle (although she really prefers to hold it herself), fetched numerous items for us in times of stress, and been very loving towards Ava. It's been

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Last day in Hefei... On to Guangzhou

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Current time in China, March 9 - 9:23am,  Current time in Houston - 7:23pm - March 8

Sleep schedule has finally normalized!!!!!  Girls went to bed at 7:45, woke up at 6:00am, that works for me! Thakns for the prayers!

We finally get a change of scenery tonight.  We have to wait for Queenie to get here with some paperwork. Check that paperwork, and then she goes back to finish off the local paperwork with the Anhui province (like a state in America).

Then we fly to Guangzhou. Ava's first flight, let's hope she prefers flying to driving.  The flight is about 2 hours. While in Guangzhou we will be staying at The Garden Hotel, looks pretty nice, but I'm betting the room will be a bit smaller than the very nice set up we have here at the Holiday Inn Hefei. Good news is that the weather is about 20 degrees warmer in Guangzhou. Right now, it's 39 here in Hefei, and 59 in Guangzhou. More pictures are below, but first, some more...... China observations....

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Not the zoo! And some thoughts on being a celebrity

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So our guide (her name is Queenie) decided to throw out another option instead of the zoo this morning. Because it was 39 degrees and a bit drizzly she offered to take us to an indoor playground at the fancy mall. Big Win! The playground was super fun, and the older girls needed somewhere to run around and let off steam. They've been couped up in hotel rooms for too long. This was perfect.  Then we had a pretty good meal in the mall, and made it back just in time for Ava to take her 1:00pm nap.  Added bonus, it was only a 5 minute car ride to the mall.  Did Ava cry the whole way?
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Sleeping in until......4:30am

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Yes!!!! How weird is it to be excited that your kids slept in until 4:30am? We are stoked. They slept 8 hours (still not enough) and made it til 4:30. A 3 hour improvement over the past 2 nights. Praise God. It's currently 5:45am here (3:45pm the precious day in Houston).

Perhaps we can get them (and us) to sleep til 6:00 tomorrow??? Too optimistic?

In Ava news.... She is sleeping in our bed with us and man she is a wild woman. Rolling around like crazy in her sleep. In fact I'm laying in bed with her as I type this and she seems to be dreaming about break dancing. I'm looking forward to heading to Guanzhou tomorrow and hopefully getting a legit crib for her to sleep in.

Today is our last day in Hefei and we are heading to the zoo. Why don't we just come home you ask? We are waiting here for her passport, which we pick up tomorrow. Then we head to Guanzhou to take care of all the paperwork with the U.S. Consulate there. I'm sure I'll post pictures later today.

Ava is learning a lot

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Ava can't walk, and hasn't ever eaten real food, but we are working on both like crazy right now.  Because of her cleft palate anything she eats might get shot out of her nose, so that is an adventure. It also has to be really small, so we are sticking to mashed banana and yogurt right now. The noodles at lunch (very small) were a moderate success. She is doing great, and we've had a lot of laughs today, much better than yesterday. Thank you for the prayers.  Keep praying for sleep normalization.

 

From the land of the crazy sleep schedule

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It's 5:52am here. I've been awake for 3 hours. I think Alex has been awake for longer. We just finished watching. The rest of Mary Poppins from yesterday and part of Toy Story 3. Now they are coloring as we wait for Ava to wake up. Strangely, Ava has been up and down all night too. This scares me. I think i mentally need at least one kid to sleep normally so i don't feel totally out of sorts. We were able to keep the girls awake until 8pm last night but it didn't get us back on a nor,al schedule, obviously. However, I think it was a step in the right direction.

Ava hasn't been quite as fun and laugh a minute as she was in those first few hours. She has cried some, played some. She definitely checks everything out, she is very curious, but she doesn't seem all that interested in people. She rarely gives people much of her attention. She is more into things. While Jessica went to the store we did play with the always entertaining multi-colored cup stack last night and she interacted with me and the girls a little more. I'm sure her little brain is going through a lot with all this change, so please continue to pray that there would be a strong personal connection developing between her and all 4 of us.

Thank you again for all of the incredibly encouraging messages. It has been extremely meaningful to us. Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly sing Jessica's praises for being so awesome during all of this. She is making this happen. Without her I would have already died from anxiety.

Later today we are going to visit Lord Bao's temple.

Also, happy iPad 3 announcement day for you tech geeks ( like me). Although, technically it's still tomorrow for you.

 

We got her!

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It's been a wild time, and a bit challenging. The good news is Ava took to all of us immediately. She laughed and laughed with us off and on all day. We went to the grocery store and out to eat, and she was a champ. She played with the girls and played with us a ton. She seems very curious and very funny. She loves to have fun and giggle and laugh. She also seems very healthy, but we have a lot to learn about where she is developmentally. He can cruise, but probably not walk on her own yet. She loves to touch and scratch things, very tactile.

The bad news is we are trapped in some kind of bizarre sleep netherworld. Ava was supposed to nap for 2 hours at 1:00pm yesterday. We tried to put her down but she cried and cried and cried and cried. We couldn't let her cry it out in the crib because the crib the hotel provided has sides slow low that she jumped right out. Thankfully I was ready and caught her or she would have landed hard on her face! So she missed her nap.

Her bedtime is 7:00pm and we had her asleep in our bed by 7:30pm and she is still asleep. However, she wakes up and cries for 20 seconds about once an hour.

Our older girls on the other hand are in a totally different schedule. Yesterday they woke up at 1:30am. We couldn't get them to sleep, so they were just up. That came back to bite us yesterday afternoon when they put themselves down for a nap at 3:00pm!!! That nap lasted until about 2 hours ago (1:00am). Right now (3:00am) we are awake, I'm typing this, the girls are watching Mary Poppins, and Jessica is laying in bed with Ava. So we are basically functioning with 3 kids on 2 different sleep schedules. Jessica and I are very tired! Irrationally tired. Please pray we can all get on a semi-normal sleep schedule!!!!!!!!

 

This is us with Ava's foster mother and an orphanage worker.  The foster mother has a 6 year old at home as well.

Everyone is a helper!

I had her asleep like this for a few minutes, but she freaked when I tried to lay her down.

We have some better pictures and a ton of video, but I can't upload the video, and some of the pictures are in the other room, where she is sleeping.

2 more hours until Ava time!

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This is a picture of Zoe and Alex anxiously waiting for Ava (and coloring to occupy themselves).

We have indeed been awake since 1:00am. It is currently 7:50am on Monday morning (5:50pm on Sunday in Houston). We are cleaning up and getting ready for them to bring her to our hotel room. Pretty bizarre that we are waiting in a hotel room for a child.

Thank you for all the comments, emails and mostly for all the prayers! Please pray for Ava to bond with us quickly. We are anticipating this being an issue. Unlike Zoe, Ava has been in foster care for almost a year, so she will be most likely missing her foster mother/parents. I'm sure this will be a traumatic experience for her, so pray that she would miraculously bond with all 4 of us, and quickly. We are also going to be on a steep learning curve with her diet. Her cleft palate will be a new challenge for us, so pray we get some good info from the orphanage director that brings her to us.

Finally, we won't be able to post a video of the big moment until we get home, but there will be pictures galore!

 

A few observations from China

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It's 5:24 pm in Hefei and 3:24am in Houston.  I'm super exhausted, having just awoke from a 2 hour nap. All the girls are still asleep. We're gonna try to wake them up in a few minutes and stay awake for 3 hours, then go to bed and see if we can get adjusted to the new time zone.  They are bringing Ava to our hotel room tomorrow, and she'll be with us permanently after that!  That should happen at roughly 9:30am tomorrow (7:30pm in Houston).

A few funny things I've noticed since we've been here (the past 24 hours).

1. If you are a male, from China, and are in a public restroom, you WILL walk into the bathroom and the first

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good morning from Hefei!

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We slept a solid 5 hours last night, but at 5:30 we were all wide awake, so we got up and took much needed showers. Then we went to the top floor of the hotel (Holiday Inn Hefei) and ate breakfast in the rotating restaurant. It was one of the great breakfast buffets of all time and is included with the room. Needless to say the hotel is very nice. We have two adjoining rooms and they are well furnished. Thanks for all the prayers and encouragements.

We have no access to Facebook or Twitter (although I am getting email notifications when people mention me on Twitter). I'm trying to figure out a way to circumvent this, but I'm not hopeful. You can email us or post in the comments on this site, also FaceTime works perfectly and I'm on Skype as derekbonesteel.

I'll post some humorous China observations later.

PS- 9:34am here on Sunday (7:34pm on Saturday in Houston)

Friday will be the longest day of our lives

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We are super pumped to be taking our whole family to China to get our newest member, Ava.  

However, it will be the longest day of our lives. Here's why...

Because of frequent flyer mile seat availability we are leaving from Dallas.  We will wake up super early (4:30am) to catch an early flight (6:45) from DFW to Chicago. We have about an hour in Chicago before we board a flight to Shanghai. T

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