Month: August 2016

The Incident It was a dark and stormy night…….only kidding, the day was bright and sunny for our first morning with Tyler. We got up very early (like 6 am for an 8:30 appt) to make our way back to the Civil Affairs office to finalize the adoption paperwork. Today, the construction area was even …

Monday was our Forever Family/Gotcha Day. As we were not meeting Tyler until 3 p.m., we had several hours to fill before we headed to the Civil Affairs office, so we walked to a local park in the morning, which was very pretty – filled with plants, a small lake with tiny fish and some …

Catching up on blog posts from the past few days. We arrived at the Guilin airport on Saturday night luckily about 2 hours early. When we handed our flight info to the “gate agent,” she looked beyond perplexed and just kept staring at us. As that doesn’t translate into easy feelings, I just looked back …

Our final sightseeing day in Guilin was one of the most jam-packed that we have ever attempted, either with just Lisa and me or with the kids. The schedule was very aggressive, so hang on: Reveille was 6 AM, and we departed promptly from the hotel at 8 AM. We made it to the wharf, …

Good Day, All. We’e been tag-teaming posts in FB and here, as FB seems best for quick uploads of photos and nuggets. On our second day of sightseeing here in Guilin, Miss Lily our guide led us first to Yao Mountain.  There we caught the chair lift up to the peak.  Major props to Mom …

Hi all, Dad here.  It’s Thursday morning and Wednesday is behind us.  Thank goodness. In the Chinese culture, the concept of Yin and Yang is everywhere. It followed us around all day yesterday.  We were a few moments delayed when we left Shanghai for Guilin. On the way to the plane, we needed to go …

Greetings from Shanghai Airlines climbing through 18,000 feet enroute from Shanghai to Guilin, Guanxi Province. Monday was lost to the International Date Line and it’s Tuesday, late afternoon. We’re recovering from an “on-our-day” in Shanghai, where we explored the Yu Garden area, located near our hotel. It was more of an acclimation day – a …

This is Lisa.  I am the only one up now, as we quickly acclimate through time zone changes. Chal forgot to mention yesterday that the pilot “casually” mentioned we would be flying through Russian airspace….hmm, don’t remember seeing that in the Delta map when I chose our tickets! We were up in Siberia and then …

Dylan settling in   You’re getting Sleeeepy, Verrry Sleeeepy   Moments after takeoff It’s soooo faaaarrrrr… Turbulence strikes! Closest pass to NP     Half-Way!!! Over Siberia Almost there Shortly before landing            

In the last post, when I said that we’ll check in after the flight, I really should have said “I’ll check in at 10PM Shanghai time, in our hotel, after we wrestled the luggage and wrangled the kids through Chinese Immigration and through the hundreds of drivers holding their little name signs until we “where’s …

  Sitting in Detroit Airport… Last night melted into this morning, as we woke up to our alarm clock. Everything was packed & ready so getting out the door was uneventful, which is good. We got on the highway (for the 45 minute trip to the airport) at: Park & lock the car…check. Check-in took …

Tyler’s story actually begins not long after we returned from our journey to bring home Ryan.  After Ryan’s adoption went so smoothly and Ashley’s reversal surgery went so well, we continued to quietly follow others’ adoption stories and read about other Waiting Children.  It is very difficult to not be emotionally affected by their faces …