Ladybug Adventures

Originally posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2005 3:12 PM CDT

Emilie is now in school and is loving every minute of it! She is in a pre-school class for 3 year olds at a local church here in Berne. She only attends class on Tues. & Thurs. from 8:30 am to 11:00 am right now. She likes it so much, she wants to know why she can't go to school every day. :) I hope hope she maintains this same like for school throughout all her school years. :)

We did get one small tid bit of information last week about our second daughter as well. Nikole is now 32 months old and our agency tells us she weighs 13.5 kg = 29.72 pounds and her height is 82 cm = 32.28 inches. The orphanage that she is fostered through, called the foster family and said she is doing well. And the orphanage says they are getting ready to move her from her foster home back to the orphanage to prepare her to meet us. We have mixed feelings about that. The good thing is, that probably indicates our "Travel Approval" should be coming soon, but we fear that Nikole will not get as good a care in the orphanage as she would if she could remain with her foster family until we get there. At least it will only be for a few weeks.

That is about all the news we have for now. We will post again as soon as we get new photos or travel approval.

God Bless,
Lisa, Steve and Emilie

Originally posted on Monday, October 31, 2005 10:13 AM CST

For our family and friends who may still be watching this website, here is an update on our current upcoming trip to China. We recently received our detailed itinerary, which tells us where we will be and what we will be doing each day we are in China. I posted a copy of it on our yahoo grou last week and will copy that same post to this website as well.

In case you are not aware, we have started a yahoo group for everyone to follow our trip to China this time. We are going to post to the yahoo group as often as possible while we are there and hopefully even upload a few pictures. If you want to view the photos we post from China you will need to log on to our yahoo group to see those. I will try to copy all of our post to this site as well, but to make sure you don't miss anything, you might want to check out the yahoo group. You can find it at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hammellfamily

The first time you visit the yahoo group, you will have to create a yahoo login and password and request to join the group. Once your request has been approved you will be able to see all of our past posts to the group, view links I have added and view the few photos I have already put up. Some photos of Emilie and the only referral photos we have of Nikole at this time.

Here is our itinerary. I have added a few website links so you can check out some information about the
hotels we will be staying in or find information about the tourist attractions we will get to see while we are there. Here it is!

Nov 4 = Fly from Fort Wayne to Chicago - Flight UA7255 - United
Airlines (D: 6:00a - A: 5:55a)

Fly from Chicago to Beijing China - Flight UA851 – United
Airlines (D: 12:05p)

Nov 5 = Arrive in Beijing at 2:30 pm (Beijing time) and stay at the
Wangfujing Grand Hotel. Here is the website for our hotel:
http://www.wangfujinghotel.com/english/ssfw/xxsg.html

Nov 6 = Tour the Great Wall and the Summer Palace
The Great Wall Info – http://www.crystalinks.com/chinawall.html
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/great_wall_of_china/
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/

The Summer Palace Info -
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/summer.htm
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/summer_palace/index.html

Nov 7 = Meet Nikole!!!! Go to adoption registration and
notarization appointments

Nov 8 = Tour the Forbidden City
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/forbidden.htm
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/forbidden_city/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City

Nov 9 = Tour the Temple of Heaven
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/heaven/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

Nov 10 = Tour the Lama Temple
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/China/Beijing_Shi/B
eijing-1024960/Things_To_Do-Beijing-Lama_Temple_Yonghegong-BR-1.html

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/yonghe.htm


Nov 11 = Get Nikole's Passport

Nov 12 = Go to Hutong Tour
http://www.cbw.com/tourism/hutong/eindex1.htm
http://www.sinohotelguide.com/travel/beijing/hutong.html

Nov 13 = Fly to Guangzhou – Flight CZ3102 – China Southern (12:05p –
3:00p)
Stay at the White Swan Hotel
http://www.white-swan-hotel.com/eng/Public/index.asp

Nov 14 = Take Nikole for her Medical Check and get her Visa Photo
taken in the afternoon

Nov 15 = Go to 11:00a Visa Appointment at the U.S. Consulate

Nov 16 = Get Nikole's Visa

Nov 17 = Fly from Guangzhou to Hong Kong – Flight CZ301 (8:30a –
9:30a)
Fly from Hong Kong to Chicago – Flight UA896 (11:35a HK time –
11:40a Chicago time)
Fly from Chicago to Fort Wayne – Flight UA6828 (3:45p
Chi time – 5:45p Fort Wayne time)

Lisa Hammell

Originally posted on Monday, September 26, 2005 5:07 PM CDT

Just a quick note to let you all know that we received Travel Approval to go to China to get Nikole!! We don't have exact travel dates yet, but expect it to be the first couple weeks of November. We will post again as soon as we have travel dates and our itenerary.

Blessings,
Lisa

Originally posted on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 3:22 PM CDT

We are happy to announce that we are officially DTC (Dossier or Documents to China). We have finished up this preliminary round of paperwork and gotten it sent off to our agency. They contacted us yesterday to let us know that our dossier is complete and everything looks good, so they sent it off to China yesterday. As soon as they get word back from CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs), they will let us know our Log In Date (LID) and that will officially start our wait. Currently the wait time from LID to Referral is running 6 to 7 months. If everything stays as is, we expect to find out who our next daughter is sometime in November or December of this year. Then we would be traveling sometime in January or February of 2006.

Emilie is extremely excited about getting a little sister. She talks about her daily and tells us things she wants to do with her little sister when she comes home. I hope her excitement and enthusiasm holds out once we have her little sister home. :)

As for Emilie, she is doing very well. She talks all the time and she is getting so big. She is quickly moving into 3T and 4T clothing because she is getting so tall.

Last week we took her to one of the local churches and got her registered for the 3 year old preschool class for this fall and she is absolutely overjoyed. Every time we drive past the church she says, "There's my preschool" in an excited voice. She also loves her children's church class and her Sunday school class. Her sunday school teacher has told us that she is quite a talker in class. :)

We have also started a Hammell Family yahoo group. The yahoo group is probably where we will post most of our updates while we are in China for this next trip. The yahoo group will allow us to post messages to everyone who is signed up and they can respond to us for everyone to see. There is also a place to upload pictures if we are able to get us a digital camera before this next trip. If it is possible I will try to post any messages we put up on the yahoo group to this site as well, but I'm not sure that will always be possible. Computers are limited and very slow in China, so we are trying to come up with the most efficient method possible. I you are interested in joining our yahoo group go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hammellfamily

We will continue to post updates when possible.

God Bless,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Originally posted on Tuesday, March 8, 2005 9:01 AM CST

Just a quick note to let you all know how Emilie is doing. As you can probably tell by the new photo I have put on the homepage, she is growing like a weed. This picture was taken around the first of February as we were preparing to attend one of the Chinese New Year Celebrations. Emilie is very nearly 3 years old. She will be 3 on June 13. She has grown nearly 7 inches since we brought her home, weighs about 32 pounds and is wearing 2T and 3T clothing. Other than a recent bout with bronchitis, she is healthy and doing very well.

As many of you know, we have been working on the paperwork to go back to China to adopt a second little girl. We have nearly completed the paperwork process, as we are only waiting for our homestudy from our social worker.

We will continue to try to post updates to this site periodically, however, we have also begun a yahoo group for anyone who wishes to continue to follow our adoption journey. Through the yahoo group we can post messages, as well as it makes it easier to receive responses from you while we are in China and we can post more picutres than we can from this site. If you are interested in joining our yahoo group go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hammellfamily

Hope you are all doing well and we look forward to hearing from you all when you have a chance as well.

God Bless,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Originally posted on Tuesday, April 6, 2004 1:25 PM CDT

Just a quick note to update everyone on how Emilie is doing these days. She is now nearly 22 months old and seems to be adjusting quite well. She is nearly 34 inches tall and weighs about 26 pounds. She talks all the time. She has picked up English so quickly, she surprises us nearly everyday with a new word and repeats nearly everything we say.

She is still having a few sleeping problems, but they have improved tremendously from when we first got home last September. Last September Emilie was having nightmare or night terrors every night and sometime 2 and 3 times a night. She now only has about one each week or so. However, she still doesn't sleep through the night yet. She still wakes up at least once and sometimes 2 to 4 times a night crying. But at least she is not hysterical from a night terror.

Other than that Emilie is doing very well. For the most part she seems to always be a very happy little girl. Always making us smile and laugh and always ready to give a hug and a kiss. :)

As many of you know, we are planning to go back to China to adopt another little girl, but we are not sure yet when that will happen. We hope to start the paperwork as soon as possible, but that will all depend on the financing and how soon we can afford to start the process again. If you are interested in taking a look at some of the things we are selling to try to help raise money for adoption fund, please go to http://www.geocities.com/pocahontas_in.

Thank you all for your prayers and support and we will continue to keep you updated on Emilie's progress.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Originally posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:44 PM CDT

We're Home!!

Yes, we finally made it home after a very long day last Friday. We left the White Swan Hotel at 6:00 am China time on Friday, Sept. 12 (which would have been 5:00 pm Indiana time on Thursday, Sept. 11). We had a one hour flight from Guangzhou, China to Hong Kong. (For anyone who ever travels through the Guangzhou airport, good luck. This was the most disorganized and confusing setup an airport could ever possibly have.) What was supposed to be a 3 hour layover in Hong Kong, ended up being around 40 minutes after finally making it through the tranfer line and all the security / SARS checkpoints. We took one last group photo with our travel group and then we all boarded the plane for a long 14 1/2 hour flight to Chicago. Emilie did absolutely wonderful on the entire flight. She slept nearly 12 hours of the flight and what time she was awake, she was playing nicely on Lisa's lap or on the floor right in front of Lisa.

Due to a typhoon near Japan, our flight was detoured which added about 40 minutes to our flight. This caused us to miss our connecting flight to Fort Wayne. We were then told that United could not get us on another flight to Fort Wayne yet that night and neither could American Airlines. Our best option was to take a flight from Chicago to Indianapolis. (One little bit of irony - the flight to Indianapolis left out of the same exact gate we left out of just 2 weeks earlier to fly to Beijing, China - How's that for closure?) We landed in Indianapolis around 7:15 pm where Lisa's parents picked us up. After waiting for luggage, struggling with the car seat and stopping for a bite to eat, we finally made it home around 12:30 am Saturday, Sept. 13. By this time we had been up an entire 33 1/2 hours with nearly no sleep. Needless to say, we were a little tired.

The last 3 to 4 days of our time in China, Emilie had really begun to open up to us and was doing much better. However, she was still very attached to Lisa and didn't like for Lisa to be out of her sight. If this happened, it was met by a lot of crying and screaming on Emilie's part. Now that we are home, we have had a little bit of a set back the first couple of days. Emilie has been back to doing a lot of crying and clinging to Lisa just like she did the first 2 or 3 days we had her. She also is not sleeping through the night. We think this is partially due to her still being slightly on China time and it appears that she may also be having some nightmares.

We are seeing improvements almost daily. When Lisa's parents met us at the airport on Friday night, Emilie really didn't want to have much to do with them. Then on Sunday evening she was having a blast at their house. She was being quite the little ham wanting Grandma to take more and more pictures of her. :)

Today has been one of the best days Emilie has had yet. Today we visited Steve's workplace where Emilie got to meet many of the people Steve works with. While we were there Emilie was laughing and giggling and really enjoying meeting everyone and showing off her squeaky shoes. She loved the bear that was given to her as well. Up until this point she always acted shy and rarely responded to new people. We spent some time today doing a little shopping and Emilie seemed to emjoy it all. She has been rather animated all day.

We ask that you all continue to pray for Emilie's adjustment to her new home. This will be the last offical journal entry of our China trip, however we will continue to periodically post entries to update you all on Emilie's progress. If anyone has any questions about our adoption, our China trip, etc. that we have not answered in one of these entries, please feel free to e-mail us at hoosier925@hotmail.com and we will be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support during this process. We know all the prayers is what has helped us get through a few rough spots along the way. And a special thank you to our wonderful travel group. We could not have asked for any nicer people to share this experience with and hope we can continue to keep in touch for our sake as well as the girls. We wish you all well and hope to see you all soon.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Orginally posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 10:09 PM CDT

Hello from Guangzhou!



We are very sorry for our absence the past few days. We were just very busy our last two days in Nanning. Then on Tuesday morning we flew from Nanning to Guangzhou where we are now staying in the White Swan Hotel. When we checked into the White Swan we found that using the internet was very expensive there ($5 US for 15 minutes). But we just found a wonderful store owner near the hotel who has his own store (Jordan's) and he also offers internet use for just $1 US for 30 minutes.

As soon as we got into Guangzhou on Tuesday afternoon we had to immediately take Emilie to get her Visa photo and then to the hospital near the hotel for her physical. We found out that she definitely does not like doctors. :)

Guangzhou seems like a very nice city. It is a much more modern city than Nanning and has some very beautiful buildings. All of the hotels we have been in during our time here in China have been very nice, but The White Swan Hotel is by far the best hotel so far. It has a beautiful waterfall in the center of the hotel.



We are seeing more and more improvements and changes in Emilie each day. We are getting many more smiles and giggles from her each day and she seems to just chatter away many times. Only wish mommy and daddy could understand the chinese words she is using. Our guide in Nanning told us that she has a rather large chinese vocabuly. She can speak words in both Cantonese and Mandarin. She was doing very well at conversing with our guide, Alice, in Nanning. We have also found that she loves riding in her stroller. Many times when we are in the room she will start pointing to her stroller and try to get mommy or daddy to put her in it so we will take her somewhere.

We have found that she also loves musice. She dances and moves around any time she hears music. The little see and say we brought has been a big hit.

This is our last day in Guangzhou. A friend of mine from college, who is a missionary in Macau (an island off mainland China about 2 hours from Guangzhou) will be visiting us this afternoon for a few hours. We are trying to also finish up some of our shopping this morning and later this evening.

We leave for the airport tomorrow morning about 6:00 am. We will be flying from Guangzhou to Hong Kong where we will have about a 3 1/2 hour lay over. The on from Hong Kong to Chicago. We will have about 2 hours in Chicago before we head on to Fort Wayne. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day, but hopefully Emilie will do well on the plane. Please keeps us in your prayers during our return flights home.

Best wishes to you all and we will write again once we get home to let you all know how the flights went and how Emilie is settling in at home.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Originally posted on Saturday, September 6, 2003 2:34 AM CDT

GOD IS GOOD!!!!!!


The last 24 hours have shown such a tremendous change in our daughter that I know it was your prayers and God's goodness that have helped bring about the change in her we have seen.

Emilie has started to show us the sweet little girl we knew she was. She laughs, smiles and plays with her toys some now, where all she did before was cry. Lisa and I have been taking steps to break the bungee chord that she has attached to Lisa and she even will let daddy hold her for a few minutes now. (but only when Lisa is in the room.) Small victorys, but we are getting there.



Today our guide took us out into the countryside where we visited a farmming village. We got to go into a farmers house and meet his family. The people in the village were wonderful, but let me tell you we all have a real appreciation for what we have in America because most of these people here have so little.



This afternoon after Lisa and Emilie wake up from their naps, we plan to go explore the streets around the hotel a little bit. That should be an experiance. Let me tell you, the traffic in China is organized chaos. We are all amazed that not more people are killed around here. Our bus drivers have been the best.We have all agreed that they could put Nascars's best to shame with their ability to drive fast and in traffic.

Thank you for all your prayers, please keep them coming. We have crested the hill with Emilie but still have the long road down the other side to go.

Steve and Lisa
Nanning China

Originally posted on Friday, September 5, 2003 1:55 AM CDT

Hello from Nanning,

Well things with Emilie have improved a little bit in the 3 days we have had her. She is eating, but only when Lisa feeds her. She will basically have nothing to do with me at all. She cries and throws a fit whenever I try to hold her and pulls away when I touch her. I know it is normal for an adopted child to attach to one parent,but it still hurts after waiting and dreaming all this time to find out that your daughter does not like you. I know she will come around and hopefully soon.

Emilie will not let Lisa put her down at all. And with all the crying and screaming Lisa's nerves are getting very fraid also. We have discovered that she was a very stubborn and spoiled little girl and we are both working hard to change that.Basically Lisa and I are ready to come home, neither of us has enjoyed this trip at all since Wendsday morning. We are definitley thinking twice about starting this adoption process over again in a year.

Yesterday we got to visit the Nanning SWI and Mothers Love orpanage. At mothers love we actually got to go inside the baby room. Let me tell you it broke our hearts to go inside and see all of the beautiful little girls laying in cribs and on straw mats. What was really sad was the one little boy of about seven who had no eyes and was just sitting on a straw mat weeping. I know I was in tears when we left that room. I had to leave early because I was holding Emilie and she started throwing a fit.

I forgot to mention that Jane, CWA China program director joined us in Nanning Wendsday night and went to the orphanage with us and took clothes and toys.

We then went to the Nanning SWI where we got to meet the director again and a doctor looked at Emilie to see if she had any physical problems. The doctor gave her a suppository because she had been constipated and that seemed to help some.

We were able to drop off two gifts that we had bought over for CWA families to the orpanages were the children were. We gave the Thompsons gift to the director of Mothers Love. We did not get to meet thier son though. At Nanning we dropped off a gift for Rob and Debbie Hard. We have some very good news for Rob and Debbie if I ever can get hotmail to work here.

Please continue to pray for Lisa, Emilie and I, We really need all the prayers you can send our way.

Tommorow is one day closer to home!!!

God Bless

Steve