Ladybug Adventures

Originally posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2003 10:50 PM CDT

Hello Family and Friends,

Just a quick update to let you know that we received our United Airlines tickets for our international flights today. We also recieved back our passports with our Chinese Entry Visa's. We are now officially allowed to enter China one time. :)

We are expecting our in-China travel schedule in the mail any day now. As soon as we recieve it, we will post our entire travel schedule here for you all to see.

10 days and counting til we leave to go get Emilie! :)

Originally posted on Sunday, August 17, 2003 11:13 PM CDT

The past few days have been a very exciting time in our journey to go get Emilie. On Wednesday evening we found out our confirmed travel dates and international flight schedule. We should have our airline tickets, passports and visa's in our hands by Friday of this week or before.

The most exciting news came on Thursday morning when we opened our e-mail. A few weeks ago, we met a lady in Ohio (Theresa) via one of our adoption e-mail groups. She was preparing to leave for China, in particular, Nanning, Guangxi Province, where Emilie is currently residing. Theresa offered to take a few questions about Emilie to the orphanage director for us to see if she could get us some answers. Well, she did better than that. She not only got our questions answered, but she even got to meet Emilie and her foster parents and she took 6 new photos for us. We were both in tears as we looked at these new photos of our little girl.

Theresa told us that she was able to speak with Emilie's foster parents through a translator. The foster parents were told who she was taking the pictures for and were completely happy to help. They are thrilled that we will soon be coming to take Emilie to a better life. Theresa told us that is was very obvious to see how much the foster parents love our little girl. I'm sure this is going to be a very hard adjustment for them as much as it will be for Emilie. Theresa even told us that the foster father took off work so he could be there that day. Considering how little they make each year in China, that was quite a sacrifice on his part. We are very grateful for all the love and care they have shown to Emilie over the past few months she has been in their care.

We should have our confirmed schedule for all our in China travels sometime this week. As soon as we have it we will post the information here in another journal entry.

God Bless,
Steve and Lisa

Originally posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 10:05 PM CDT

As most of you already know, we received our referral for our little girl on July 7, 2003. Her Chinese name is Yuan Zhan Min and we will be giving her the name Emilie Mae Zhanmin. She was born on June 13, 2002. Emilie is currently residing in foster care out of the Nanning Social Welfare Institute in the city of Nanning, Guangxi Province, China.

We just received our travel approval on Friday, August 8, 2003 and hope to know our travel dates by Monday or Tuesday. We will post another update as soon as we know more.