Bai Jia Bei

Bai Jia Bei means 100 Good Wishes Quilt. In China when a baby is born, friends and family members each give a square piece of fabric to be sewn into a quilt. A smaller piece of the same fabric is given to be put into a scrapbook with a wish for the future for the baby. When 100 pieces of fabric are procured, the quilt is made. It gives the baby luck, energy and good wishes from the people who gave the fabric squares. It is handed down each generation.

I've been friends with a large group of girls since April 1999 when we all had a baby. We mostly interact online although many of us have met in real life. Without letting me know, they decided to make a bai jia bei for Anslee. These friends live all over the country so they all had to mail their fabric squares and messages. It was a big undertaking! Sondra did all the sewing and Alisa made the scrapbook. They both turned out beautiful! It was such an incredible suprise when we received the quilt in the mail!!

Thank you all so much. I know Anslee will treasure this forever!

Happy New year!

Happy 2006!!

Every year (except one I think) since we graduated from College we've spent New Year's Eve with the same couple who we went to school with. Our evenings have changed a lot over the years! We've gone from 4 of us to 8. This is the first year we've had four children total. Next year our friends will have added a new baby to our group!

Buster seemed to enjoy the festivities too!

Streamers are always a hit! We are still finding little pieces of

them when we sweep the kitchen.
This was one of Andrew's favorite Christmas gifts from Santa.Andrew is teaching Anslee all about the Georgia Bulldogs...
I hope everyone is enjoying the new year.

T

More Christmas pictures...

Andrew and his cousin giving an Anslee sandwich hug.

Andrew and Anslee opening their Christmas pajamas and new Christmas books.

Anslee and Granddaddy having a quiet time before bed.

We celebrated Christmas a day early with cousins.

Andrew's good friends gave him Georgia Bulldog pajamas.

Christmas Eve...

Every year Andrew gets new Christmas pajamas. These are this years. He made this gingerbread house at school. He decided to eat it midway through January. I don't think it could've tasted that good... See that little mark right under his lip? That's where Anslee "kissed" him (using her teeth).

We are waiting in line for Santa at the mall. I was suprised that Anslee wasn't scared or nervous at all about sitting on Santa's lap. After visiting Santa, we ate a cookie and went to build a bear. Anslee loves being in the stroller but if we don't have her harnassed in, she'll try to stand up in it. She is the most curious baby ever!

Christmas Eve we went to Church with Nana, Grandmommy and Granddaddy. Andrew's choir sang and Anslee loved the music. They both also loved lighting the candle at the end of the service when we sang Silent Night.

After the service we returned home and ate dinner. Then Anslee and Andrew opened their pajamas and put them on. We read some Christmas stories and then it was bedtime!

I am going to get all caught up on pictures and posts...

T

We're Back!!!

All,

Sorry for the lapse in posts. As you can all well imagine we have been very busy (and tired) since our return home.

I have been surprised by the number of people that were addicted to the posts. I hear that a lot of you needed this to go along with your cup of coffee in the morning. I hope you were able to find suitable replacements for your time in the interim.

After the 24+ hours of traveling back home we were wiped out. It took me a week+ to get back on track.

Things here have been awesome! I can not believe how quickly Anslee has integrated into our family. Honestly, I was expecting it to be much more difficult.

I'm not sure that Andrew could really believe it when he saw Anslee for the first time. After 14 months of talk, I think he thought that she was our snuffalufagus.

Here is Andrew with the welcome home sign he made for us. As important, you will notice in the background that our house has some Christmas decorations up and there are no leaves in my yard. Thanks Mike!!

This is a picture of the first time Andrew saw Anslee. It is about 4:30 am and we woke him up, but as you can see he was quickly wide awake.

We went downstairs and Andrew had his first opportunity to feed Anslee a bottle.

Hanging out in Anslee's room.

Big brother and little sister.

Check back I'll post Christmas and new years.

A few more photos

As we are leaving tomorrow this will probably be our last blog until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest. This has been a once in a lifetime experience, and I'm so glad that we were able to share it with everyone at home. I can not wait to get home and hug Andrew.

Andrew, once I get you I'm not letting you go!

Here are a few final pics.

K.

Anslee asleep in the hotel crib

Terri & Anslee in front of the "critter market"

What would we do without Uncle Joe. I'm not sure that I can explain how critical he was to this trip!!!!

All the vendors outside their shops waiting to sell the new parents items to take home

Terri and Anslee at Lucy's. Best hamburger in China. I'm not sure that is saying much.

Our last day in China

These eleven days have flown by. We are excited and a little sad at the same time. Anslee is used to these foods, smells, sounds and it is all going to change tomorrow. I hope we've taken enough pictures and video for Anslee. I know we'll come back some day but until we do she is going to have so many questions.

Yesterday we had our ceremony at the U.S. Embassy. They told us that our babies are now ours and when we land in the U.S. they will be American citizens. We also received her visa. She was not feeling well so we came straight in to give her a bath and a bottle. The picture below is right after we got back to the hotel.

Last night Anslee had such a high fever and we couldn't get it to go down. Poor baby...

This is where we ate dinner on the two nights she was sick. Right outside our room. Keith kept accidentally buying vanilla coke instead of regular. He said he can't read Chinese yet.

Today we were able to go shopping and sightseeing around Guangzhou. We had lunch at Lucy's. Anslee is eating congee again.

The hotel provided us wih a stroller.

what a day!!

We didn't have a second to post yesterday!


Yesterday we flew from Chongqing to Guangzhou. It was about a two and a half hour flight. I am sure all the Chinese businessmen on the airplane were not to happy to see our nine babies boarding the small plane! Anslee has a cold so for the first time since we were at the orphanage she was a little fussy. She fell asleep right as the plane was landing and woke up as we were getting off the plane.

It is amazing how different each province is that we've visited.
In Beijing everything was covered in coal dust. You couldn't see the sun because of the pollution. They said it is the worst in the winter. It was freezing cold! I read a book that said the trees in Fuling looked gray like they had been in an attic for years. I found it much more accurate for Beijing.

In Chongqing the sun rarely shines. It is rainy and polluted. I did love this city though! It looked much more beautiful than Beijing to me. I loved the hills and the people there. The temperature was in the high forties to mid fifties.

In Guangzhou the sun is shining, there are palm trees everywhere and the temperature is like Orlando, Florida! The babies squinted for a while until they got used to the sun. They all love the shadows since they've never really seen them before!!

This is a picture of my friend Sherry (from California) and her baby Sarah before we boarded the plane.



After we landed, we drove an hour to our hotel. We let the babies rest an hour and then we had to go get visa photos and then their medical exams. We had about a 20 minute walk to the medical exam and Anslee fell sound asleep in the baby bjorn. She was exhausted since it was 3pm and she hadn't had a nap.

We arrived at the examination office and were all handed our medical forms. Then we had three stations to take the baby. The first one was a ear/eye/throat check. Anslee was still sound asleep so the doctor started softly slapping her little cheeks. I was trying to wake her quickly so the doctor would stop. She didn't wake so the doctor shoved the tongue depressor down her throat. That woke her up and as you can imagine she was not happy!! (me either!) The next station weighed, measured her height and took her temperature. She was miserable at that point and she had a fever. So the doctors start running around and talking in chinese so we had no idea what was going on. I called Zhou over and he said to go to the next station and then to have her temp rechecked. I went to the next station where the doctor does a quick physical examination and the doctor found a rash. So he looks and saw she had a fever and he starts running around. I was so stressed! They rechecked her temp and sent us to a room. Zhou came out and said if it is contagious we have to stay in China until she is better. Keith and I looked at each other and then Keith said "so do we have to stay?!" and Zhou said no because this isn't like measels or chicken pox. Thank goodness!!!!!!!!! Although we have enjoyed our trip we are ready to be home.

December 14th

Today we visited the Ghongquing zoo. Andrew asked that we put pics of the animals on the site. All we had time for was the panda and tigers because it was raining. I've got video of the animals for you when I get home Andrew.

Did I mention that I went to a local market and got 2 waters, 4 beers, and some food, for 3 dollars!

Three Gorges Museum

As Terri noted on the last post, we visited the three Gorges Museum. It's really more of a beautiful park and the museum part is more an explanation of why the three gorges dam is being built. It is the largest water project in the world. The biggest issue is that when the dam is finished, it will flood many current cities. Residents are being relocated and historical land marks will be lost forever. Because this is a communist country the Chinese do not question it. They go along with all of the goverment hype. I'm sure that there will be a lot of benefits, but it is sad to see all that will be lost. Below is a picture of Fu Ling, were Anslee is from. I'm not sure if you can see the red and white bar in the picture, but everything below that line will be underwater. The number on the photo represents the 68,000 residents of Fu Ling that will be displaced. There were about 8 cities that will suffer the same fate. Upwards of 500,000 people will have to be relocated. The project will be complete in 2009. The large rock formation in the center of the picture has carvings that date back many centuries. It is used as a sort of agricultural predictor. It raises and lowers in and out of the water with the change in seasons. After the project it will be permanently submerged.






Here is a photo of the lady that tought us how to properly drink tea.


K

December 13th

We had a fun day today. We went to the Three Gorges Museum and and an authentic tea house. Keith will post pictures of these on another post. We learned the correct way to prepare and drink tea. Keith looked like a "bull in a China shop"! :-) While we were there walking through the park several of us were mobbed by groups of Chinese women. They were inspecting our babies and making sure they were dressed appropriately. Luckily Keith and I had really bundled Anslee up and passed the examination. Others were not so lucky. If you don't have the babies heavily layered the women got really upset. We have video to show this!

This adorable Chinese girl is the hostess to one of the hotel restuarants. Keith wants to adopt her too! We eat here every morning for breakfast - our favorite meal of the day. Anslee's favorite thing to eat is congee. That is basically just rice cooked with a lot of water until it is really thick and mushy. Keith's favorite thing is "crispy bacon".


The hotel provides a crib for the adopted babies. It isn't the most sturdy and the sheets and blankets aren't tight like we all do in the US but she seems to be very comfortable as she sleeps about 11 hours at night.

Anslee loves playing! She is just incredibly adorable when she is laughing.

Bath time is one of Anslee's favorite activities. She loves splashing and trying to grab the water.

Thanks for the posts. Jason emailed them so we were finally able to read them. We have such wonderful friends and family!!

T