Lily's adjusting to our time

Lily

Lily and her friend Myah

Shelly, Noah, Machelle and Lily

Whitney, Lily and Corrine

Lily is adjusting to our time zone and is sleeping very well. She will get up once or twice during the night, but that is better than staying up all night wanting to play. It is good to be home, we have had a lot of visitors and it is good to see everyone. I will be going back to work on the 20th and Amy will be off work until the middle of Sept. Shelly, Amy's sister will be watching Lily after Amy goes back to work. I hope that goes well I'm sure it will.

We need sleep

Lily is doing great during the day, she is pretty much staying up all day and is happy. We wish she would sleep a little more during the night. She must not be used to the time change yet. She will sleep in her crib for about an hour the she is ready to play. We have been trying to keep her up during the day so she will sleep all night, but it is not working yet. She is not fussy she just wants to play all night.

We are finally home

We finally made it home. The flight was around 15 hours, which seemed like twice that. Lily was very good on the flight and it is great to be home. Lily is still on China time when it comes to sleep. We tried to keep her up last night but she fell asleep around 9:00 pm and woke up around 1 am and she was up until around 5:00 am. Her and Amy slept in until 11:30. Hopefully we can get her adjusted soon. Other than the sleep schedule she is doing great, it seems like she is happy all the time. The only time she is fussy is when she needs changed or when she is hungry. We are so lucky and happy to have her home. It was great to see everyone at the airport and it was great to see Blake meet his baby sister for the first time.

Finally able to post again

I finally found a place that I will be able to post. If this does not work I will continue to send pictures by e-mail. Everything is going fine Lily is adjusted very well and she is sleeping much better. Today we went to a pearl market and bought a few pearls. Nothing too exciting. I can not add pictures so this is pretty much worthless. I know that everyone wants to see pictures so I won't post again until I can get pictures to load. If you want to get pictures get with my mom, Mike Gerkin, Bob and Janice or my Dad. I will continue to e-mail pictures using Vito's computer. See you soon.

Jeff

Last day in Fuzhou, we wil be heading to the police station for her passport later this afternoon and will be flying out around 7:20 for Guanzhou. All three girls got together in Gina's room last night for a playdate and did pretty well, mostly just starring and trying to grab at faces. Being here in Fuzhou has been amazing just to see their culture. In the evening they gather down the road from the hotel in an open area and dance, last night we had the joy of watching little ones learning to skate and ride bikes. We also had three little girls running around us and giggling, they later came up and asked how we were doing? They spoke very good english, although we are ready to move onto the next step to heading home, I will miss Fuzhou and the people. Think we have some photos of the girls from last night, enjoy.

Amy

Last day in Fujian Province

Today is the last day in Fuzou. We went to a museum today while we are waiting for Lily's passport. The weather here is very hot around 95 and very humid. Lily is warming up to all of us more and more each day. She is sleeping very well and eating alot. Last night we went down to a park that is close to the hotel. There were thousands of people out dancing in the park. It was very neat to see how when the sun goes down the people come out. During the day when it is hot there are very few people in the same park. We went shopping today at what I would call a flea market. They had about anything that you would want, alot of junk and alot of very nice handmade crafts, china, tea sets we bought a tea serving tray for 80.00 HBG which is around 13.00 us money. Nick bought a hand carved pipe for some reason. It was funny watching him bargain with the salesman, since they don't speak english they were typing what price they would sell for on a cell phone and Nick would type what he was willing to give. Eventually they agreed on a price.

It is almost impossible to make a phone call so Mom and Dad I have tried to call each of you, but I can't get a line out. The only person we have had any luck calling is Blake and I don't know if that is because we had him added to our international call package on our cell phone. I have been told that when we go to Guanchouz we will not have as much of a problem calling home. Anyway I will try to keep posting here to let you know that we are doing fine. We fly to Guanchouz tomorrow at 7:40 pm.

Fun day

Today we had the day free and our guides took us to a market that had mainly jewelry and stone carvings and artwork for sell by local artists. After that we went to a tea house which was very interesting. It had two girls that prepared different types of tea for us to sample. They prepared it the traditional way using clay pots, they showed us how to drink the tea which required alot of slurping. It would be like a wine tasting in the states. After that we went to KFC, chicken in China is the same as in the states. We really haven't had alot of traditional Chinese food to speak of. Our guides have only been to this province once and are not sure where it is safe to get good food. Lily is adjusting great. She is always smiling and very happy she is attaching to all of us very well even though Nick is still her favorite, she is warming up to Amy and I. The picture of Nick with the girls is from the tea house. The Chinese culture is amazing. Every morning around 6 am there are hundreds of people in the local park and on the streets doing tai chi and exercising. After around 10 am there are very few people out in the park because it is so hot. Most of the people that are out in the afternoon are playing cards in the shade. It is a real adventure to just cross the street. There must not be any traffic rules because you will see cars that look like they are driving the on the wrond side of the street and there are scooters and bikes everywhere. They will ride the scooters on the sidewalks so you have to watch your back or they will hit you.