Baby Shower

Yesterday most of our family and friends came together to throw us a baby shower at my Aunt's house in Woodford, Virginia. It was a great time. We ate lots of good food and sweets, played some games(Salene and I came in second in the baby scramble, being out witted by our cousin and his fiancee Elly.), and opening lots of great gifts for Leia. I was particularly happy to receive so many books. We plan on reading alot to Leia.

Our flight leaves in a few days. Right now we are just wrapping everything up. Installing baby gates, removing swallowable items from ground level, and cleaning out the basement. Currently I am in a war with the local mouse population. I keep setting traps near our basement door and every morning a poor mouse has taken the bait. I hope I can get most of them before we leave.

Plans are set.

We are getting ready for our flight to China which is set for May 1st 2008. We will be flying from Dulles to Los Angeles and from Los Angeles to Guangzhou, China. Total trip time will run about 22 hours. In preparation for such a long trip I bought a portable movie player and loaded the entire Lord Of the Rings Trilogy on to it. About 10 hours worth of movie time. That should keep me occupied for a while.

Nina and I are also going to complete all or most of our packing today. We want to be able to run right out the door and not have to worry about if we left something behind. Packing now will give us the two weeks to ponder any missing items needed for the trip.

We will be there a few days early before everyone else. That should give us some time to recover and see some of the sights. One of the more interesting sites we plan to visit is the shrine devoted to Wong Fei Hung. He is often portrayed in movies by Jackie Chan.

Only 14 more days! Hopefully there will not be any SNAFU's.

JPB

A Good Friend

Charlie, our good little buddy of 13 years passed away today. Our hearts are heavy but we also remember the happy days we had with him. The hikes at the park, listening to his howl at the sound of fire truck sirens passing, and his happy go lucky attitude. He would have been a wonderful dog for Leia and I am sorry she will never meet him. You will be missed Charlie. Hope you are some place happy playing with Tazz.

Jesse and Nina.

Grandma McLeod

My grandmother passed away early this week. I will miss her dearly and wish I could have shown her Leia in person. Thanks grandma for being there for me throughout my life. I will remember the times I was home sick and having you bring ginger ale to my bedside to feel better. I will remember you reading me Pickles The Fire Cat. I will remember playing scrabble with you and grandpa on Saturday nights. Thank you so much for being a part of my life.

Jesse

Off To FedEx

Last night we officially "accepted" the referral by signing the appropriate documents. We were only able to do so once the medical translations had been done for Leia. With that done on Saturday, Nina sent off the documents via FedEx using overnight delivery to Texas. From this point it should be about 4 weeks until we get our travel approval and hopefully another two weeks for us to fly over to China to pick her up.

Attached is a map I made of the area Leia is from. There is only so much detail as Google Earth can provide.

JPBellavance

Signatures Away

This evening we officially signed the document to be sent to our agency letting them know we want Leia. According to the rules we were not able to sign this document until we received a translation of the medical records for Leia from the agency. With that out of the way we seem to be on track to go pick her up in mid April.

Today we went to Target and bought some nice outfits and looked at the daunting array of baby products for sale. Nina will be speaking with her cousin soon which will help us pick out the stuff we need.

Oh. Finger printing will be done this Thursday. Also I will be making a map of where Leia is from this week.

JPBellavance

Wheeeeeew!!!

The Department of Homeland Security just sent us our appointment letter to go in for fingerprinting. This is the third time we will have done so and we feel lucky the appointment was made since our fingerprints expire about the same time we leave for China. It is important that they remain current while we are over there.

Also had some extra passport photos done to take along with us. We are also debating whether to get the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine. After reading a few articles on the subject I think we will. Nothing like a swollen brain to turn your trip into a downer. We will also bring some long sleeve shirts and Military Issue DDT skin rub to protect us from the mosquitoes. Hopefully in another six weeks we will be in China.