Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Must have been a slow news week...

When Jane, a reporter from our small town's weekly newspaper, called me a few weeks ago and asked if she could interview us about our Vietnam adoption, I figured it would be a nice *little* article in a quiet corner on page 18B or something. HELLO! Front page and huge! Gee thanks, Jane! Very nice article, you did a good job, but ya coulda warned me, lol!

Here are a few pics from last weekend. Lily got to enjoy her first lawn tractor ride with Dad & Thomas, and she loved it:



Lily has a new obsession--the joy of Cheerio's. She can't shove them into her mouth fast enough. I was finally able to capture her "Popeye" face in the 2nd picture.



Several families from our agency received their I600 approvals in the last week or two, so there is a whole big group of them going to Vietnam to get their babies this week. I am so happy and relieved for them--they have been waiting so long, and for a while it looked like they might not get to bring their babies home at all. I hope the US and Vietnam gov'ts can get their acts together and work out a new agreement so adoptions can continue--there are so many kids there who need families.
You can help these needy orphans by writing, emailing, calling your congresspeople and letting them know you want our gov't to work with Vietnam to continue the US-Vietnam adoption program. Here are links to help you find your representatives contact info:
Other links that explain the problem better than I can:
Please do what you can to help the beautiful children of Vietnam find loving homes.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

What we've been up to sinced we got home from Vietnam

We got home late Friday night on Easter weekend, so the Easter Bunny was pretty busy on Saturday trying to get ready. We managed, and plenty of candy was had by all. Lily had to give all of her chocolates to me, poor thing, but she got to keep her stuffed bunny.





My mom, my brother Bill, and his fiance Stefanie came over to meet Lily on Easter.



Lily does love her food--so far she seems to like everything we've fed her. Taken 3/29/08.

With three rowdy older brothers, it's important to know how to use a weapon. Taken 3/31/08.

She absolutely LOVES these Gears. Her favorite toys! They make good teethers too I guess, because she likes to chew on them. She's just starting to get her two bottom front teeth coming through. Taken 4/13/08.Lily would be happy to relieve Anna of her freezer pop. Taken 4/18/08.
So angelic; she fell asleep with her upper lip sucked in. Taken 4/19/08.


Thomas teaching Lily the proper way to use a stick. 4/19/08

Heh, heh. I know how to use a stick now, Mom!

We went to my cousin's daughter Sarah's wedding 4/26/08. Here are some pictures from the reception:

William was slightly bored.
Anna talking to my niece, Kelley, and her beautiful new baby Kate. Kate was born on 3/21/08, the day we spent under siege in a snowstorm at O'hare airport trying to get home.

Thomas being Thomas. I'm not sure what Richard's problem is.
Anna dancing with the bride, Sarah.
Lily with Grandma and soon-to-be Aunt Stefanie.
Then a week later, on 5/3/08, we had another wedding to attend, this one for Don's niece Amanda. Yes, she's wearing the same dress--shoot me. Here's Lily attending a little princess party with Anna and some of her little cousins.


Two of the princesses, Maria (top center) and Olivia (right) were adopted from Guatemala. Their sister Isabel is in the pink dress in the middle, and another cousin, Makenzie (sorry if I spelled that wrong, Matt & Karrie!) is on the left.


We've also started the soccer season:

My two handsome little cub scouts.

Lily started pulling herself up to stand by the coffee table not long after we came home, then soon after that she became an expert at cruising while holding onto the edge of the table. Now recently she has begun to let go and can stand and balance without holding anything. It won't be long now before she's walking unassisted. I'm betting it will be before her first birthday, which is 6/22. These pics were taken on 5/25/08:

She's adjusted very well and is a happy baby. She loves her brothers and sisters, and they adore her in return. We just all love her to pieces are so lucky to have her!

Monday, May 26, 2008

Our long, long, long, long, long trip home.

We left our hotel in Hanoi at 8:30 am on Wednesday, March 19th Vietnam time (that would be 8:30 pm Tues. eve, March 18th, Illinois time). We walked in our front door on Friday night, March 21st, shortly before midnight. So about 75 hours door to door. Let me just say that is a LONG time to be traveling with 4 kids and a baby. We had a few unexpected (and unwelcome) delays along the way.

Unfortunately, I was too stressed to even bother taking many pictures of the trip home, which I regret now. But all we could think of at the time was "get us home!"

Here are a couple pictures of rice fields on the way to the Hanoi airport:



You can see a cemetary in the distance in this picture. We saw alot of above-ground cemetaries out in the middle of fields all over Vietnam.



On the way to the airport, I was feeling pretty confident in my ability to get all of us and our bags checked in with lots of time to spare. After all, I had just taken Lauren there two days before, so I knew exactly where to go. Only problem was, on Monday with Lauren, the airport was practically empty. Today, the entire population of northern Vietnam was in the international flights area when we walked in the door. I kid you not--it was more crowded than Walt Disney World during the fireworks on New Year's Eve. We had grabbed two carts outside when we unloaded our multitude of bags from the taxi, and they were both piled high. So picture Don and I each pushing a cart-o-luggage, holding a baby, and trying to keep 4 more kids together while wading through a sea of humanity to try to find the right counter to check in. Oh, and nobody spoke English that day either. For the first time in this entire amazing trip, I was beginning to panic. We could barely move through the people, and it was impossible to see where any line to the counters began. I finally figured out that all of these people were waiting for flights to Moscow, according to the signs above the counters. Now, why 5,000 (seemed like it!) Vietnamese people felt the need to go to Moscow on this particular day, I'll probably never know, but I was quite relieved when we realized that we didn't need to be in *that* mess! We eventually pushed our way thru the crowd and made it to the correct counters for our flight to Hong Kong with FAR fewer people waiting, thank goodness. Crisis averted. Our flight to Hong Kong was fine, and we made it thru the Hong Kong airport to our gate for our flight to LA, but then there was another security check at the gate as we were boarding our flight. I am very lucky that I didn't end up in a Hong Kong jail, because I sort of lost it on the young security guy who was checking my diaper bag and didn't want to let me take the 2 sealed, unopened water bottles I had for mixing Lily's formula. This had never been a problem before, and I was a *little* stressed, so I started arguing with him and saying, in a too-loud voice, "well then you tell me how I'm supposed to feed my baby?!" Then another security guy comes over and tells me to calm down, and he tells me the other guy is new, it's ok to take the water afterall. Good, I won't have to kill you then.

We had 2 seats in the bulkhead of the 747, and the other 4 seats were in the middle, about 6 or so rows behind us, so we were separated again on the long flight. Anna and William took turns sitting by me and Lily, and Don sat with the rest of the kids. They gave us the bassinet that attaches to the wall in front of the seat, but Lily didn't sleep well in it at all, so I held her for most of the flight, but she did pretty well.

We finally arrived in LA around 2 pm LA time on Wed. Mar. 19th. Lily automatically became a US citizen when we touched down on US soil. YAY! I really wish I had gotten a picture of that, but I couldn't begin to tell you which bag the camera was in at this point, and we had other things to worry about. We had to go thru customs and then get to another terminal for our flight to Denver and then on to Moline. The lines going thru customs were LONG, and we were literally running to try to make it in time for our flight to Denver. We got to the United counter in the nick of time to check in, only to be told that our flight had been cancelled due to mechanical reasons, and the next flight he could get us on was into Chicago with a connecting flight to Moline, but that didn't leave until 11pm the next night (Thursday nite)! ARRRGH! So United had to put us up at a Quality Inn near the airport until then. At least we got to sleep a little, but everyone's internal clocks were so screwed up that it wasn't a good night's sleep. Lily was having night terrors or something, because she would wake up and look around and be inconsolable because she didn't know where she was. I called Lauren to let her know we were stuck in LA and she suggested we go to Hollywood and sight-see. As if! I don't care how boring and ugly our little airport neighborhood was, I wasn't about to get in one more vehicle that I didn't have to!

Here's a couple pics of the kids crashed at our LA hotel:


I don't know if this was taken in the LA airport or in Chicago, but she looks cute anyway!

So, we went back to the airport Thursday evening to catch our 11 pm flight to Chicago, and when we checked in, they told us our connecting flight to Moline early the next morning had been cancelled due to the weather. But don't worry about it, they'll put you on the next one. Right. We get into Ohare around 4:30am, and flights are being cancelled left and right due to a snowstorm. There were 4 or 5 scheduled flights to Moline that day, and one by one, they were all cancelled. We decided to rent a minivan and drive thru the storm to get to Moline, but there wasn't a rental car to be had at Ohare. (I guess we weren't the only ones with cancelled flights that day.) We finally got a good United counter agent who did some fancy stuff with her computer and got all of us on the last remaining flight to Moline for the day, scheduled to leave at 2:30pm, but she wasn't very optimistic about whether or not it would be cancelled too. So we just hung out at the airport all day, watching the moniter as our flight kept getting delayed further and further, and the snow falling harder and harder. We really did not know what we would do if it got cancelled; we were out of plan "B's", plan "C's" and even plan "D's". I think we were at plan "F", as in, "you F***ing United people had better get us home or someone is going to die." (We aren't usually violent people, but remember, it's now Friday and we've been traveling with 4 kids and a baby since Tues. night Illinois time, with maybe 4 to 6 sporadic hours of sleep during all that time. We were a little testy by now.) Luckily, we found a kid's play area in our terminal; that really saved the day. By late afternoon, the flight monitor was saying our flight would leave at 6:30pm, so a little before 6 we left the play area and moseyed on down to our gate. We sat there for quite awhile, and then they announced that the flight would be delayed a little longer, because they needed to get some new flight attendents for the trip, because the one's already on the plane had logged too many hours or something. So here are the kids as we waited at the gate to board our flight. Count 'em. 1-2-3-4-5 sleeping kids, plus 8 various carry-on bags for Don and I to figure out how to get on the plane:





We managed to get William and Anna to a zombie-like state, but with walking capabilities when they finally let us board. We managed to somehow carry the rest of them. We had to sit on the runway for what seemed like forever while we waited for them to de-ice the plane, but we finally took off around 8:30 or 9pm. Hallelujah! It was a short flight to Moline, and then we got our van and drove the 1 hr 45 min. trip to Galena. Here's the first picture of the Lily in her new home, right after we got in the door Friday night. It was FREEZING in the house because we had turned the heat way down before we left, so they're all trying to get warm, but VERY glad to be finally home:


It was a long and stressful trip for everyone, but I am so amazed at how well all of the kids, Lily included, handled it. There were a few minor melt-downs on the way, but for all of the time they spent standing in lines or sitting with nothing to do in all of these airports and planes, with very little sleep, they were awesome and I'm so proud of them.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Our last day in Vietnam

I have no excuse for my failure to complete our trip report in a timely manner, so I won't even try to give one! So just never mind, and let's get on with it! (Naggers, you know who I'm talking about!)
So here we are on Tuesday, March 18th--our last full day in Hanoi. We had been looking down into the "Hanoi Hilton" from our apartment on the 8th floor of the Somerset Hotel next door all week:





and we finally made it into the place for a tour. A good portion of the prison had been torn down and that is where the Somerset now stands; what remains has been turned into a museum open to the public for touring. This prison was where American POW's were kept by the North Vietnamese during the war, but before that, it was built by the French and used by them to imprison Vietnamese insurgents during the lengthy French occupation of VN during the late 1800's and first half of the 1900's. Most of the museum's exhibits definitely have a "spin", focusing on the mistreatment of the Vietnamese prisoners by their evil French captors. There was only one small part of the museum that told of the Americans (including John McCain) that once were housed there; and if you didn't know any better, you'd swear they were there having a great time--all the pictures showed the American POW's laughing, playing games and ball. Whee! A fine time was had by all!


Here's the entrance--notice the name above the door is in French:



Pictures from inside the prison--here are some original doors:




Inside the prison walls:
This depicts the way Vietnamese prisoners were treated by the French. Female prisoners (some with babies or small children!) were kept in separate blocks of the prison:

Thomas in one of the cells:

Help me.


Squatty potties (use your imagination):


What goes in up there, must come out down here---poop chutes? hee hee:



This guillotine was the actuctal one used by the French to remove the heads of Vietnamese trouble-makers:

View from the side:




In the "American" section, this is supposedly the flight suit John McCain was wearing when he was captured:The sign says this is a bed used by an American pilot (POW):


After we finished with the prison tour, I dragged the family on a quest to find some good Vietnamese coffee and tea to bring home, and then we went to another restaurant in the old quarter for lunch, Cafe Mocha. It had a huge menu and very reasonable prices. Lily was feeling particularly photogenic:




My dish was some sort of coconut milk and shrimp concoction. Quite tastey!


William re-arranging his sandwich:
Lots of milkshakes and smoothies on the menu, if I recall correctly:

After lunch, we walked around the lake and did a little shopping, and then over to the Water Puppet Theater to get tickets for a show later this evening. We took a taxi back to the hotel to clean up, and then returned to the theater for the show. It's hard to describe, and it was too dark to get any decent pictures of the show with our camera, though we did video tape part of it. It's a very old art form in Vietnam (and China maybe?) where the puppeteers are in a pool of water behind a screen and the puppets are performing on the surface of the water. There are Vietnamese singers and musicians playing traditional music to accompany the show. The music was awesome, and the kids enjoyed the show. This is just a picture of where we were sitting in the theater; I wish I had pictures of the show to post. Oh well.
After the show, we grabbed a taxi in front of the theater to take us to Le Cyclo for dinner. We got the worst taxi driver in Hanoi! I would have sworn we were being taken, except that we had pre-negotiated the price with him, so he had nothing to gain by wasting his time and gas driving all over the place looking for the restaurant. I had a fairly good idea of where this restaurant was located, so when we got to the other end of the lake (by Bobby Chinn's) and he turned left when I knew he should have turned right, I knew we had a problem! Unfortunately, he spoke no English, so we just kept pointing to the name and address of the restaurant on the little card we had, and he kept nodding, and then he pulled over and was asking some people on the sidewalk for directions. He finally turned around and headed in the right direction, but when we found the right street, he STILL couldn't find the place, and so he pulled over and asked somebody for directions AGAIN! I kind of felt sorry for him by this point; it was obviously his first day in Hanoi, let alone as a taxi driver! This was not some obscure restaurant in a far-flung section of Hanoi--it's a VERY popular-with-tourists restaurant in the main tourist area! There was no excuse for him not to even know where this street was. Seriously, I really think I could have driven us there more quickly!


So we finally got to Le Cyclo, where most of the seats around the tables are actually from old cyclos. The food was great too, and not *too* expensive.





Anna's going to kill me for posting this horrid picture of her, but that's just the kind of mom I am:

Don said this was one of the best steaks he's ever had. Which was a pleasant surprise, because some of the "beef" we were served in Vietnam was questionable.


I had the daily "special", which was some sort of duck breast dish, served over mashed potatoes. Very good.



Anna and Lily checking out the fish tank:

Our waitress took Lily while we ate:

In front of Le Cyclo, waiting for our taxi to take us back to the hotel:

Luckily, this taxi drive knew where he was going, because I had ALOT of packing to do; we needed to be in the lobby with all our bags by 8:30 am to get our taxi to the airport. I was up VERY late getting everything packed carefully, and trying to fit all of our souvenirs and gifts. Why does the mom always have to do this stuff?