July 11th

July 11th

Julia woke up fine today. I was there waiting with her bottle. I love the bonding time we have in the morning. She stares straight into my eyes. When I dress her she just looks at me with a huge grin. I feel like she has been ours forever!

Today was a "fun" day for us, but not as much fun for Eva. For us, it was a no paperwork, no medical checks, and NO drivers license type photos to be taken. Yeah! Today we could just be tourists. :-) Eva had to do some document running around and then pick up our notary certificate in the afternoon.

This morning Eva took us to the Guangdong Folk Art Museum. The museum really interesting. The museum had displays of intricate carved wood, ivory, concrete bricks, pillars, words to describe the place- detailed beyond belief. The building itself was uniquely beautiful too. We also enjoyed stepping back in another time to hear about the history of the Chen family, who donated this museum.!

There were a few talented artists here. I purchased an ink stamp for Julia with her Chinese name and English name on the stamp. The artist carved it while I was waiting. It will be a keepsake for her. We also purchased a hand painted picture by a local artist as a souvenir, he wrote our last name on the top.

It was a rainy day so after the museum, we went back to our place then headed over to the mall to eat. I wanted a hibachi style meal, so we found a casual one in the mall. As you can see Miss. Julia is getting pretty comfy being out and about with all the people around. She did great the whole day.

During a large part of the day the technology talk was all the chatter with Nick and the boys. We decided in the evening to ALL go to the electrical market. Well, I've never seen anything like it. Levels upon levels upon levels ...of electronics. No words to describe. Stores and more stores. Too bad it wasn't clothes, hair products or shoes! The highlight of that shopping jaunt was a $3.00 watch I got from a guy selling watches on the corner. He even measured it and took the links out in less than 1 minute!! It was another great day!

In my earlier post today, I sounded like I was complaining about the business process for adopting Julia. Thinking back through this week, and really through the whole year of being what they call "paper pregnant", there were a lot of steps to take for adopting Julia. Those steps have become happy memories now. We are so blessed to have Julia in our family. She is a perfect fit.