Home at Last

We made it back to the states safely and are looking forward to seeing everyone and recovering a bit from the jet lag and long trip. The babies are in good shape and will hopefully adjust their schedules to local time soon. The bassinet seats were a life saver on the 13 hour flight from Hong Kong (the babies slept 9 out of the 13 hours!!)

Also, a special thanks to those who came out to meet us at the airport. It was especially nice to see familiar faces again. Special thanks also to everyone who thought of us and has left us food and gifts both before the trip and upon our arrival! (It is great to come back to a stocked fridge!) Super Duper thanks to Meghan for picking us up ( with a installed car seat!) and getting dinner ready for us tonight! We are truly blessed to have such great friends and family and can't wait to introduce Noah to you all!

On Our Way!

We made our first flight out of Hanoi and are now hanging in the Hong Kong airport. I'd just like to re-iterate how great this airport is: wonderful new facility with all the fixins. The good news on our upcoming trans-pacific flight is we got bassinets for the babies and bulkhead seating for Martine and Kasey so our 13 hour flight should go as well as can be expected for the babies and parents. I see the book store here has the new Harry Potter book for sale, only $245 HKD. :) All of us are looking forward to getting home. Thanks for all the great comments and encouragement and we'll see you soon!

We Are Coming Home!!!

Yay! We got Noah's U.S. visa this afternoon (and Olivia got hers as well), so we are all set to come home!! We will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning and will get into Iowa on Wednesday evening! Although, we are not so excited about the long plane ride with babies,...it is an inevitable means to the end.

We are very excited to get home!!

Congrats Tim and Kelli!

Martine and I just wanted to wish the two of you all the best and congratulations on your new life together. We are sad to have missed your big day but know you understand and are looking forward to meeting Noah. We have been thinking about you both and can't wait to get home to congratulate you in person!

We were able to get out of the hotel yesterday and make the trip Ha Long Bay. It was stunningly beautiful and we all had a good time. Our van trip home was a bit rough since the Ford van's AC was broken (shocker) but other than that, it was definitely worth the trip. We posted tons of pictures on our Flickr site so check them out. Here are pics of our two families on the boat tour.

We are really excited to make the long trip home this week!!

One Step Closer to Home

Well, good news on many fronts today. The day started with Troy and Kasey getting a call from the US Embassy confirming their appointment today at 10:30am along with us! We were all excited and relieved to get this news. The whole appointment took about 2 minutes once they called us up to confirm the accuracy of the documents and our identities. We were back at the hotel by 11am and planning a relaxing weekend. We should get our baby visas on Monday assuming things go well with the Embassy's process for that. At this point, we are about 90% assured of making our Tuesday flights.

Upon arriving back to the hotel, Martine and I decided we would catch another tourist site on our list and grabbed a cab for lunch at Mama Rosas (very nice suggestion!) and then off to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. If you recall, Noah is part of a Vietnamese minority group known as Tay. We were unable to find much info on this group on either the Internet or back in the States so we were excited to finally find a source of info. It was a great experience and provided us with the opportunity to learn a bit about his heritage as well as take some great photos and buy some authentic Tay items at the gift shop. Below is a picture of a traditional Tay home. You can catch more on Flickr...

We arrived back to the hotel after the museum visit in time to meet Uyen and the visa person. Check that one off the list as well as we successfully extended our visas well past our date of departure.

Also while out, we stopped by a local tour agency and booked all six of us on a day-long excursion to Halong Bay. We are told this is a must see for anyone staying in Vietnam. It is a beautiful bay with thousands of forested rocky islands scattered through it. We are taking a boat tour around the bay and will stop on floating villages and have a fresh meal while on the water. We are excited to get some good pictures and video from this excursion and are also looking forward to getting out of our rooms for the day.

Progress of sorts...

Well, today was definitely an eventful one. Since we are approaching the end of our anticipated timeline, we are all getting a bit anxious to get home to family, friends, and familiar things. That said, we had some mixed news today. I had called our agency this morning to ask about getting their help in extending our visas which expire Saturday (Troy and Kasey's expire the 25th) since it was looking like there is no way we will be leaving until our regularly scheduled flight next week. There was some chance that we could have left on Saturday, but our meeting would have had to happen today to get our visas for the kids tomorrow. Anyway, agency representatives stopped by around 2pm to discuss things and help Martine and I get the extension in progress. Somehow, it was communicated that our visa appointments were at 2pm today over at the US Embassy and we were already late. So, cautiously optimistic, all six of us (both families) piled in a cab and made our way through the chaotic Hanoi traffic to the US Embassy. Upon arriving there, we found that there was some sort of confusion and there were no appointments today. A bit dissapointed, we headed back to the hotel to discuss our options. Once getting there, we dug into our visa issue and also called around for updates on our case with both our agency and the US Embassy. Our agency contacts called in an immigration specialist and we should have our Vietnam visas extended on time.

Around 4:30pm we got word that the Noah's US visa paperwork had been approved and our 2nd appointment had been scheduled for 10:30am Friday morning, but still no word on the Olivia's appointment. We called the embassy and learned that the US CIS office in Ho Chi Min City was still processing Olivia's paperwork and there is a chance that we will get it cleared up tomorrow. We are really hoping this can work out as we would like to keep our travel plans in place and go home together. Despite everyone's somewhat fazzled nerves, everyone at both our agency and the Embassy has been extremely nice and dilligent in helping us get through this process. It is pretty amazing these things can come together given the number of details that need to be processed and the added complexity of working with two different governments in two different languages.

To clarify for those not intimately familiar with this stage of the process, the US visa for each baby is the last document we need in order to go home. In order to get it, we needed many forms including each baby's Vietnamese passport, all adoption paperwork, and a current medical evaluation (all accurately translated to English). We need two interviews with US officials to get a US Visa for the babies; the first was completed last week, the 2nd will be to review all of the materials and get final approval. The visa is issued 1 business day after the 2nd interview is completed. So, in order to leave Tuesday, we really need to have our interviews by Friday so we can pick up the visas on Monday.

I really hope things come together tomorrow so we can relax this weekend and prepare for our trip home next week. We hope everyone is doing well at home. We are all fine and hangning in there. Wish us luck!

Movie Marathon in Vietnam

We found out this morning that our 2pm US Embassy appointment for Noah's visa was cancelled. No real explanation, but we were definitely warned that this process can take time. Unfortunately, with 100 degree heat and Martine and Noah feeling a bit under the weather we just camped at the hotel. We have spent the day catching up on various movies that our hotel so conveniently provides and spending quality time with Noah.

On a culinary note, we did find a decent Latin restaurant that delivers. It's called Latino and did a nice job of satisfying our craving for nachos.

Beyond that, not much new here. We are all looking forward to seeing everyone when we get home.

Noah Has a Passport!!!

Yay! Today, we got the babies' passports!! And, we also got their required medical checkups. Our understanding is that we have our second interview with the U.S. consulate tomorrow (so, we should be very close to getting the visa!) Once we have the visa, we can come home!!

We love Vietnam, but we are excited to come home! Tonight we ordered pizza and kicked back to watch the Vietnam soccer team play Japan in the Asia cup, which is being held here in Hanoi. (The Asia cup has made the city very busy lately!) For those not following Asian soccer, Vietnam did very well by beating UAE, and so even if they do not win against the Japanese, they can still go the quarter finals if UAE beats Qatar. This is very exciting for the Vietnamese.

Here is Noah with his Vietnamese passport!

Hangin' in Hanoi

We are having a nice low key weekend in Hanoi. Nate and I were going to take a trip to Halong Bay today, but we cancelled our trip because Noah still has a bit of a cold and the weather is crazy hot. We decided to just hang out in the city.


Yesterday we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Actually, babies are not allowed in to view the body (which is preserved ... sort of like Lenin), so we just toured the grounds, which were very impressive. There was a huge line of people to see the body, and the ground also contained sights like the one pillar pagoda and the house on stilts where Ho Chi Minh lived. Very interesting. The huge crowds of people kept gathering around Noah to play with him...which is cute but would hold us up because we could not move through the crowds. I had him in the carrier in front of me. Everyone wanted to touch him and play with him; it was really overwhelming.


Last night we went to dinner at the famous Bobby Chinn's (which is a western tourist hot spot here in Hanoi) with Kasey, Troy and Olivia. It was a gorgeous place with rose buds hanging from the ceiling and red drapes around the tables. Both babies were very very good during dinner. we were very pleasantly surprised! Unfortunately, Kasey did not feel well later in the night, so we gave her some time to get better by taking Olivia for a while. Two cute babies in our room. We managed to get them both to sleep at the same time! Yay! Kasey is feeling better today, which is great news!

Noah is cute as can be still:) So, we are constantly entertained by him/entertaining him.

Here are a couple highlight pics... (remember all pics are at flickr)

Nate and Noah at Bobby Chinn's






Two Napping Babies (Olivia always sleeps on her stomach and Noah sleeps on his back...that is what the orphanage told us, and it holds true...neither baby is thrilled about sleeping in their cribs yet though...they both are used to sleep on big communal beds.):

Every Three Hours:)

Sorry for the late post, I try to post each night, but Noah had such a good night, that I had to take advantage of the sleep (beginning at 8pm)...:) We are settling into our schedule. It is a three hour pattern. Eat, play, sleep... repeat.... throw in an occasional diaper change, bath and maybe a little out in in Hanoi and you have our day. It is actually great to get all this time to just play with Noah!

Unfortunately, our hopes of getting lots done yesterday fell through. We did not get the babies' Vietnamese passports, which means we could not get their medical appointments done. So, we are really just in a holding pattern until Monday when the offices open back up. We hope to get both the passports and the medical stuff done on Monday. Kasey and Troy (our travel companions) ran into a little document translation issue with their consulate application, so we are also hoping that the staff will get the translation fixed this weekend in time to get that in on Monday as well.

Meanwhile, we are deciding what to do with our two days off (not that we have been super busy the other days, but we have been 'on call' so to speak for any appointments or issues). The staff recommended a day trip to Halong Bay (which includes a little boat trip). Halong Bay is supposed to be lovely, but Noah still has a little cold (although he is sleeping much better), so we thought we would see how today (Saturday goes in Hanoi), and if he is doing well we might drive to the bay on Sunday.

We are still having a great time just hanging out! Here are some highlight pics, but you can see more at the Flickr site, look for the link in prior posts.

Noah and Olivia had some play time together... when we visited the orphanage, we noted that they were sleeping together there. They liked the reunion.

Here is Noah after his bath:

And, here is a super cute and smiley Olivia!

Because we are on the three hour schedule, we have quite a bit of time to watch TV while the babies nap. There is a Malaysian channel, CNN, a German channel, an Italian channel, several Vietnamese channels, Cinemax, ...and my personal favorite, a Korean channel that has a Korean Hip Hop music video show called "Pops in Seoul." By the time I leave I will know all the popular Korean hip hop artists by name :)

Broken In.... (and sleepy)

Okay, after tonight, I think that you can say that Noah has broken Nate and I in. We got about an hour of full force crying/screaming before bed time. Up until now, Noah has cried only for about 2 minutes at a time and there has been an easy fix: bottle, pacifier, walking... But, this time we just walked him around until he wore himself out, because we could not figure out what else to do. He seems to be sleeping fine now though...

Noah has developed a little cough, which may be the issue. We took him to the international clinic in the morning (and they said that he had no fever and sounded very normal and happy... he tolerated all the poking and prodding with a big smile, and we pretty much left thinking that we had overreacted...the German doctor we saw said that it was not bad enough for anti-biotics, but he gave us some meds to give Noah only during the day to help him cough up whatever is in his way).

Hopefully, he will be feeling much better tomorrow night:)

We had an otherwise good day. (The cough is only bothering him at night...during the day he is his typically happy self.). We spent most of the day at the hotel, but we did venture out for a short half hour trip to the Temple of Literature (which is fantastic...I really recommend stopping there if you are in Hanoi) and for an hour or so with Kasey and Troy for our first interviews at the U.S. consulate and a quick bite for dinner.

The consulate eventually issues a visa, but first they gather all the documents about both us and the babies and then they do an interview to make sure that the adoption process has gone through in a way that they feel is legal etc. Now that we have had the interview, we will go back to the consulate again to give them the final pieces of paper (Noah's Vietnamese passport, which we think will be ready tomorrow, and his medical exam). We cannot get the official medical exam until after we have the passport, so we are hoping to pick up the babies' passports tomorrow morning and do the medical exams tomorrow afternoon. Then, the consulate here sends all our documents to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), and we should have to wait probably until mid to late week next week for the visa.

Things seem to be going very smoothly with this paperchase process, so if things continue to go this well, we may even be able to come home a little early. Pre-Noah, I would have said, no, let's stay and tour instead of leave early, because there is so much great country left to see. But, touring with the babies is a bit challenging, and what we would really like to do is get them home!

For those of you that are tracking Kasey and Troy's daughter Olivia's progress as well, she is doing very well. She does not seem to have the cough, and she is also adjusting well to her new family:)

We are uploading pics to the Flickr site regularly, so please check there for more...the link is at the bottom of the post directly below this one:)

Hope all is well in the states. Thank you all very much for all of the very kind comments you have been leaving on these blog posts. I plan to print them out for Noah's scrapbook!

P.S. Nate is asleep, which means I cannot ask him to help me get this blogger site in English...right now, it is all showing in Vietnamese for me. That is fine, because I pretty much know where everything is, but I cannot spell check...so please excuse any errors.

Laid Back at the Guoman Hotel...

We spent today just letting the babies adjust to us and their new surroundings. We spent most of the day in the hotel just hanging out. It was a nice day! Noah had a bath, and really liked it! In the morning the agency staff came and helped us gather documents for the US Consulate. Then Uyen took all the documents to the Consulate. We were then informed that we have an interview appointment tomorrow at the consulate, so things seem to be moving along. We hope to have the babies' Vietnamese passports on Friday (and we will also probably do the medical exams that day), then, we can complete the visa application process.

This evening we ventured out (for the first time today) with Kasey, Troy and Olivia and gave into a craving for American food (even if it is American food that we hardly ever eat in the states). We had KFC. Then, we went for a walk around the lake (well half way around, because we jumped in a cab when the rain started). The babies both seem to love their baby carriers!

Here is a laid back picture from our laid back day:)



I finally got some time today while Noah and M were sleeping to get a Flickr account setup. I've started uploading all of our photos of the trip so you can check out more pictures.

We are Officially Parents!!

We are officially a family! This morning we picked Noah up at the orphanage and went straight to the Giving and Receiving Ceremony where Noah was officially given to us and where we promised to send regular updates on his life to Vietnam for the next 18 years (well worth it!). We then drove the 2 hours back to Hanoi, stopped and got baby pictures taken for their U.S. visa application, and ended up back in the hotel. That was short lived though, because an hour later we all went to apply for Noah's Vietnamese passport (which is a prerequisite for getting the U.S. visa). It was a long day, but a very exciting one.

Noah is doing very well. We are hanging out in our hotel room tonight. Noah had a brief period of panicked crying when I turned the TV off during his nap. As soon as we turned the TV back on, he was fine. Apparently, he is used to background noise and the silence scared him. (That will be fine though, because I also love TV:)) Otherwise, he has been a very happy guy!

We video taped the Giving and Receiving Ceremony, so I do not have pics to share, but I do have some cute shots of Noah!

Here he is sleeping at the passport office...and playing in the hotel...

I know that Kasey and Troy's families are also checking this blog, so I also want to post a cute picture of their daughter, Olivia:) (We also video taped their G&R ceremony)

From here on out, we just get to know each other and continue to navigate the paperwork maze to get everything we need to bring the babies home!!

We Met Noah!!

Today was fabulous! We drove two hours in the car with Kasey, Troy, Mai (our translator), Uyen (Gift of Love staff) and our hired driver to get to Hoa Binh and see the babies at the orphanage. The country side was very beautiful and we took many pictures of rice farms, mountains and street scenes...but I am not going to post those, because we have much more exciting pictures than that!!

We met Noah!!! See our first family photo!

Here is one more super cute picture of Noah and Nate!

Noah was very smiley and laid back. He did not cry at all, and just seemed to be a very happy, healthy baby. He always wanted to be watching what was going on in the room. The orphanage was very clean and the babies seem to be getting exceptional care. The caregivers that we met were very attentive to the babies and knew them each very well. It was really great to see that Noah has been living with such wonderful people. We also had a fabulous opportunity to ask the caregivers and staff questions about the babies, their birth families and their schedules (with the help of our translator, Mai, of course!).

Kasey and Troy (our travel companions) also met their baby, Olivia. Here is their family photo!

We were able to visit the babies two times. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. In between the babies napped and we toured Hoa Binh a bit.

All in all it was an amazing day!! (which ended with Noah peeing all over me...they do not wear diapers under their clothes because of the heat...the orphanage is not air conditioned...so I got wet right before we left for the afternoon.) We cannot wait for tomorrow when the babies are ours to take home! We have gotten cribs set up in our hotel rooms, so we are all ready to go!

Taking It All In!

We had a very busy day today! We met our travel companions, the translator and the agency staff in the morning, and took off from there. The translator, a 21 year old woman named Mai, took Nate, Kasey, Troy and I to the super market to buy baby formula (the same kind they use in the orphanage --Dutch Lady brand), diapers (Pampers), a thermos for warm bottle water, dish soap to clean bottles, laundry detergent to wash out baby clothes, lots of bottled water, and some gifts for the orphanage (cookies and candy). We are all set now for our upcoming trips to Hoa Binh! (Here is a picture of all of us with the agency representatives at the airport yesterday.)

Then, Mai took us all to a local restaurant for some Pho (a Vietnamese soup with noodles, meat and veggies...oh, and a bit of the famous Vietnamese fish sauce). It was very good, and we all agreed that it was a great experience that we may otherwise have been to timid to try on our own.

We then walked toward Hoan Keim Lake (where we knew there would be shopping). On the way, we walked by the famous "Hanoi Hilton" (where American POWs, including John McCain, were imprisoned), a huge Cathedral (built during French colonization of Vietnam), some embassies, and many many shops and restaurants.

Here people are selling things everywhere. They set up little stands on the sidewalk to sell vegetables or meat (including live fish), or ride bikes by slowly with souvenirs or just start cooking Pho on the sidewalk and people can pull up stools and eat. All of this sidewalk traffic is compounded by the heavy motor traffic. People seem to park cars and motor bikes on the sidewalks as much as the street, so we spent a lot of time weaving in and out of obstacles. It is very lively and fun! We were able to find some great gifts and souvenirs on the way to the lake, including some of these beautiful lanterns.

Once we got to the lake (which is beautiful), we paid to go over a bridge that led to a temple. The temple was very interesting, and we got some great pictures! There we also saw a 550 pound turtle from the year 1968 that is plasticized in a glass box. Apparently large turtles live in the lake.

We then had ice cream near the lake before heading over to the water puppet show. Water puppetry is unique to Vietnam, and it was a lot of fun to watch! After the show we had dinner at an Italian restaurant and headed back to the hotel.

We are exhausted! The weather here is incredibly hot and humid, and we had to drink so much water to keep up with the pace! It was a great day though, and it was a good introduction to Hanoi.

We are all looking forward to tomorrow, because we are going to visit the babies! :)

We Made It!

Hi from Hanoi! After thirty plus hours of travel (we think...calculating is difficult on very little sleep), we have made it, and we are checked into the hotel. The hotel is beautiful, and we are really ready to crash (but in the interest of curing jet lag I am bound and determined to make it to 9pm local time before I fall asleep).

The only hiccup thus far is that they told both us and our travel companions that our giving and receiving ceremonies have been moved from Monday to Tuesday (due to a department meeting on Monday). That is a bit of a bummer, because it means that we will not take custody of Noah until Tuesday. However, we will get to see Noah Monday. They told us that they would take us to the orphanage on Monday for a few hours to play with him! That may actually turn out to be great, because we will get to see more of Hoa Binh and may get more time to see where he lives and talk with his caregivers than we would have if we had had the ceremony on Monday.

Yay!

Planes, Pigs, Pandas and Noodles (Greetings from Hong Kong!)

Hi there! We made it to Asia!! The flights were really long, but we did get seats together and after a little Tylenol PM slept through most of it! That is we slept when they were not feeding us, which happened all the time! We had: dinner (chicken and rice, beef or pasta), then they brought ham sandwiches, then noodle bowls, then peanuts and pretzels, then breakfast (omelets, sausage, muffins, yogurt, and fruit), then they brought us apples. Needless to say, we may be tired travelers, but we are well fed.

We are sitting in the Hong Kong airport...we have 8 hours here before we head to Hanoi... It is a gorgeous airport with lots of fun things to look at. I am having to hold myself back from buying all of the cute 'year of the pig' stuff and you can also find just about anything you want with a panda on it:)

Here is a picture of us weary travelers in Dallas last night (Nate and I are traveling with Kasey and Troy, which has been a lot of fun:))



Now we are off to find some noodles to eat:)

We Leave Today!!!

I cannot believe today!!! I have been up since 4am thinking about it, and it is just so crazy that we are at this final stage in our adoption process. The G&R date is Monday, and it is so strange to think that in just a few days we will be parents officially!!!

For anyone who is curious, we have been told by our agency that they strongly recommend the Guoman Hotel in Hanoi, so we will be there throughout our entire stay. We will get there on the 7th (note that the 7th for Hanoi begins long before it begins here...check the weather pixie on the right hand side of the blog for current time and weather in Hanoi), and we have down time the 7th and 8th (on those days, we plan to do a little shopping to pick up diapers and formula -- the two things our agency advised we buy there instead of pack-- and to pick up treats for the staff and kids at the orphanage -- our agency recommends that we buy treats for all to share rather than get bigger gifts for the caregivers, and the agency takes us shopping for those in Hanoi). On the 9th, we drive to Hoa Binh and pick up Noah!! Then the next few weeks are filled with bonding time, sightseeing and governmental appointments for passport, visa, medical check etc.

I am so excited to get going! We are also thrilled that we will be traveling with another couple from Des Moines who are picking up a little girl around the same age as Noah! It will be great to go through this experience with another family and to have friends in Des Moines who have been on a similar journey.

A big thanks to everyone that has offered to help while we are out (by caring for cats, filling our fridge for our return, etc.)!

We really appreciate the help! While we are gone, we hope to be able to keep this blog current, so please watch here for news!! Okay...I have to go finish packing (we are trying to rearrange things to accomplish two goals (1) one checked bag a piece and (2) no over weight luggage charges:)