Our Journey to Brooke

June 17th, 2009 (from Taiwan)

We Made IT!!!!!!

We left Fresno around 6pm. Jon had a little "putt putt" incident and ran out of gas on the way home. Thank goodness for grandma Janice who made it to the rescue

We arrived at Alberts and Jenny's in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, are visit was too short, and we were suddenly off to the airport in San Francisco. Albert drove us to the airport so everything was very easy.

Our flight was with an international flight called EVA AIRWAYS....We were very impressed. We had quite the excitement early on in the flight. Shortly after takeoff there was an annoucement overhead, "Emergency....if there are any nurses or doctors aboard please report immediately"...of course I nudged Jon and he was off. Apparently, a lady had passed out and was very hypotensive. Jon wasn't gone too long, but next thing I know, they are moving us up to FIRST CLASS!!! We were living the big life. Chairs recline all the way back. Down Comforter blanket, and very personal treatment. Needless to say, we were both very well rested by the time we arrived in Taiwan....apparently, the lady who passed out had "drank too much"!!!

When we arrived to Taiwan, Mr. Yeh was waiting for us.....unfortunately he doesn't speak any English. He used his cell phone for his son to interpret. When we arrived at our hotel, we realized they had no reservations for us. Gladney was suppose to set it up, and apparently did, however, Agora Gardens Hotel had no record....Luckily, they had a room available and we only had to wait around a short time before it was ready.

I posted pictures of our hotel and our outting today. We will be Mr. Yeh at 9:30am in the Lobby, we travel to Taichung which is about 2 1/2 hours from the Hotel and we pick up Brooke at 1:30. I think we are going to the Marytrs' Shrine on our way.

We are very excited about tomorrow. As soon as we get a chance we will post pictures of our daugter.

"Brooke, mommy and daddy will be there soon!"

"Luke and Connor, We miss you and can't wait to talk to you on Skype tomorrow!

That's it for today. Until next time....

We are going to TAIWAN!!!!

Well, finally, I put this blog together, but I have much to learn about blogging......................

We got the call on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 from Lindsay our Case worker from Gladney Center of Adoption that we received our Final court date and Brooke is now our's officially! We then had to wait on our date to get her Visa and bring her home............well just a few hours later Lindsay called to let us know that there was a date available on June 19th and that we needed to move on getting all of our paperwork ready.............Jon and I were both excited and a little shocked, we thought we would have a couple of weeks to plan after getting the "FINAL" call........So the work began. I sent out an email for Jon to try and get his shifts covered....of course many of the docs are gone, and why shouldn't they be......it's summer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course, Jon works with the most awesome group of doctors and the ones who were around all came through to help out.

MINOR BUMP IN THE ROAD!!!!!

Well, sometimes there are bumps in the road as we have experienced more than once through our adoption journey......On Thurday I found out that Taiwan did not have any of the paper work needed in order to process our VISA for Brooke. Now if AIT in Taiwan does not have what is needed we cannot get her VISA......so this is a BIG problem, but very common, unfortunately.

Thank the Lord for my Blog group because they have been a wealth of knowledge. Many of them have already adopted from Taiwan or other countries, have received their referral and are waiting to bring home their little boy or girl, or are still waiting for their referral, and some are going through this process for the second or third time. So they are great resources. They all encouraged me to not mess around with this and to call our Congress office and get them involved immediately. Congressman Nunez's office staff have been right on top of things. He even gave me his personal cell phone in case I needed anything. Long story short after a series of phone calls to our Fresno USCIS office, the National Visa Center and Congress....I still do not know if our paperwork has made it to Taiwan. We hope to find out by Monday, and hope all is in place.

TRAVEL PLANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We will be leaving from San Francisco on Tuesday morning at 1:40am and arriving in Taipei, Taiwan on Wednesday around 6am. We will pick Brooke up at TWCA in Taichung on Thurday at 1:30pm and our appointment will be Friday, June 19th to get Brookes VISA. When we pick up Brooke, we will have a travel guide, Mr. Yeh, who will drive us where we need to go. A lot of the families in my blog group have also used him during their travels. We really hope we get to meet the birthmom. We haven't found out yet...... We will be staying at the Agora Gardens Hotel in Taipei. It looks really nice. This hotel was recommended by our agency and has a lot of adoptive families that stay there.

Brooke's June update video

Today June 13th, Jon and I went shopping and got the gifts for all of the Foster care workers at TWCA, the Foster mom, and the Birthmom. We also picked up a few items that we are going to be needing for little Brooke.

Luke and Connor are so excited. They get to hang out with Grandma Janice, Grandma Meg and Papa Jim and Auntie Melissa....so they will be well entertained while we are gone.