It's official!

I was going to let Carrie post first today but since she is out with the guide buying clothes for Bai Lu and we are waiting for the game room to open, I am going to take the liberty. Bai Lu had a great night of sleep and thought sleeping on a blowup mattress on the floor with Hannah was great. She slept hard and until 7:30 even though she was not feeling great yesterday. I woke at 4:30 and laid in bed and watched her sleep for awhile, amazed at what was lying before me. We had prayed about this girl for over a year and here she was in our room as our room as our daughter. Breakfast was pretty special though. After Carrie walked her around the huge buffet they have here, she let Bai Lu pick out what she liked so we could see what food she liked. She came back with two pieces of watermelon, a piece of dry white bread and a yogurt. She gobbled up the watermelon and then the bread was unique. She saw us eating french toast and though she had to eat her bread with a fork. After we realized what was happening we straightened things out. At the end of breakfast, Carrie made a passing comment of "where's the jewelry you always buy when we adopt?" so I pulled out two necklaces (for Carrie and bai Lu) that were silver with a charm that said in Chinese characters "a Mother's and Daughter's heart joined forever". They both loved them. We spent the next two hours at the Civil Affairs offices getting to know each other by playing tic-tac-toe and crazy 8's. It was really good. The best part is that we signed papers there. I included a picture of Bai Lu signing saying that she chooses to be a part of our family. After that we went shopping to buy some clothes for Bai Lu. The first stop was to pick out shoes. She walked in and picked the first pink shoes she say and was content. At each stop she only said "You decide." It was really interesting because she was quickly bored with it and seemed a bit overwhelmed that we were choosing to buy her things. After lunch at KFC we went back to the hotel, bought a hackysack and some other games and played in the park for a while.

Things are much more upbeat today and slowly getting better. We feel so blessed to have her here and we believe she feels the same.

I'll let Carrie tell the rest of the story.
Steve