Day 3 - Gotcha!

(The first few seconds, Amber and Brielle)

Today was the day we've been waiting for. Over six years after beginning the process, we've finally been been united with our Chinese daughter Brielle!

We had another rad breakfast at the Galactic Peace Hotel, then our guide Mary took us to the streets to the local grocery store, RT Mart. That was a really fun experience! It has multiple stories, and you can push your cart onto the escalators to get there. Magnets grab the cart to keep it from rolling around. Cool! It was SUPER busy, kinda like a Costco on a Saturday morning. The meat area was like a pet store, and the girls just wanted to take all the turtles home. We collected some things to supply the room, and headed back quickly so we wouldn't be late to meet our girl.

We were back in our room for only a few minutes when we got the call to come down to the lobby to meet her. We kinda freaked out and grabbed our cameras. We were told to meet in the "back lobby". We were pretty sure where that was, but when we got there it was swamped with people. A wedding reception! Went to the front main lobby. Nobody we needed to see. After frantically walking all around on the ground level, we got some help from the manager on duty. He made a call, then said, "follow me". He led us back to the REAL back lobby.

We immediately met Brielle, escorted by the orphanage director, Mr. Lu, and two orphanage ladies. The lady holding Brielle brought her over to Amber and put her in her arms. Brielle went willingly and without any fuss. It was all very calm, not really what I was expecting. After some group pictures and some exchanging of papers, we were left to just hang out the rest of the day.

After we got her to the room, we decided that a bath was in order. This was the first time she cried. She didn't like getting clothes off much, then she really didn't like getting out of the bath. She didn't cry very long at all, though. Fresh clothes and some coconut oil...nice. Then we fired up the iPad and spent the next few hours sharing the joy via FaceTime with our family back home. That was a really great experience!

We spent the rest of the day hanging out and making Brielle laugh. Audrey and Hali were awesome, and could really get Brielle going! Brielle eventually ran out of steam at about 9, hugged her Happy Goat toy, and fell over asleep.

Amazing. We are so completely blessed.