Hello from the Far East. . .

Hi everyone, we finally made it! Believe it or not, we fared very well. The flight from LA to China was good, although the flight was 15 1/2 hours long, upgrading to business class definately made the difference. I slept about 6-8 hours and thats all I need. Mike slept on and off and we are doing great. Our day started at 4:15am, when my dad picked us up to take us to Orlando for our 7:30 flight. We arrived in LA at 9:30am and left for China at 11:50pm straight to Guangzhou and landed at 6:15am, caught a 8:30 am flight to Beijing and arrived in Beijing at 10am. We got a hotel room for the day in LA to hang out and have lunch. We were NOT about to stay in LAX the entire time. The air traffic controller in LAx had some problems we heard, but we were not affected, we had landed by then.


Our hotel is awesome, I posted some pics of our room. Today we have the day to ourselves to relax and unwind. We meet tonight around 7pm for dinner. I think there is about 8 people in our tour group. Only 4 of us from our adoption agency. We arrived about 11:30am China time. We crossed the international date line, so Tuesday the 8th did not even exist for us! Tommorow we are off to Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and an evening dinner Chinese Acrobatics show.

Mike and I just got back from a short walk outside around the hotel. Lots of shops and some grocery stores. We just got back with some water and it is really neat to see the grocery items they have. For instance, they have Lay's potato chips, but Barb-q meat and fish flavor. Needless to say we opted for the plain flavor.

Enjoy the pictures, only a couple days left til we have Mia. I am not sure if we get her the 14th or 15th. Once I know, I will let you guys know.

Last minute check list

Luggage..CHECK
Car seat installed....CHECK
Room ready for her arrival....CHECK

Now all we need is our little girl. She turns 10 months tommorow. . .

We are leaving tomorrow!

YES, Can you believe it? We leave in the early AM and arrive in LA, then catch the red eye to China. We actually miss Tuesday and arrive on Wednesday the 9th. We will spend a couple days touring Beijing before meeting up with the rest of our group on the 13th. I believe we will get Mia on the 14th or 15th.

Before we leave, there are some people we would like like to thank. . .

Our familes, who have been so generous, supportive and enthusiastic of our decision, and who will also be helping us out while we are out of town.

To our wonderful friends, who have spoiled us with gifts and have helped us thru this long wait!

To China, for allowing us the privilege of being parents to our Mia.

Please follow our journey, we wish you ALL could come along to experience it with us. We are so excited and can't wait for you to meet her.

Before we leave we wanted to post some pictures of Mike's retirement party, which was a blast. Mike and I haven't gotten home at 4am in a very long time. The city put together a wonderful party and it was great to see everyone. Thanks to Larry and Jimmy for making the trip, Molly and Makenzie for giving us their home to stay in while they were out of town and to Tami, who took care of our home and our pets.

Bon Voyage . . . .

We just received our travel approval call. We leave August 7th and return August 26th. Our stay is slightly longer because we are heading to Beijing first to do some sightseeing. I am pretty much ready and have to get our clothes and such ready but I think we are good to go!

I can't wait til I have her in my arms. We will be in China for my birthday. What a birthday to remember!

We are now awaiting our travel approval to go get Mia. Mike and I are pretty much ready to go, we have purchased all the medications that are recommended to take with us. I have bought most of our baby gear. The nursery is ready, we will install the carseat just before we leave so when my parents and Mike's dad pick us up at the airport we are set. I am ordering the "new" bills from the bank tomorrow. For those of you who do not know, when we arrive in China, a donation to the orphanage is made and payment for travel, tours, meals is made in American bills. The Chinese are very peticular about the bills being new. I have already informed the bank manager at our branch and they said no problem, just give them a couple of days to get the "new" bills in. There are people who are unable to get all new bills and ironed their money!

We received our itinerary for the Beijing pre-trip that Mike and I are taking before meeting up with the rest of our group. I think there will be 3 families doing the pre-trip. It will be nice to spend some time with them before the baby mayhem starts!

My next post will be our travel dates, we hope to hear something today or tomorrow. Mike's retirement party, which is being hosted by the police department is next Friday. We are excited to see everyone, however; we may not be able to attend if we have to leave to China.
The unknown, you gotta love it!

Update on Mia!

We just received some updated information on Mia. Based on her report, she was abandoned by the Xisha Bridge on October 9, 2005 (2 days old) wearing old clothes and no other information was found. She was taken to the Qianjiang Police Station and then was taken to the Qianjiang Social Welfare Institute (orphanage). She was named by the doctor who examined her and diagnosed as a healthy newborn baby. They estimate that she was only 2 days old. She weighed 6.8 lbs. and was 19.29 inches long. She is currently in foster care, is eating rice porridge 2 times a day and eating mashed fruits. She wakes up at 6am,naps from 11:30-1:30 and goes to bed at 8:30pm. We will try to go visit the area that she was found, as it will be a very sacred place to all of us. I thank her birthmother for placing her in an area where she knew she would be found and taken to the proper authorities. I always wondered if she would be found by some sort of body of water, as Mike and I are definitely water people. I sent her care package out today which had pictures of her new home and pictures of mommy and daddy as well as her grandma's and grandpa's. We included a thank you gift to her nanny and some postcards from Florida. I was told that Chinese people love American music, so I also included an American Idol CD along with clothes for Mia. I sent quite a few outfits so whatever they do not use will be donated to the orphanage. We have sent in all our paperwork for our visas and are awaiting our travel arrangements. In the meantime, SHOP, SHOP, and SHOP!

What an emotional week Mike and I have had. I did not expect the call when it came. Norman (our agencies director) called Monday evening, I was home already and was getting dinner ready. I was on pins and needles all day and saw that others were getting their calls and when the call didn't come I said "Oh well, we'll get the call tomorrow". He totally caught me off guard and I was on my cell phone with my friend Grace when my phone rang and I saw the caller ID. Poor Grace, I dropped the phone and started screaming, "Grace its THE call" I think I just put my cell phone down and everything else is a big blur. Mike was not home, so as soon as I hung up with Norman I called his cell. What a wave of emotions from a phone call. The next day Mia's paperwork arrived at my work and believe it or not, I did not open it and drove home to open it with Mike and my parents. She is so beautiful and looks very healthy. Our agency has several children from the same orphanage and it will be so nice to travel together to get our girls.

We had some family and friends come to visit this weekend. It was wonderful and we even got to see the shuttle launch on Tuesday from the beach. We have to say that we are so fortunate to have such great family and awesome friends. The calls and emails that we have received has been overwhelming. You really get to know who in your life is important!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!

Friends Family and Fun!!!!

Mia Michele Li Harrell

We are so blessed, we now have a daughter!!

Her name is Li Tong Qian

Date of Birth: October 7, 2005 (8 months)

She weighed (at 6 mos.) 15.25lbs and is 26" long

She is in foster care in Qianjiang, Chongqing

I was shaking when I took the call and our agencies director called himself! He said, "Hi I have good news" I forgot to ask about her weight and height. They are Fed-Exing her picture, medical information, etc. tomorrow. I will post her picture once we get off cloud 9.

The wait is over and I can't wait to get our Mia in August. I am now going to get some info on her hometown. I understand that the meaning of Chongqing means 'constant celebrations' and if you know the Harrell's, there are always celebrations going on in our house!!

Thank you for the calls and the emails, I can't wait for you to meet our little girl.

That's What I'm Talking About!!!

Here is what we wanted to see. We should get the call soon. We just needed to know exactly when the CCAA was releasing the information to the individual agencies. Our next post will be information about our daughter. (doesn't that sounds good)? . . . . . .

The contractions have started. . .

Our agency just called to advise us that we are getting "the call" with the next week or so. We are tentatively traveling early to mid August. They have given us our instructions so they can get our visas and our consulate appointments once we receive our notice. Once we formally accept our little Mia, they notify the proper authorities in China and the travel dates will be confirmed. The next call is the big one! They will tell us about her age, weight, health, height and which province of China she is from. I can't wait to find out all the little details. I called Mike after I received the first call (he was fishing with my dad) and I told him my water broke. He said "what happened to your water?".

I cannot believe that the time has arrived and Mike and I will be parents soon. Being a mom has always been a dream of mine and I can't wait. I can only imagine the feelings I will have when she is finally placed in our arms or when she says mommy and daddy for the first time.

ITS SHOWTIME ! ! !

OK we just got word that we will be hearing something real soon. I am so excited that I cant even type. Mike's theory is, " I'll believe it when we get the call " Meanwhile some family and friends have sent some gifts already and we wanted to say
THANK YOU!

Last vacation as a family of 2 (hopefully)

We did our annual trip to Marco Island and everyone was expecting to see Mia. I was so sure we would have her by this year, but she will definately be there next year. Mike and I took full advantage of going out on the boat and just relaxing. We had a wonderful time as usual.

Molly came to visit us while we were at Marco. We had a great time and our Marco friends loved her. . .

OK Mike is now officially retired, he bought his first set of golf clubs.....

Because it was raining, we decided to go shopping. Mike had promised my dad that if he and my mom moved closer to us, that he would take up golf so he could join my dad. We went to a golf store that was having a closeout. Of course the guys that went shopping with us sealed the deal. We went back to the dock once the rain stopped and the guys started hitting balls into the water. What a site that was !!!!