Introducing our New Baby Daughter!

It is with great joy that we present our new daughter and Cassandra's baby sister Sophie Minli Francine. Sophie was born on November 16, 2005 in the Chinese province of Hunan. She has been described as loveable, a good eater, a good sleeper and all round good natured – a perfect match to our family. Sophie has two middle names, Minli which is her Chinese name and Francine which was chosen in honour of her Grandmothers FRANCes and IreNE. Her first name means “Wisdom”.

We received the call notifying us of the proposal at 12:43 PM on Wednesday November 8th. This time of day is considered lucky in Chinese culture and many choose this time of day to get married. The Chinese have a saying regarding how a red thread connects those destined to meet and how the thread can never be broken. There are already several threads that connect Sophie with us.

We will be traveling to China to pick up Sophie. Our expected departure date is January 5th 2007 and return on January 18th 2007. The first night we spend in Vancouver and then fly to Beijing where we stay overnight in a hotel by the airport. The next day we fly out to Changsha in the Province of Hunan. Later that same afternoon is “gotcha” day! Our facilitator, Family Outreach International, will accompany us all the way and will be making all of the accommodation and travel arrangements. Nana, Poppa and Ankie Donna are going to look after Cassandra while we travel. It will be very hard to be away from Cassandra for so long but we know that she will be in good hands.

This is a photo of us with the just opened proposal. There was a happy dance we did that was also caught on tape but we will save that for some day when Sophie brings home a boyfriend. We will post more updates in the weeksto come and will hopefully be able to continue updating the Blog from China as well.

The following map of China shows the location of Beijing and Changsha. You may need to click and enlarge the map to be able to read it.