It's Official

It is with great joy that we announce that we are now officially the proud parents of Sophie Minli Francine.  So much has happened over the past few days so I will go back to the beginning.

 

The flight from Vancouver to Beijing was verrrrrry long.  The flight was late leaving due to a "problem" with entry in Russian airspace so we ended up sitting on the tarmac for an hour. The 12 hour flight was by the far the longest flight that I had ever been on. It was difficult to rest due to the possessed reading light over my seat.  It flashed on and off at will and seemed to like to wait until I was just about to sleep before making a light show.  The in flight movie was probably good but was a bit hard to tell because of the static that drowned out the sound from the high quality headphones they supply. And no, the movie wasn't Snakes on Planes.  I think the flight crew thought of us as "the herd" and every time we started getting restless they would bring out more feed.  That said the food was not really that bad.

 

We followed the sun to Beijing and it was weird seeing 2 sunsets in 12 hours.  The good thing was that due to the time changes I was able to celebrate my birthday 2 days in a row.

 

We arrived late in Beijing and after a quick check in we were off to a traditional Chinese hot pot dinner.  It was very nice.  We had our first taste of China traffic here and I don't know where to begin.  Maybe I will say that story for its own blog entry. We crawled into bed late and after a fitful 3 hour sleep and 6 hours of staring at the ceiling we were off on the next leg of the journey.

 

The 3 hour flight from Beijing to Changsha was somewhat like a bit claustrophobic due to the fact I had to bend my knees to fit into the seats.  Not much in China is made for those in the six foot range.  We have a good picture of me standing in the doorway of our hotel room with about 1" between my head and the frame.

 

We arrived to find that we would not see that babies until the afternoon so we were off to the hotel to check in and do paperwork.  By this time fatigue had set well and quite honestly I have given up trying to figure out what day of the week it is and what time it is back home.  We were all loaded onto the shuttle bus and taken to the local Government office where the babies were waiting.  Have I mentioned the traffic?

 

The moment when we finally met Sophie is one we will always remember.  She looked at us in wonder with those big eyes and she did not cry when Helen took her.  It took a while but she finally smiled at us.  She is just adorable and we are so lucky to be her parents!

 

Today we went back to the government office where we officially became parents (again). Tomorrow is a down day and the group is going to the park.  The weather here is beautiful.  Did I mention the traffic?

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