We’re Coming to America!

Date: Aug 20, 8:00 p.m. China Time

I’ve been singing it all night long! We cannot wait to get our hands on our three other kids—we’ve been missing them so much! We’re also missing American bathrooms (complete with toilet paper), ice-cold drinks, our favorite foods, cool summer evenings, church, extended family, and blue skies!

HOWEVER, we are really going to miss China!! We love it here. We particularly love Guangzhou—it’s a little piece of heaven on earth watching all of these children join their forever families. It’s also wonderful to have a little break from normal responsibilities, and I must say we’re more than a bit scared to come home and face them! We know from experience what jet-lag is like, and to combine it with work, 5 kids starting school, 1 kid at home who will surely be into EVERYTHING, laundry, housework, cooking, and adjusting to our new family seems daunting. We are grateful for Teri’s specific prayers that we will have strength beyond our own over the next little while. (:

Our Xander continues to be such a joy. We love him so much and can’t wait to see him in his new surroundings! He is excited to come to America, but I wonder what that means to him. How can he have any idea how much his life is about to change? Over the last several days I noticed he would always longingly watch any little kid he saw on a bike. Yesterday, he was just staring at one little boy’s tricycle, and I had Graci tell him that in America, he would have a bike. His eyes got big and he started clapping and cheering. It was so precious!

Today we traveled to the American Consulate to take the oath that everything in our paperwork was true. There were 50 other families there taking the same oath. Xander then received his visa to go to America, and he will become an official US Citizen upon arrival in LA! Pretty amazing.

Well, we leave tomorrow evening. This is likely our last post before arriving home at midnight on Friday. Hopefully the next thing you see on here is pictures of all the kids together—woo-hoo!!!

Thanks again for all of your support and love during this journey to Alexander—oh, and I keep forgetting to mention—his name is actually Alexander Philip Green. We had gone back and forth between Chase and Philip, and finally decided on Philip, in honor of my grandpa and dad. He couldn’t have better men as namesakes, and we hope he will follow closely in their footsteps. My dad is a particularly amazing man in every way. We love him so much! And a sidenote-- “Philip” means “lover of horses.” I think this suits Xander well, as he is drawn to every horse figurine that we see in the shops. It will be fun to take him on the farm and see some real horses! :):):)

Christianne