11 hours and counting

First let me say....no pictures, I will try and load a collage tomorrow night and finish off the trip to Chongqing for you. As a family we have been afforded the opportunity to travel all over the world, and I must tell you that the trip to Chongqing far exceeded any trip we have ever taken. We truly had an amazing time, we experienced so much, learned more than I would ever be able to share, and have made lifelong friends in Shiyu's family. I can't even tell you how warm, generous, kind, FUNNY, and loving they are. They treated us like royality, and I am certain we will never have another trip like that again. We have already taken about 350 pictures, and so that is why I don't have time to get them loaded tonight...but I will because I want everyone to get to see the China we were so fortunate to see. I am fairly certain that Shiyu's dad is president of the Chongqing Tourism Board!! You are going to be shocked as how much we covered in 3 days.

We left Chongqing this morning after arriving home last night at midnight....yes we are tired and it has nothing to do with adjusting to the time change. I have no idea how I got everything packed. We are coming home with a lot more than we left with....and we only barely contributed to China's growing economy. But everyone else in Chongqing that brought gifts for Shiyu's American family, and her impending new Taiwanese sister made a HUGE dent into the economy. Yes....Hayden's now owns even more clothes than any one person should ever own. We did have a minor issue when one of the suitcases decided to instantaneously combust as it was being loaded into the car. Thank goodness I knew nothing about this until we arrived at the airport....David knew not to tell the crazy lady who had only had about 4 hours of sleep. Firecracker Auntie took control(what a surprise) and tied that bulging mess up, and then had the nice packing men at the airport saran wrap it permantly shut. Apperently I am not the first for this to have this happen:) We only ended up with $10 in excess baggage(which of course I was told that I could not pay because it was not my fault that my bags weighed more than when we arrived)
The time finally came for us to say our goodbyes, and let me say that the tears were rolling, and it was not only hard to say goodbye to the girls, it was just as hard to say farewell to the whole family(yes...they all went back to the airport with us) Those 5 days are days that I think all three of us will treasure, and never forget.

We boarded our flight to ShenZhen and after the 3rd time of the the pilots turning on and off the power I said to David....this is not normal, at least at home, and I hope something isn't wrong. Well since we have a very small select Chinese vocabulary list it does not do us much good to listen to the announcements, but it was clear what the last announcement we heard said....Get off the plane, and collect your belongings....something is wrong with the plane. I don't need to tell anyone that is not what "this crazy lady needed to hear" We had come to Chonqing, we had an awesome time, I did very little anticipating while we were there....but I am now on my way to our baby and I will be damned if a mechancial is going to keep me from getting to Taiwan to pick her up tomorrow. So it is Sunday, we have no cell phone that we can use, we can understand a damn thing anyone is saying, they found us a translator who spoke about 5 more english words than the five people prior that we tried to communicate with, we know from the departure list that we don't have a lot of options in front of us, and they are now handing out a box breakfast that has a bowl of beans in it and a roll with some unknown piece of meat in it, and we have to be in Hong Kong by afternoon to catch our flight to Taipei. Well let's just say that they finally found another airplane, we boarded with no joke 22 babies(what is up with that) all in split pants and all under the age of 6 months who could teetee on command??? (did I miss something in the parenting books I read??) We flew to ShenZhen, boarded a bus with all of that cargo we are schleping around in a torential rainstorm so that we could then sit on a bus sopping wet for a mere hour...hence the term: come hell or high water:) When we got on the bus and settled into our seats, a man got on with a video camera and came down the aisle and videotaped everyone. I asked the "british" man next to me what that was about and he said that they do that to have a record of who is on the bus in case it blows up?? I looked at him puzzled and he said "you know if we were to have a suicide bomber blow up the bus, then they would look back and see who might have done it" Well now, thanks for sharing that little story with me. After driving to the border we then had to get off the bus(yes with all of the cargo in tow) to go across the border, but we understood that we would be getting on another bus once we showed our passports, but then some guy showed up and said we needed to get in this mini-van to go to Hong Kong Airport, and you are gonna laugh but even though we all looked at each other and thought that would be a poor travel decision, and why would a mini-van take us when a bus(big bus) had brought us....we got in. Once in we decided that if we were being kidnapped that they would for sure bring Taylor and myself back as we are far too annoying for anyone to want to keep and certainly no one that we love has any money to ransom us out. So we decided that we were probably okay, and sure enough we were, and he took us straight to the airport, and we found out that no one else showed up to go to the airport at that departure time and so instead of wasting a bus they used a van to take us.

By this time it is 3:00 in the afternoon we had arrived at the airport at 7:00 that morning, we had been through a monsoon, and had had no sleep.....we looked awesome when we walked up to the business class counter to check in. But good lord I was so happy to see the lounge and made great use of cleaning myself up so that when the guide picked us up in Taipei she would not make any phone calls claiming that they might want to reconsider our family....we looked terrible, and didn't actually feel that great either. Once we were semi clean and put back together we finally made our way to our gate and that is when the emotions started running pretty high. I just started crying, and for anyone who knows well knows that tears do not come easily for me. It was like an out of body experience. I really just started to feel the final leg of this very long journey. We were really going, it wasn't pretend anymore, no one was ever going to ask me again when Hayden was coming home, and to be honest I was a little caught off guard by these feelings. It was happiness, excitement, shock, and probably some exhaustion thrown in, but it was real we were getting on the plane and flying the 499 miles to Taipei to get our girl.

So I sit here in our hotel, everyone else is asleep, I am surrounded by a very big stack of baby things that need to get organized before I go to bed and I just can't believe in 12-13 hours from now I will be meeting our daughter for the very first time. Amazing is all I can say. I can't thank you enough for all of the nice comments, and emails I have gotten since we left. I am sorry I have not responded, I am hoping that after tomorrow our time will be a little less hectic than it has been for the last 5-6 days. I will load pictures, and I will absolutely post pictures and some thoughts for what I would guess is going to be a day I will never forget. Yeah....I am crying again. So I say goodnight...actually good morning to you all. I know you will be thinking about us and sending us your love and good thoughts. But please send good thoughts to Hayden, it makes me very sad and emotional thinking that tomorrow is such a day of huge change for her, I pray for her to have a very peaceful transition. We have loved her for a very long time now, but we are total strangers taking her from all that she knows and is comforted by.

We really will see you on the otherside now:)

Sorry no proof-reading tonight, too tired and still too much to do:)