Gotcha Day Surprise!!!

- September 12, 2018

It’s still September 9. We got off the bullet train at the correct stop (thankfully) and went to look for our guide. We stood in a courtyard for about half an hour until our guide showed up. He is so kind and apologetic. He said something about traffic or a different train station…I’m not really sure, but it doesn’t matter. As we road to our hotel in Jinan, I asked him what time we would meet our children tomorrow (Monday). He very calmly said, well you all will meet him about 4pm today! What?!!! That was in two hours!!! What a surprise! When we got to our hotel our rooms weren’t ready yet and we were told they would be ready in one hour. So I started to get nervous because I”m about to meet my son and we don’t even have a room ready yet. We finally got one room and then we discovered that the lock/door knob separating our adjoining rooms was broken! So then we had a worker in our room forever fixing it! The kids started arguing which each other…you know nothing gets kids arguing more than a stressful, crazy, unplanned moment. Then they called…..that was it! They asked if they could come to our room, but we still had a worker in there working on our door so we opted to go downstairs to the lobby. The second we rounded the corner and saw the two sweet ladies from his orphanage everyone instantly relaxed! At that moment nothing mattered except Theodore. It didn’t matter that our room wasn’t ready or that we didn’t have time for a simple shower. The kids stopped arguing all on cue and we all focused on our boy. Then he stepped out from between the two ladies and we saw him. He gave us a half smile and I knelt down near him. He was so nervous that I new not to rush things. I could tell he wasn’t sure of me or Jeff so we asked the kids to go say hi. The second Max, Cooper, and Piper sat on the floor and talked to him he completely relaxed and started playing. Within second the four kids were playing with cars and laughing all together. What an amazing gotcha moment! After signing some temporary custody papers, he was ours! Wow! Ten months of praying, waiting, crying, planning had lead us to that moment and now we had just had it!

They told us that he had not had dinner yet and it was now well after 5pm so Jeff and Max went out to find us takeout while Cooper, Piper, and I played and loved on our new little guy. He is so perfect!

The guys came back with lots of food, but they weren’t sure how much or what to get. Ordering food in a foreign country is tricky business. Max was quite proud though that he had ordered the McDonalds meal all on his own and paid for it without help. He is really loving this travel adventure.