The Famous Red Couch Picture. Monya is in Wesley's arms just out of my view on the left. She should be in the "official" picture though.
Ashley and Daddy right after the picture above.
The Chinese Princess getting ready to go.
Isn't she lovely?
The Atha Family
Today was filled with shopping and sight seeing. We had a nice day and saw the sun for the second time since we have been in China. We had a beautiful river boat cruise tonight and it was quite a sight. Tomorrow we go to the final appointment and then we get ready for the trip home. We can't wait to see you all again and let you meet Ashley. The first few days we will need to let her get settled but we will have her out bragging shortly.
We love and miss you all.
Mike & Billie

This is the view out of our hotel room window at about noon. We have only seen the sun a couple of times during this trip. We do not know if this is normal for this time of year or just this way all of the time.

Even though this is out of focus you can see a very happy and playful Ashley cutting up with Daddy and the camera.
Another view of the beautiful Smile of Ashley.

This is our "Adoption Barbie" that is given to all the adoptive families by Mattel and the White Swan.

It is getting closer to time to go home and we cannot wait. We are all very tired and Ashley is running a fever again. Once again we are blessed by the Stanley family who let us have their medicine for Ashley since we had used all of ours. They have been a wonderful family and we are so thankful for them! Many have asked about the lady who fell and I have forgotten if I put in here about only one of them or both of them. The first lady who fell at the zoo is doing much better, but still sore. She has the local shopping to keep her going. The elderly lady who fell in her room ended up with a broken arm and flew home today to get it taken care of, we have had many prayers for her during this time and we hope all will heal quickly.
As we have feared the group has separated a lot since the move. Each couple or maybe one or two couples are going their own way, we are sadden by this as we enjoyed the time with all of them.
We have learned a lot for this trip and will treasure the time forever. I value the time learning from all of the other families more than anything. We have such a good group of Christian people here and they are not afraid to show it. We have prayed in public, held hands in prayer and worship together, comforted each other and attended to each other's needs.

By the way Billie and I found some white silk and bought enough to make Ashley a wedding dress when she grows up. Billie thought that this would be a nice thought to have the silk from the same trip as when we came to get her.
We hope that everyone at home is doing well and we look forward to seeing you all very soon.
Love to all,
Mike & Billie

Monya and Wesley hanging out at the front desk of the White Swan Hotel.
Ashley likes the crib here.
She really likes the Crib.
Dale, Billie, and Sharon doing over 2 hours of MORE paper work. This should be the final to get ready for the appointment on the 30th.
All in all a good day today, we just moved from one hotel to another. We like the hotel okay but the other one was much nicer. We don't have enough room here and we have already lost the group feeling in just a few short hours. Before we all would go together to do things and so far everyone is going their own way. We did set it up to meet at 8am for breakfast with a couple of other families tomorrow. We have a "free day" tomorrow so that will be nice not to have to rush to one place and then the next. We hope everyone is doing well at home, we sure do miss all of you.

Love,
Mike & Billie

The Atha Family having fun at supper.

Another shot of the Atha Family.
Ashley & Mommy at dinner.

Two Beautiful young ladies !!!!!!

God is so Good, God is so Good, God is so Good, He's so Good To Me !!!!

Another Sunday in China:
We started the day in worship to God and thanksgiving for all that he has and is doing for us. The whole group got together in one of the hotel meeting rooms and we held a service. On couple sang a few songs and lead the rest of us in praise worship. Another man lead our thoughts in a sermon about the adoption process and how it is our opportunity to show others who God is and how he effects our lives. He also mentioned how that these babies would most likely never have known about God if it was not for the adoption process and us bringing them into our homes. We are very thankful to the mothers who made the choice to give birth rather than abort these precious souls.

Later in the day we went to the Zoo to see the Pandas and ended up in a mighty rain. We all were running for cover and trying to get back to the bus. One of the ladies fell and hit her head and is banged up pretty bad. We think that she will be fine, once again God had the Doctor in our group for a reason so she has been watched over by God and by a Doctor as well.

In this picture Ashley is enjoying the zoo before the rain by taking a nice long nap.

In this picture she is finally learning that Daddy can be a lot of fun and she will be joining Taylor in the "Throw me up to the sky" fun.


A kiss for the beautiful Ashley from Daddy.

Hey mommy this guy is alright after all, you weren't kidding.

Pray for the continued recovery of our lady that fell. Give thanks to God always for all that you have and all that you so often take for granted. We are blessed beyond our own understanding and we are BETTER OFF THAN WE DESERVE !!!

Love Mike & Billie

The Atha family at Lunch.
Ashley eating lunch.
The Medical Exam. Not real sure about all of these people and all of the noise in here.I am very sure I don't like these people trying to weigh me, give me back to mommy.
Back to the lunch pictures, ain't she cute !!!
Somewhat busy day again, we did have a little free time and that was nice for a change. We meet in the morning to have our own Church service and we go to the Zoo in the afternoon. We were going today but that was changed. Very tired so not going to type much tonight, maybe in the morning before Church.

Mike & Billie

Adoption Decree:
She is officially ours according to the Chinese Government.
A close up of the new addition to our family with Mommy & Daddy.
I took this one to see if you could get a look at those eye lashes, they are really long.
This one is from lunch yesterday. We ate on top of a mountain with beautiful views. The food was really good here as well. Only a couple of people are having problems with the food choices most are finding something they really like.
Here is another Monya picture for those looking for her. Her Daddy is taking her for a walk outside after lunch.Yesterday was much quieter for us than most have been. We stayed at the hotel while the others went to the orphanage their babies came from. We did not have to choice to go to ours as it is over 6 hours away on way. Since the trip was not to our orphanage and Ashley was sick we stayed here to rest. After lunch the ladies left the babies with the men and they when shopping for baby clothes at the wholesale market. We all could not bring much for the babies since we were not sure of their sizes. It turns out that Ashley is in 18 - 24 months like she should be, right now she has been wearing 18 month old clothes most of the time. Billie used a measuring tape to measure her feet and bought her the prettiest red and gold slippers, size 6. While they were shopping this Daddy & Ashley took a long walk through the neighborhood behind the hotel, it is just beautiful. Every other street light has a speaker in it playing music softly and the trees and plants a blooming and pretty. I said something when I got back about walking her maybe 3 to 5 miles today, I estimated low as I tend to exaggerate on distance. One of the other men said I was crazy I had walked her that much just up and down the hall way that day, he had been watching me. By the end of the day I could hardly stand or walk due to the hills and distance, not that I am out of shape you know. Later last night the women set up for them to go get a massage and then for the men to go after they got back. It was fun but it hurt, they were too hard on Billie and the guide even told them to be easy. It even hurt me while they were doing some of the things but it felt good later. It was a foot, lower leg, arms, back, and neck massage for 75 minutes for like $7 in U. S. Money.
Ashley slept until 5am this morning and still is not feeling well. She has a low fever and rubs her head a lot. Today we go for the health exams (of course since she is sick) but ear infections are common they say so it should not be a problem. At least 4 of our 9 babies have ear infections. After that it is lunch and then the Zoo. She said we will not have much time there but most families only want to see the Pandas anyway. So of course a couple of us asked if we could see the Dragons too... ;7)....
Got to go help with Ashley now.

Love to all of you.

Mike & Billie

The above frame capture from the video I talked about yesterday. In this clip you see Monya with the orphanage caregivers and Ashley walking into the frame. This is our first time to see Ashley in China and we caught it on video by accident.
This frame is a little bit later once I come back to the doorway knowing that it is Ashley. She is now with the Orphanage Director and she has just looked up to see what is going on in the hall. This is the first time Ashley sees her mommy and daddy.

Love to all and we hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

Mike & Billie

Happy Thanksgiving to you All !!!

I know people are not so patiently waiting for post each day but it would be impossible to explain what we go through each day here. Everything seems to be rushed. We get up early each morning and rush to eat some breakfast, then we rush to the bus to go to all of the appointments that we have to that day to take care of paperwork. We run from one building to another and wait in long traffic jams to get to the next appointment and come back exhausted and do it again the next day. I will continue to try and post once a day but even doing that keeps me up till midnight and we leave some mornings at 7:15am. We really want to brag and bore you with details and we will when we get home. Thanks for everyone caring so much about us and our babies.

GREAT NEWS:

The one family that had to take their baby to the hospital for test came back with a good report. Only had "rickets" which means she did not get enough vitamin D and sunshine. Proper care and nutrition will reverse the symptoms and she is going to be fine. PRAISE THE LORD!!!

Some Bad News:

We had a terrible night last night with Ashley as Billie was up with her until midnight and her crying all of the time. I slept a couple of hours and then took my shift with her. She finally fell asleep in my arms about 1am and it would have been funny if you could have seem me trying to get her and me into the bed. She always wakes up and cries if you change anything. If you go from standing to sitting she cries, if you go from sitting to standing she cries, if you go from standing to leaning she cries, you get the idea. I was swaying back and forth when she went to sleep so I had to keep that up as I shuffled over to the bed in the dark. Then I stood there swaying for a while till she stopped moving again. Next I slowly sit down on the bed all the while swaying back and forth. Sort of like doing deep knee bends with a 25 lb weight and swaying at the same time. Then I had to sit there swaying and then slowly lay back while swaying, ETC... Anyway she only slept for about 2 hours before she woke up hungry and we fed her and she watched Taylor's favorite movie "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", I have been telling everyone that she woke up and wanted "Dinner and a Movie". Anyway all this time we could not put our finger on what was wrong but we knew something was up. No fever no other systems, normal body functions and such but something just was not right. She would be happy and the next minute break out crying for no reason. The Lord did a great thing in putting us in a group that has a Pediatrician as one of the adoptive moms. I asked her if she would mind taking a look at Ashley just to see if there was a problem. She "made a house call" to our room and brought her medical equipment and found the problem in seconds, BOTH of her ears are infected. We started medicine right away and the transformation is amazing. Right now she is sitting in the floor playing with toys, something she has not done since we got her. If you tell me there is no God I will till you that you are crazy as He put this Doctor here among us to help diagnose a problem with no symptoms.

Back to GOOD NEWS:

Everything has been such a blur here that it was this morning before I realized something amazing that happened on "Gotya day" Tuesday. As we walked into the building and got the the 5th floor I turned on the camcorder as I walked down the hall to the room where we would meet our babies for the first time. As I went down the hall I was taking video of the pictures on the walls and we passed an open doorway. As you watch the video the first thing you see is Monya and then Ashley walks into the picture. The camera goes on to the wall and you can hear Billie and I saying "That's her, That's Ashley" and the camera comes back to the doorway and Monya and Ashley with their care givers. We had to move on so we would not get in trouble but we have on film the very second we first saw Ashley in person !!!!!!!! The music behind this part of the completed video when we get home will be the song "The first time, ever I saw your face".........

Thanksgiving:

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner here with our new family and believe me family they are, we have grown so close to these wonderful people. We do however MISS our WONDERFUL and AWESOME family back home and cannot wait to see them again. We hope that all of you have a good Thanksgiving there but try not to have too much fun without us. Allison, our guide, worked it out here so that we had a buffet dinner and they even found a turkey just for us, not something that you normally find at a Chinese dinner.

Sorry but I am going to go play with my daughter for a while and then we will be trying to call family to talk to them before we go to bed.

Love to all and Praise and Glory to GOD !!!

Mike & Billie

Monya Atha Update for those in the Atha Family:

Dale and Wesley asked me to post these pictures for their family. They also mentioned that you can follow the "adventures" of Ashley and they are doing the same things. It is really hard to find time to e-mail, call, or even do these posts will all that we have to do each day. I hope these pictures will help and we will try to post more as time permits.
Love, Mike

What a wild ride this has been. As you can see above Ashley has taken to Daddy as well now. The gotya day was crazy with all of the babies crying and when they would stop one would start again and the rest would say "oh yeah we are suppose to be crying" and they would all start again. When we left the office we got caught in a traffic jam for what seemed like hours, and the babies had no idea what to do or what was going on.

Everyone seemed to have an okay night last night. Some slept better than others and some woke up a time or two but nothing that was not normal for a baby. We were awakened twice by Ashley, once at 1am to feed and then again around 3:30am. All in all a good night.

Today we went to have a family picture taken for the files here and then to two interviews. During this process we were told that the babies were now legeally ours and the document we just signed made it official. Whoo Who !!!

We did some shopping today for items we needed for the babies and our selves and then ate McDonalds in the open area in front of the store. The more we look around the more we are thankful for all of the blessings that God gives us back home. We see people living in less than desireable conditions and today's lunch topped it all. There were a group of children staying near by and we thought it was just the normal people looking at the group of Americans, but we were wrong. These children were about 8 to 12 years old and when I took our unfinished cokes and a few fries to the trash and walked away several ran to the trash and grabbed the food to eat. So the rest of the group left the leftovers on the tables when we left so the children could have the food.

Please keep one of our families in your prayers as they are at the hospital right now having some test done on their child to make sure everything is alright. The group has gotten together a couple of times now and had a group prayer for them and their child. We place this in the Lord's hands to care for her.

So Blessed that we don't know how to handle it!!!

Mike & Billie

Well it was "Gotya" day here in China and oh what a day it was. Too long of a story for tonight but I wanted to get some pictures on the sight for all of you. Ashley and Monya are doing fine and the Parents are adjusting to them. It was a long hard day for all and I will try to write more about it tomorrow. Ashley is asleep right now and Billie and I need to finish up a few things and do the same ourselves. I must say we have an AWESOME group of families here !!! They all are looking to help each other, wait for each other, and hug and pray for each other. We have a wonderful new family here to spend Thanksgiving with this year with our new babies. We cannot wait to get home to see all of our family and share the blessed joy called Ashley.

May God bless you as He has once again blessed us.

Mike & Billie