Cotter’s Corner

I'm glad you asked! Here is where we are staying in China!

First up is Beijing, where we will be staying at the SuperHouse Beijing International.

Next we will be heading to Hangzhou. Our hotel there will be the Lake View Hotel. 

And for some reason, we're being forced to go to the actual city where she was. So, we'll be staying at yet another hotel (as yet to be determined).

Then we're off to Guangzhou (which has been in the news a lot lately due to the weather). While there we are staying at the Victory Hotel. 

Wow, this roller coaster ride jut won't stop. Seems that we were good to go until we learned that the Chinese Consulate wouldn't make an appointment for us. We were initially told that shouldn't be a big deal, until we learned that they were not taking appointments on the day we thought (they stopped taking them the day prior) and were already completely booked and wouldn't take one more. So, we go from running around here packing and busting our asses to waiting for another whole MONTH. The earliest we can do it now is February 21. So, talk about your big let downs. I just found out, and when Robyn wakes up in the morning she isn't going to be a happy camper. She was giddy with the prospects of us getting our little girl earlier than we had imagined. I too was pretty happy because the short notice would have not allowed me to OCD and obsesses about the travel arrangements and plans and whatnot.

Damnit. 

This is not a drill!

This is not a drill! 

We learned not 5 hours ago that we will be leaving to go to China on Friday. That's right people, in 4 days we will all be on a plane heading to China. OMG! Hang on to your hats people, it's going to be interesting! More info when I have time to type it.

Our adoption agency has managed to secure some new pictures of our little girl for us! They are posted just to the right of this message, or for those who hate that, I will inline them here for your viewing pleasure.

Looks like we are going to be traveling Jan21(ish). We think. Maybe.

Which is about how this whole process has been, nothing definite, everything kind of fast-and-loose, which goes against my over analyzing tendencies. But, I'm going to continue to STFU since I just want to get there, get her and get home. In that order.

I'll post more when we find out more, but for now it's more hurry up and wait.

Oh yeah, and the pics!

She is ALMOST smiling in that last pic. Also, her face has some red candy stuff all over it that they gave her, but, doesn't matter. She's SO beautiful, we cannot wait to get her home.

No, it's not an exaggeration either. We were notified Monday that our agency had a girl for us to consider. Robyn and I saw her picture and fell in love. She's beautiful. And perfect. Here is what we know about her: She is 17 months of age (right now). She was abandoned in the city gardens by her mother (who left a note) and discovered by a policeman. She is albino and (from what we can tell from the pictures we have) has violet eyes (not completely red, so there is some pigment there – which is good news if it's not just a bad picture or trick of the light). She's healthy and happy and needs a family. We were allowed to choose her, and choose her we did. She's simply beautiful and if you look at Robyn and my pasty white skin, you'll see that she's going to fit right in.

I've shown her picture around here at work and it always make me laugh when people go: "…wait… She's Chinese right? Why is she blonde?"

From the indications that we have now (which may be completely wrong, btw) it appears that we will be traveling in early January. We're taking the whole family with us, I know, it's an EXPENSIVE proposition, we're really going to have to work on our financials to get this done, but none of that matters. I just want to hold my baby girl. 

Yeah, I ripped off the idea, but I'm sitting here with a laptop and I thought it'd be pretty awesome to live blog the game. Futile attempt at relevance or just a bored dude with a laptop? YOU DECIDE!

Go here to share in the fun. 

So, I was reading some comment on eJaqui's blog today and I noticed the badge for a place called Yelp in her sidebar. So, I started checking it out and it's pretty darned cool. It's a social-networking/reviews site. It's more reviews than the social networking, so… I signed up. And yeah, the uber-trendy eJ signed up for it like a YEAR ago, but I'm a little slow to the game. So, I reviewed a couple of places here locally (and the OMG awesome Doc Chey's in Asheville). I'm going to keep adding some places over time but I have a few reviews in at this point and I'm going to be adding more. If you wanna check out my reviews head here. For right now, it's mostly a bunch of restaurant reviews, but I'll add more later. I really like the idea!

So the family and I went to Asheville this year on vacation. It was kind of "last minute" because we still haven't heard anything from China and we were pretty sure we'd hear something this month. Alas, we did not and it appears it may take a little longer, so… we wait. And instead of waiting and missing all the kids "off of school" time, we decided to head over there to Asheville instead. We stayed at a pretty reasonable cabin in the hills and we were ten minutes away from Biltmore. Which everyone enjoyed touring. No, not cheap – but nice. The behind the scenes tour was awesome as well. Now we're back and ready for China to tell us to come over there and pick up our little girl!

Just for the record, I did see one foot doc (podiatrist), but I was less than impressed with things overall. I think he made the right diagnosis, I just don't feel like he was up on the new treatments for my stupid, stupid, stupid foot problem. I must have done something to it while running on it Monday because since then it's like I've bruised it. It's just insanely painful walking around on it. And if my gait is just a TINY bit off I have lightning bolts of pain in my foot. So, I can go back to the guy in my town and get him to give me yet another cortisone injection, or perhaps he will recommend surgery (which I won't do). Or maybe he'll make me some custom orthotics. I just need to see someone else about it. Because it's really getting to be a pain in the foot (lol!). Ugh.

I should just do it next week and get a little good news for a change. That'd be nice.