Ella's first hurricane.

We are all sitting here waiting the arrival of hurricane Isaac. I am so glad that I am not in China right now. That would have been a mess. G cannot leave town nor can he stay home. My poor friend would have been stuck with the boys for the duration (thanks Tricia :-) ) Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We have several pine trees on our lot and hope none fall on the house. They have all survived katrina, so hopefully they are good.
 Ella is doing good. She has been with me since July 23. I am starting to notice more and more behaviors common to institutionalized children. Nothing serious or alarming, just things that I did not really pick up on in China. maybe because we were so busy and tired. Thinking I might talk to our social worker to see which of any of these thing I should try to stop. For some it is clearly not appropriate, but others are not harmful to her, but just not really normal. Hope that makes sense.
 Anyway, on to watch the weather and I will post when the storm has passed. Take care everyone!!

We are home!!

We finally made it home late Thursday night. The flight was very turbulent but Ella did a great job. She did not whine or complain a bit. She sat just fine or slept. She would wake up just a little and whine, but I think it was because she was sleeping in an uncomfortable position. When we finally made it home, G and the boys were at the airport waiting, of course. What a beautiful sight to see. I missed them sooooo much.
 Ella is doing better at home than I thought she would. She seems to do the right thing more often than not. We still have a lot of sass and attitude to deal with, but she will learn. Fast. I'll see to it :-) She might have been the big cheese where she came from, but not here. It seems like she was probably one of the more dominant kids in her orphanage.  All of the kids will be treated the same. Again, she will learn. Once she gets some English, I suspect things will get better much faster. Here are a few pics from the airport.

Hmmm, I don't know why Jordan isn't in any of these pictures. He was there, I promise.
 Haha, btw, can you tell Evan's daddy dresssed him??? Look at those shoes with shorts!!!

We are still here. Leaving to head home tomorrow. We have had a nice time in Guangzhou. Soooo much better than being in province. The hotel is great. Anyone trying to decide between the few hotels we can choose from here, you will not be disappointed if you chose the Garden. Lots of good places to eat and it is safe to get out and walk around. If I were here again, this is where I would stay. No doubt about it. We had our CA yesterday. We were there for a while, but once they got started the process went pretty fast and smooth. After that we took a quick trip to the island, It is really nice and beautiful. Picked up a few things but wish I would have spent more time there. Oh well. Ella is doing good. She has had a couple of really sad moments. She cries and says the same thing over and over. I don't know what it is but I am sure it is something like she wants to go home. Not our home. It's sad to see but it's good for her to get it out. I would be more concerned if she didn't do this. This little girl is a handful. She has a lot of behaviors that really threw me at first but the more I think about the things that I read it starts to make sense. She is really big about trying to turn on the smiles and charm when she is around other people. More specific, Chinese women. While it drives me crazy because it is sooo fake and rehearsed, I understand that this is how she probably coped in the orphanage. I really can't wait to get home and start getting into a routine. I will post more about some of these behaviors if anyone is interested later, after we get home. It is exhausting to think about. I will post some pics of the past several days, They are probably at the top, I don;t understand why, Sorry.