Happy Adoption Day AnnaLi!!!!

Today has been an extremely busy day. After getting MaiLin off to school and then taking AnnaLi to school, Chris and I left to travel to our nearest immigration office to get fingerprinted by the immigration (USCIS) office. Now you must remember that FBI denied Chris' fingerprints earlier in the year. It took us 5 MONTHS and an act of Congress (literally because we had to get our representative involved) to get them cleared. Fast forward to today--the guy at the immigration office makes a comment that Chris has terrible prints and FBI probably won't pass them. Chris explained the earlier fiasco with prints. The guy said, "Oh, FBI actually reads these prints too." NOW THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE!!!! So, we call our representative again to see if they can beat them to the punch. Maybe, their Washington liason can call FBI and say "CLEAR THESE PRINTS". We are hoping . We are also praying that God would go before us and clear them without delay. He is much bigger than the FBI. So, if all goes well, we should have our immigration approval (well the first step in approval) in a couple of weeks. This is the only piece of paper that we need in order to send our dossier to China. So, we are praying that the "golden ticket" to China arrives soon.

After a very quick trip to out of town to be fingerprinted we came home and picked up the girls from the neighbors house and headed to the mall to celebrate another one of the most exciting days of our lives--AnnaLi's happy adoption day. Three years ago today in Wuhan China, AnnaLi was handed (well plopped actually ) to Chris first. I was a little jealous. OK alot jealous :). She has grown and changed so much over these last 3 years. She has been a happy baby and brought much joy to our family from day 1. Her name means "happy and beautiful" and that is indeed what she is. We love you baby girl!!!

We celebrated by going to Build-a-Bear and then to eat in the luxurious food court so that AnnaLi could have Chick-fil-a. The rest of us ate Chinese but our good ole American girl had to have her chicken nuggets and french fries.

Here are a few pics from that special day in China 3 years ago:

When we arrived at the Civil Affairs Building on the morning of Sept 4, 2006, the babies were already there. We quickly found our precious girl. We had to wait until they did the "official" presentation of her to us before we could hold her. So we had to look at that sweet face across the room for what seemed like eternity. (see top pic)

This is the scene right before AnnaLi was literally just plopped in Chris' lap because he was the closest one to the man holding LiLi.

Big sister gets to hold AnnaLi for the first time. Notice there is no pic of me by myself with AnnaLi. I had to fight for my turn but today she is definitely a momma's girl.
Daddy gets his turn to be first with AnnaLi.
Finally a family of four.
At the hotel we got our first smile. This is that sweet smile that we have come to know and love.
And this face too is one we see often at our house.
Two sisters---finally.