Happy New Year!

Cannot believe that we are ringing in the new year in China! What's harder to believe is the exhaustion that we are experiencing as well-we went to bed at 8pm! We woke up and forgot that it was new years! So we celebrated it over SKYPE with the family. Faith did wake up screaming today and she is grieving terribly for her caregivers. We visited the orphanage yesterday in LuoHe, and that was a treat but faith was confused about it. She was happy to see her nannies, but at the same time she did not want us to put her down with her friends. We were happy to see her own and meet some of the other children who do not have families yet, but we got to play and ptay with them-and it touched our children very much. Thank you Beka for all of your advice and all of your help-God bless you. Faith has also rejected Freddy. Which has made things even more difficult for us. I cannot put her down or leave the room-she cries and sleeps often...and I am concerned for her. I knew there would be challeneges with an older child but I just hate to see her suffer, and I feel like I cannot even console her at times or I worry it just makes things more confusing, for her:( On another note: we keep bumping into 'John & Amy'! They speak mandarin and so its been such a blessing to be with them as they have been helping us order food. And we have been comparing notes and our babies' experiences and they are already talking about adopting again asap! What a blessing! Something that has me bothered is the pollution here is awful I feel terrible for our kids and I feel terrible for the people in China! We take so much for granted in the U.S.A. So I have to admitt I have been so lousy at blogging this time around, and I apologize for that. I praise God for this new year and I thank God of all of you and your support and prayers. Even our picture taking has been ughhhh....I will have to do a lot of revision when we return or maybe when Faith gets more comfortable. A funny thing to note; is the dirty looks she gives Freddy when we are eating...everytime he looks away, she looks at him and when he looks back at her she closes her eyes or looks away. I feel so bad for Freddy...its a good thing men don't take these things to heart...I know she will love him like Hope adores him. Hope is adjusting great as well. She is thrilled to take on the role of big sister and she adores Faith. I have to also recommend the Holiday Inn Express here in Zhenghou again-they have been so fabulous and their morning buffet is AMAZING! YUM! Faith is not eating much though, we are trying to give her familiar foods such as congee and noodles and hot milk/formula.

Things that we have done here in Zhengzhou: We take almost daily walks to Walmart-the kids love looking into the aquariums and every so often a fish or frog hops out. We walk to parks, went rollerskating and we visited the ZOO! Or we took our Zoo to the Zoo as Freddy likes to say. The Zoo is worth seeing! Very exotic animals-we got to see a Panda!!! Its very stinky but we rode in cable cars over the lions and tigars! The kids are having a blast and we will miss Henan terribly-we're already feeling it especially with Rita. We love her and will never forget her-she works very hard.