handsful

I got this picture from a family who adopted their daughter from the Bengbu orphanage, and they made a trip back to the orphanage last June. She shared this picture with me. This was taken in the old orphanage, a new one was built in August 2007. We have no idea if Lainey is one of these babies, but I can at least see what her sleeping situation might have been. She would have been just shy of one year old at the time this pic was taken.

See the nice Fed Ex man, posing for a picture while holding our daughter’s paperwork?? This may seem weird (yep, you’re probably thinking we’ve lost it by now), but this is a pretty common thing in the adoption community! When your referral information, the precious paperwork about your new little one, is delivered to your home you MUST snap a picture of the man responsible for delivering said information!

We almost missed the picture (gasp). The boys had a baseball game yesterday around 1pm, so we had to leave the house before the Fed Ex truck showed. As we rounded the corner, THERE HE WAS! Driving right toward our house! “Randy, turn around!!!” So, he did and we got back to the house just as he was walking up our driveway. I grabbed the camera (we had it for the game), jumped out of the truck, and walked up to the unsuspecting man. I had to wait for him to get off his cell phone and then quickly asked if I could take his picture, and explained that he was holding the information for our new adopted daughter. He looked at me as if I’d spoken Mandarin (which, I only know a couple words of that so far…). I actually had to explain this twice, before he “got it” and stood there for the picture.

So, there you have it. One China adoption rite-of-passage checked off the to-do list.