The Phillipsons: Finalizing the Adoption (7-1-2009)

Last night was our first night with E.V., so obviously this morning was the first time for E.V. to wake up with her new family. She slept for 12 hours through and was very happy to see us in the morning. We were equally happy to see her.

First up on today's agenda was to go back to the adoption center. The first night, we were just E.V.'s guardians... In order to finalize the adoption, you go back the next day to do more paperwork and confirm that you still want to adopt the child. I guess it is like a cooling off period or lemon law. Anyway, we went back to the center to do some final paperwork.

Here are a couple of photos looking out the window. We were on the 8th floor. In case you are wondering, this was not a particularly bad area of town, many of the large office building structures are actually residential and are in pretty bad shape. Elsie told us today that there are 12 million people living in Guangzhou.

When we got to the center, we noticed a lady from E.V.'s orphanage who had stayed overnight to make sure the adoption went through. We had been told that she was just an office worker from E.V.'s orphanage, but you could just see her eyes light up with love when she saw E.V. It made Tammy and me feel good to see that E.V. had been so loved for her 1st year of life. We were able to get a translater and ask several more questions about E.V.'s medical history and such... priceless. Here is a picture of her with us.

After finishing up the adoption, we were headed home. But first, we stopped at the market. Here is E.V. shopping with Mom and what we bought... she wanted to push the cart.