Today the group threw all of the March birthday babies a birthday party! Rebecca had such a good time! She blew out the candles on the cake, had cake for the first time, and the first birthday gift she got was a bunch of baby barettes for her hair and toys! It was a blast! Below are some pictures of the happy baby on her birthday! That is the one word I could use that would describe her most accurately: HAPPY! She loves life and lives it very happily! She wakes up happy! She eats happy! She plays happy! Only two times she is fussy: when she’s hungry and when she’s tired! She also doesn’t like being away from Mama for very long! If Mama goes out of the room, she looks around, and after a certain amount of time, she sounds the alarm! 🙂 It’s getting to where she understands though that when Mama leaves, it’s not forever, and she’s not leaving for long, and not leaving her behind. She really loves Mama! When she wants her, she yells: Mama!!!!!

I do have one claim to fame though: I was the first to make her laugh! And she has started calling me by two different names: Daddy and Baba! Baba in Chinese means Daddy! I love it! Call me Daddy, sweetie pie, and you have me wrapped around your little bitty finger!

More photos below! See ya tomorrow!

“I love birthdays! Bring on the cake!”:

First Birthday Present!:

Smiling Baby! AKA “She smiled at me! I love my baby daughter!”:

More tomorrow! Check back again soon! Thanks for looking, and thanks to all for your encouraging e-mails and comments! Such a blessing to have so many caring friends!

God bless!

See ya tomorrow!

We had a fun day today visiting a park on the Yangtze River. It was beautiful! Rebecca was admired by many of the local townspeople! You can see her below interacting with a little boy there at the park. People came up to us and asked to have their picture made with her. I think she enjoyed it very much, and I know we did! Any chance we get to show her off is a good one!

Little boy and Rebecca!:

Every day we spend with our new baby girl is so full of fun and adventure! She is so full of life and curiosity about everything! I love seeing her smile, and when she laughs, it comes straight from the belly, and makes everyone around her who hears smile and laugh as well! I want to tell all of you who are following us on our journey about something funny that she does (Pardon the proud papa syndrome showing through here!). She is definitely a a leader and not a follower. How do I know? One sign is a game she invented herself. She will say something in baby talk like: “OOOOOOHHHHHWAAAA!” very happily and then wait for you to copy her. Once you say it just like her, she moves on to another cute baby phrase. When you copy her, she brightens up, giggles, and loves leading everyone who will follow in a baby talk cheer!

Anyway, just a moment of proud papa syndrome! She is so cute!

Here are some more pictures of our little princess from Hubei!:

Isn’t she sweet?:

Baby eats good!:

Stay Tuned! More soon!

I just had to be honest and tell you guys the story about what happened with us as new parents last night! We went to bed around 10 to 10:30 last night, and we were awakened after midnight by our daughter crying loudly. We thought “Oh, No problem. We’ll just comfort her like we did the other night until she drifts back off to sleep.” Finally after 5 “owwwwwwwwers”, oops I mean hours, it finally dawned on us to ask her in Chinese “Ni e ma?” which means, “Are you hungry?” She immediately stopped crying and her eyes brightened up, and she smiled really big and cooed! It was as if she was saying, “Whew! Finally somebody around here gets the picture! What took ya so long?” Well, we fed her, and she drifted off to sleep around 5AM! If only we had thought of this 5 “owwwwwers” earlier!
Needless to say, we stayed home and skipped the outing to the museum today! Mommy, Daddy, and Baby, had to rest!

We did do something different today though, we took Becca out in our rented stroller thorugh the streets of downtown Wuhan for a walk. She slept the whole time! (I wonder why?? 🙂 ) We did get one thumbs up from a grandma concerning the way she was dressed. Let me explain. It’s very common for the elderly to critique the new parents in Chinese culture on whether they have dressed their babies warm enough or not. Cultural rules dictate that no matter the weather, you must bundle that baby in about four or more layers of clothing! We did not bundle her in that many layers but we did take her coat with her and laid it over as a blanket in the stroller. This seemed to pass the test with at least the one grandma that stopped us to have a look, and make sure baby was OK. That made us feel good that she approved!

Anyway, the bellman told us that KFC was short 15 minute walk from the hotel. We know its there, but we never found it! Ended up going back to the hotel restaurant instead. The restaurant here in the White Rose Hotel is very good! Has western food as well as Chinese. The breakfast is great too! A buffet!

Anyway, I digress! Point of story: NO KFC, but the high sign from the grandma made it all worth it!

More pictures below as promised!

Enjoy!

See ya soon!

Leaving hotel for stroller ride already fast asleep:

Playing in Hotel Room in Wuhan:

Today was the day that we officially became Rebecca’s Mommy and Daddy! We began the day going back to the Hubei Intercountry Center for Adoption for our interview before the adoption was to be finalized. They asked questions like: “Do you believe this is the same baby that you received 24 hours ago?” and “After the time you have spent with her, are you still sure that you want to go through with this and be her parents?” (Of course, I’m paraphrasing.) The interview was done through an interpreter. After the questions, we signed the adoption legal contract, and they put the fingerprint from our right index finger over our signatures. They then put Rebecca’s footprint on the document’s reverse side. She got to sign off on it with her approval as well! We then took our first family photo! We will have copy of this on the web later! This photo will be on our official adoption certificate which will be given to us later on in a beautiful red folder!

Tomorrow, we head to the Notary to have another interview and hear a speech before receiving the baby’s passport and the adoption certificate in the red folder. At least I believe this is what’s going to happen. My brain has been mush since becoming a Daddy! All I think about is Becca, Becca, Becca!
Everything else has to be told to me at least three or four times before it sinks in. Must be something in the air!!! Ha! Ha! Many of the other parents have expressed experiencing these same symptoms! What a wonderful illness! I pray I never recover!

Pictures below!

Enjoy!

Photo with the Orphanage Director Li:

Smiling Baby with Happy Daddy:

Today was Gotcha Day, and wait until you see what a beautiful baby we have. We went to the Hubei Center for Intercountry Adoption Affairs at 2:30PM. After we got off the bus, everyone was escorted into the main waiting area where there were lots of couches. All of us anxious new parents armed with photo and video cameras sat down on these couches as we awaited the arrival of the moment we had all be waiting for: our gotcha moment!

As we sat down, we heard cries in the other room, and knew that on the other side of that wall was our baby! One mother got so anxious when her baby’s name was called only for the purpose of doing paperwork, that she rushed past the orphanage director and other officials, and grabbed her baby from the nannies who were in the other room keeping the babies quiet and occupied until their moment came! The anxious mama then had to hand her back to prevent possible mutiny from the rest of us, because everyone then got this “let’s go get ’em” look in their eye! 🙂 Do ya blame us!

Our name was the first called after paperwork was finished! We wasted no time, and ran excited to get our baby yelling, “That’s us!”

She is just adorable! An answer to eight years of prayer! God really knows how to knock your socks off! For those of you who awaiting DTC or I-171 or Referral or are anywhere in the process of international adoption, when you begin the journey, you think you know what Gotcha Day will be like! Multiply the feeling you imagine by millions, and you barely touch the surface of the amazing moment! It’s all worth it!

Just look below at what God has done!

She the prettiest baby in the whole group! Pardon the understandable prejudice! After all, she’s ours!

Grandmas and Grandpas we can’t to introduce her to you in person!

Sorry this post took so long to materialize, but we have been a busy Mommy and Daddy the last couple of days!

Here are the Gotcha Day Photos!

Sign we saw upon entering the Waiting Area on Gotcha Day!:

“That’s us!”

Our family photo!:

On bus after Gotcha:

Happy Mama with her sleepy baby!:

More soon! Isn’t she just beautiful!

We went to church this morning at the church designated for foreigners only called Beijing International Christian Fellowship. The service was wonderful and the worship was really refreshing. The pastor preached about “Private Sins” and his focus this week was on the two sins mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount of anger and lust. After this very compassionately delivered and hard-hitting message, we all took communion together as a congregation. They sang many vineyard style songs, and it brought tears to my eyes worshipping as I thought upon the fact that He had blessed me with a little girl that is so precious to Him, and He trusted me to parent such a wonderful gem from Him. The timing of having church the day before Gotcha Day could not have been any better planned. I could not think of any better thing to do in response to this blessing we are about to receive than to take communion and worship our baby’s Creator and her Father in heaven, Daddy God!

Here are some photos from the church service:

After church we went to lunch at a restaurant that served a traditional Chinese “family style” meal. After lunch, we went shopping at the Jade Market where they showed us how Jade was made.

Then, we went off to the Great Wall to spend the afternoon hiking this wonder of the world! Sarah and I hiked to what I believe was the second plateau! Boy, was that hard! The stairway went pretty much straight up and the stairs were built in all different sizes! It was difficult, but when we got to that second plateau, it was all worth it! Man, what a view!

Here we are at the Great Wall:

Here is a picture of the hill we climbed on the Great Wall:

On the way to the wall, Sarah opened her Bible and it opened to the verse in Psalm 18:29 that says:

“For by you I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall.”

Wow! What timing! It not only brought to my mind the fact that He gave us the strength to climb that monstrous hill at the Great Wall, but also He is faithful who called us to parent Rebecca Catherine Jiayi Battle, and He also will equip us and teach us all along the way how to effectively scale the seemingly sometimes insurmountable wall of what right now is the unknowns of our coming era of parenting her together!

God is good and always on time!

Tomorrow, we get up at 4:30AM to leave and head to breakfast by 5:40AM so that we can be on the bus by 6:20AM to go to the airport and fly to Wuhan. The babies arrive at 3! Tomorrow is Gotcha Day!
Rebecca Catherine Jiayi Battle in Hubei here we come! We love you so much already and can’t wait to hold you in our arms for the very first time, and tell you we are your Mommy and Daddy, and we will always love you!

Happy Birthday, Rebecca! Today is our baby’s first birthday! How we wish we could be there with her, and we long for March 7th like you wouldn’t believe! There are several babies from Jiayu with March birthdays, so plans are underway for a big birthday party for them after Gotcha Day!

We went to breakfast this morning to find in line many of our AWAA buddies that we have already gotten to know over the last year via the internet! It’s so nice to have the rest of the group finally here!

Part of today, we spent shopping. In our case, we bought some gifts for Rebecca, and so that they will remain surprising, we will not give them away here in detail! May the reader understand.

We also saw many sights today, and did alot of walking! We could not go to Tianamen Square because it was closed to tourists due to a huge government meeting being held nearby there.

We did see the legendary Forbidden City of the Chinese Emperors. This was a city only occupied by the emperors and their family and officials. How far any official could go into the Forbidden City and where they resided in it depended solely upon what their rank was in the empire.

Here is a picture of the front area and buildings in the front half of the Forbidden City:

Next after this we went to shop some places and to eat lunch at a simple, yet elegant, Western and Chinese Buffet. Here is a picture of this elegant place. The food was wonderful too! Fellowshipping with those from our AWAA family was awesomely refreshing!

Sherry Fan, our guide, who is only a teen herself, was so knowledgeable about all of the sights. She knows almost everything about the sights we saw today, both important facts and fun trivia! She is always so cheerful and helpful! We thank God for her!

Here is a picture of Sarah with Sherry:

After eating, we shopped some more and then went to tour the Emperor’s Summer Palace. Beautiful place! The lake on the property was iced over! We hiked for many miles around this enormous piece of choice land. Many buildings on it were ornately decorated with handpainted and carved artwork dating back thousands of years.

Here are some pictures of this enormously beautiful palace!

Us at Summer Palace by iced-over lake:

One of many art-covered gazebos in the Summer Palace! These are hand-painted! Can you imagine how long it took the artist just to paint one of the tiles in this gazebo?

After seeing the Summer Palace, we went to dinner for a beautiful traditional Chinese meal at a very ornately decorated restaurant! Everyone ate using chopsticks as we sat around a huge table with an enormous lazy susan in the middle filled with various Chinese dishes. Using our chopsticks we grabbed what we wanted to eat from the lazy susan and ate it off a very small plate. The waiters and waitresses were dressed in ancient traditional Chinese outfits.

Here are some pictures of this beautiful restaurant:

Hope you enjoyed today’s post! This was a very eventful and memorable way to spend our baby’s first birthday. If only she were here to see it all with us! Only 2 more days, Rebecca, and we gotcha forever! Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Today was a free day while we awaited the arrival of the rest of the group.
It was a fairly relaxing settling in kinda day.

For lunch today, we had Pizza Hut, and it was a full meal for two with drinks for only about 9 US dollars. What a difference in price between Pizza Hut in the states and Pizza Hut here in China! They also have KFC everywhere! We probably will give that a try sometime during the trip!

Later today, we visited Beijing’s version of Wal-Mart called “Carrefour”, less than a block from our hotel, and picked up some essentials. This place is huge! It has two stories with food and other groceries downstairs, and everything else you can imagine upstairs. One of the things we picked up was a pair of matching sock hats! It is windy and a bit cold! We thought these might come in handy, and they look pretty cool too! 🙂

Anyway, enjoy the pics from this fairly slow day! See ya tomorrow!

Lunch at Nice Pizza Hut in Beijing! This place looks a lot nicer than the one in America, and it was alot cheaper too!:

Buying essentials at Beijing’s version of Wal-Mart called “Carrefour”:

We are here! Praise the Lord! We slept well last night! Beijing is much prettier than we even expected! The hotel we are staying in is very nice! It is called the Radisson SAS (not sure what SAS stands for! 🙂 )! It is decorated in Scandinavian IKEA decor! The bed is just right and sleeps very comfortably! We have highspeed internet in the room, so updating you on our journey is very easy to do!

Before we tell you more about how things have gone so far, I just want to take a moment and thank everyone for their prayers and support!

Mom and Dad Battle and Mattson, it means so much to us to have parents who have prayed us through on this journey, and have been 100% supportive all of the way through it! We could not have made it to China without you and your prayers!

To Bethany Dena: we can’t thank you enough for the beautiful banner you made for Rebecca & for the beautiful song in Latin that you sang to us Tuesday before we left! Sarah and I are so proud of you and the stand you are taking for Jesus!

To all of our loved ones and church family: Wow! What can we say? We are so blessed to have you all in our lives! Rebecca will be surrounded by people who already love her, though they have not even seen her yet!

We will have one person who will be our guide the whole time! Her name is Sherry! She is so sweet and very knowledgeable! Ask her anything, and she can either give you the answer or find out the answer! Thank God for her! We will have a picture of her later for you!

Later on today, I will be going downstairs to make some final preps on our documentation that we will need to have in Wuhan.

Also later, we will go to Carrefour, China’s version of Wal-Mart, across the street from our hotel. It is huge! It is two stories high, and has food on one floor and everything else on the other.

Our hotel is full of European businessmen and women! At breakfast, we heard languages spoken that were from all over Europe.

Anyway, it is so nice to have a free day before the whirlwind schedule begins. Tomorrow at 8:30AM, we leave for a day of touring the sights!

Keep us in your prayers!

Enjoy the pictures!

Until tomorrow, God bless!

Love,
Brandon & Sarah

Our hotel room in Beijing:

View of Downtown Beijing from our hotel room:

More soon!

Stay tuned!

Click below to E-mail us! We check it daily! We would love to hear from you! Also feel free to leave your comments by clicking the word comments below any post.

b.battle@sbcglobal.net

We love each and everyone of you! Thank you for following along with us on our China journey to Rebecca!

More soon!

God bless!

Love,
Brandon and Sarah

Ni hao! (“Helloâ€?) As I am writing this we are 9 1/2 hours away from Tokyo. We will catch our final flight to Beijing from there. They estimate that we will arrive in Tokyo at about 3:30PM Tokyo time! We have already had an awesome time! Everyone loves to hear about our adoption when we meet them! We have shown Rebecca’s picture to everyone we meet! It’s so much fun to watch people’s faces light up when they see how sweet looking and precious she is! We forgetfully keep asking people with much anticipation and wallet in hand: “Have I shown you the picture of our new baby we are adopting from China? (Due to our convenient memory loss, we have shown her picture twice to many people! 🙂 ) Her name is Rebecca and she is the most beautiful baby in the world!â€? Maybe our forgetfulness is simply due to the fact that we have had little sleep today (Yeah right! I don’t expect anyone would believe that for a second! 🙂 ).

While waiting to get on the plane in Houston, we met a man who had a daughter who has adopted from the Ukraine, and is in the process of adopting from China! Wow! What a God-ordained moment! His eyes beamed as he showed us pictures and bragged about his adopted grandchild! 🙂

In Minneapolis, we met two pastors who were heading to Indonesia via Tokyo for a pastor’s conference! Wow! Another God-ordained divine appointment, and guess what? The Senior Pastor was also a native Houstonian! He lived there when he was a young adult about 30 years ago! We also met a serviceman who was heading to South Korea for a tour of duty there. God bless our US Servicemen!

Another neat thing happened in Minneapolis! As we were in line to have our passports checked before boarding, the ticket agent who was checking ID’s found out we were adopting (My I wonder how? 🙂 ). She then congratulated us and said she was waiting for her referral to come from China soon too! She was so happy for us and we were elated for her as well! Another God-ordained moment on our journey!

Our rowmate on the flight to Tokyo is so nice! Her name is Wei. She is from Shanghai originally and now lives in the USA. She is going to visit her father there. She also thought Rebecca was so beautiful (Doesn’t everyone?!?) She has been teaching us how to say important things in Chinese like:

1. Are you hungry? – ni e ma
2. Milk bottle (or baby bottle) – nai ping
3. Thank you – xie xie (pronounced “Shay Shay�)
4. You’re welcome. – bu yong xie
5. Little Baby – ying er
6. I love you! – Wo ai ni!

Well class, that’s our lesson for today 🙂 !

Enjoy the pictures! We may not look very presentable but keep in mind, we’ve been in a hollow silver tube going 500 miles an hour at 30000 feet! This will give you sympathetic feelings for our situation and the way we look! 🙂

See ya online tomorrow!

Gotta get some sleep!

Our rowmate on the flight to Tokyo named Wei!:

Brandon on flight to Tokyo:

Sarah in Tokyo Airport:

Just a note to ask for everyone’s prayers as we pack to leave for China on Mar. 2nd! We will be there until the 18th. The wait during this last week has been the slowest of all! Below is a basic itinerary of where we will be while in China!

March 3 – 4 Arrive in Beijing and get settled in

March 5 – Beijing tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, & Summer
Palace

March 6 – Church and Great Wall

March 7 – Fly to Wuhan for GOTCHA DAY! We get to receive Rebecca into our family once and for all forever! Babies will arrive at hotel in the afternoon.

March 8 – Spend first full day with Rebecca in Wuhan! Fill out more paperwork and see sights and shop!

March 9-12 – More paperwork and sightseeing and loving on our new family member, Rebecca Catherine Jiayi Battle!

March 12 – Fly to Guangzhou in Afternoon

March 13 – Filling out Consulate Forms

March 14 – Rebecca’s Medical Exam

March 15 – More sight-seeing

March 16 – 9:30am Consulate Appointment

March 17 – 3:00pm: Pick up Baby’s Visas

March 18 – Depart for US from Guangzhou

Please use this as a reference so that you can pray us through while we are on our journey!

Today we purchased our airline tickets! We are leaving 3/2 and returning 3/18! One step closer to our precious and beautiful Rebecca Catherine Jiayi Battle! China here we come! We are letting America World Adoption Association do our travel booking for us. They are such a blessing to have as an agency. If anyone is reading this and thinking about adopting, America World Adoption Association is the only way to fly! They are the best adoption agency for international adoption around! They arrange adoptions from Russia, Ukraine, China, and other countries as well! Check out their website at http://awaa.org

Steven Curtis Chapman has adopted through them and recommends them highly!

Until next post check out that website!

We love you Rebecca! Mommy and Daddy are coming soon to celebrate your one year birthday with you!

We got our visas at the Houston location of the Chinese Consulate today! Things went very quick at the Consulate! They are so efficient!

May God bless and keep our baby safe forever and ever before and after we get her!

We love you Rebecca!
Mommy and Daddy

Yehaaa! Our travel dates are confirmed! We will be leaving on March 2nd and returning March 18! First we will go to Beijing, then to pick up Rebecca, then to Guangzhou, and then home to Rebecca’s new home as a member of the Battle Family!

Rebecca, we are so lookin forward to meeting you! We bought you some new outfits today from JC Penney and cannot wait until we see you wear them! You are the cutest baby alive! Everybody says, “She’s so beautiful!” and OOOOHHHH and AHHHHH over your picture!

We love you so much! This month cannot go by fast enough!

Your parents,
Brandon and Sarah

Rec’d travel info today! They estimate we might be travelling on March 3rd. No date is soon enough. Though we waited for nearly 6 months between the time we mailed our paperwork to China and referral, this wait seems much harder, because we know what Rebecca looks like, and that she is over there waiting for us right now!

Lord grant us patience, but please hurry!

Please keep us in your prayers as we prepare for our soon-to-come journey!

When our travel dates are confirmed, we will let you know.

We will also send daily updates and photos from China and post them right here on Rebecca’s website.

We love all of you, and we know Rebecca will too!

Blessings,
Brandon & Sarah

After receiving our daughter’s biography translated from Chinese we’ve decided to call her Rebecca Catherine Jiayi Battle. We had originally chosen Li for a Chinese middle name. We discovered through her translated biography which we received today by e-mail that she responds to the name, “Jiayi”. “Yi” is her Chinese given name character. It means, “talented.” We thought it sounded beautiful when combined with Rebecca Catherine.

Thank you for all of your prayers during this awesome journey!

Many of the Chinese waitresses fussed over Rebecca’s picture when we showed it to them! They seemed so extremely happy that Rebecca was coming here to Houston, and they can’t wait to see her in person!

We told everyone at the church today about our referral and put Rebecca’s picture up on the screen for all to see and admire! There were many oohs, aahs, and congratulations over how beautiful she is! After 8 years of marriage, this is one more testimony to God’s goodness to us as His kids! We can’t believe she’s really gonna be ours! Rumors of a soon shower for Sarah are abuzz! Looking forward to the beautiful days ahead with our new little girl!

We received Rebecca’s Photos and Medical Record today! She is so beautiful! She takes our breath away! God is so good! Can’t wait to go get her in China! She is our precious daughter– a gift from the Lord Himself! We feel so privileged by Him to have the honor of raising such a sweet and adorable little baby!
Attached to this is another photo! More to follow! Stay Tuned!

We had so much fun tonight calling all of our immediate family and telling them about Rebecca! They all taped a short message to her on our video camera, and soon Brandon will take them and put them on a DVD for her to hear and see! It is so nice to have such a sweet family! We can’t wait to have everyone meet her!