Civil Affairs Office, Show Hope, and Passport Office

Once again we started off the day with breakfast. The boys did okay. Much better than I had anticipated. For that I am thankful.

Jacob is kind of out of it today. Yesterday definitely took a toll on him. Caleb is a little tired but not like Jacob.

Surprisingly they did not cry when we got in the van. They are doing so much better

Once meeting our guide we went to the Civil Affairs Office. More paperwork and an official ceremony. The boys are officially Braxtons.

We are now driving to Jiaozuo. We are going to the passport office and we hope the orphanage. Our guides' English is so poor we really don't know. The other day I told her we needed to go to the store for the boys for food and she said "snakes?" Then she started talking about baby cakes. She eventually got it but not without some work.

It is 3:30 and we are on our way back from Jiaozuo. Now I am just mad. Mad at our agency, mad at the travel service and facilitators we have to use in China, mad at our facilitator, and mad at the lady in the purple sweater from the orphanage.
Just keeping it real. There is no reason it should be like this. It is stressful enough as it is. This is our 3rd adoption from China we know how it should be.

Now that I got that out of my system on to our day. When we arrived in Jiaozuo we went to the notary. Spent a long time there. Lady in the purple sweater from orphanage was there. Boys were fine until she started talking to them. Zachary and I had to pace with them and it was hot!

Finally left there. We were asked if we wanted lunch. We said yes and then lady in purple sweater gets in the car with us. This isn't helping the boys at all. So we change our mind and say no lunch. We know the boys will scream the whole time with lady in the purple sweater there.

Go on to orphanage to New Hope/Show Hope floor. Thank goodness there is a girl from the Phillipines that speaks English. She answers some questions for us.

We are then taken to a room to rest for an 1 1/2 hrs. We don't want to rest. I think the lady in the purple sweater didn't want us there. We let the boys play with their friends and nannies.

We requested to see Donna at Eagles Wings but was told she wasn't there.

Finally time to leave. Very emotional as you can imagine. To make matters worse the lady in the purple sweater gets in the van with us.

Next stop passport office. Boys have calmed down now and everything goes smoothly. We drop the lady in the purple sweater off at bus station, boys cry a few minutes and fall asleep.

The boys did much better tonight. We got back to the room at 5:00pm or so. We had a makeshift dinner. We played and they went to sleep peacefully. Still sleeping on the floor but no issues going to sleep.