Many Thanks

We appreciate everyone's support so much and we would like to thank each and everyone of you! Your love and friendship has kept us going throughout this most precious moment in our lives. We have been so blessed with wonderful friends and family and you may never know how deeply we have been touched by your love and support. Your messages have been uplifting, encouraging, sympathetic and humorous at times. This journey will undoubtedly be a very special time in our lives and we appreciate your taking the time to make it a special part of your life as well. We do have a few people that we would like to say a huge thank you to, for without their cooperation this journey of the heart would not be possible!
Thank you to:
GOD! For placing this answer in our hearts and giving us the means to make it all possible. Also for keeping Myah safe while we wait. This list could go on and on.........
Kelly, Linda, Jordan, Austin and Whitney Voigt: For showing us the way to our daughter. For all of the prayers, dinners, friendship and love and above all your support and encouragement and undying optimism that this day would finally come and be so worth it!
Mom Schultz: For saying absolutely! For your unending support and love! For getting all of those nasty shots so you can travel along side us! For buying a pink coat and matching gloves and then having to buy a pink sweatsuit and then having to buy pink shorts to wear in China! Thanks for being flexible!
Mom and Dad Friend: For the love and support and encouragement. For the laptop that will be our lifeline while we are away!
Our Siblings: Thank you for your love and laughs, you have kept us sane throughout this long process. The phone bills always say Midland and Battle Creek the most!!!
Our Friends at Shalom: Thank you for the prayers, love, friendship and hugs. We have a beautiful church family and we love all of you! Thank you for keeping us going and reminding us that in God's timing all will work out!
Our wonderful neighbors: We love our neighbors and are so grateful to be sharing our lives with you! Thank you for always caring and looking out for us!
Ken and Pam Ritola: Thank you so much for watching the house while we are gone!
To Sherry and Jeff Smith, Mike and Cheri Steckel, Tom and Heather Archer, Randy and Kym Sieler, and Les Sharon: Thank you so much for the beautiful letters for our home study, they brought tears to our eyes! We love you all very much and hold you all very dear to our hearts!
Karen Jackson and the staff at Adoption Associates: Thank you so much for making our dreams a reality. Thank you for being able to answer every question Mark had for you ( I know he can ask alot, it is the police officer in him!). Your promptness and ability to make miracles happen is a gift! We will never forget your part in all of this!
Canton Police Dept: Thank you for being so flexible at a time when we know it isn't easy to be! Your support has meant so much to our family! In addition to the adoption we had another major event to deal with and it wasn't easy but you helped us more than you will ever know!
Mrs. Calderwood and Mrs. Pelto's 5th grade class: Thank you for a wonderful year and for letting us take Dayton out 2 weeks early. He enjoyed this year so much and I know he was a little bummed about missing the last few weeks of fun! Thank you for understanding the importance of having Dayton join us on this journey.
Pinckney Pirates U10 team: Sorry we will miss the tournaments, thank you for letting us take Dayton and Coach Schultz away for a few weeks! Hit some homers!
Ashley and Jason: for the ride to the airport!!!! What would we do without you!
My adoption buddies: Thank you for being you and for opening your families to mine and for all of the tears, heartache, emails, Applebees dates, laughter and for the great time I know that we are going to have together in China and beyond!

Our Travel Itinerary

June 3rd: Leave Detroit Metro Airport at 3:35 pm
June 4th: Arrive in Tokyo, Japan at 6:25 pm, fly to Beijing China arriving at 9:15 pm, go to hotel and sleep!
June 5th: Sightseeing in Beijing, Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Shopping
June 6th :Leave Beijing and fly to Wuhan, Hubei. Go to hotel and maybe get Myah that evening.
June 7-12th : In Wuhan, Hubei. June 7th is probably going to be "Gotcha Day". Spend our days getting to know Myah, filling out adoption documents and sightseeing.
June 13th: Fly from Wuhan to Guangzhou and stay at the beautiful White Swan hotel.
June 14th: Paperwork turned into U.S. Embassy, shopping!
June 15th: Our U.S. Emabassy appointment, get Myah's Visa to travel to the USA.
June 16th: Fly from Guangzhou at 8:20 am to Tokyo, Japan. Leave Tokyo at 3:55 pm. Arrive in Metro Detroit at 2:40 pm (Detroit time). China time is 12 hours ahead of us!
Please pray for our safe travels and for us to stay healthy while we are in China. These are very long flights up to 13 hours on a plane at a time.

Tickets Are Bought!

We learned that we are leaving on June 3rd and getting home on June 16th. We have had a very busy week to say the least. I have crammed into one week things that would normally take me 3 weeks to do. We had Dr. appointments, made our travel arrangements,met with our agency, received our visas (not credit cards!) and installed baby gates. Things are moving at a very fast pace now, it seems so funny that for months we waited for this and now it will all be over in a matter of days! I can hardly wait to get her in my arms and claim her as ours. I am not expecting her to love us right away but I want her to feel loved right away. I think having Dayton along will help her warm up to us. I am so excited about getting her, in the adoption world that day is called "gotcha day". I am hoping to have our itinerary today and we will officially know when our "gotcha day" will be. Her first birthday is on June 1st so we will just miss it. But we will celebrate it over there and will probably have some sort of a party when we get back to celebrate. We have spent alot of time researching and learning about her needs. We have learned to keep her in a baby carrier while we are in China. This encourages bonding with us and face to face contact, she can learn to trust us. We also have learned that we are to be her primary care givers, ( like we wouldn't be) and she needs to learn that we are her parents, permanantly. She has been in foster care so we know that she has been well cared for but we also know that she could be grieving for them once we get her. We have to be careful not to overstimulate her, which knowing us could be a problem! Ha! We are going to try our hardest to keep life simple for her. Luckily when we get home Dayton will not have school and we can be home together getting to know each other. I am sure that she will fit in just fine! We are looking forward to the trip, we are expecting very hot weather and very high humidity. I am already preparing for my hair to be a curly mess! We sure appreciate everyone's prayers and well wishes. We know that Myah is coming home to a community of love like she has never known. I am so ready to get her home and start living our life as a family of 4! Finally!!!! Please keep us in your prayers as we prepare this week, we aren't world travelers by any means so this is all new and overwhelming to us but we know that our faith guides us and we believe that everything will all work out in the end. We look forward to experiencing the Chinese culture and hope to gain knowledge about her heritage so that we can share it with her. But as excited as we are about China, we are even more excited about gaining a daughter and sharing our life and culture with her. China here we come!!!!!!

Travel Notice

We talked to Karen today and she said that we will probably leave on June 3rd as opposed to this Friday! Whew, I am so glad, I have been running around like a mad woman trying to get everything ready. I could use an extra week that is for sure! We actually got to put our plane tickets on hold today until we have a written confirmation that it is the 3rd, as soon as we know we can call the agency up and say go ahead! Yeah! We are excited! I also talked to my cousin Trudi today and both of our girls are in Hubei! I can't believe it. We didn't even know that each other were adopting and then we learned that we had the same log in date and now we will be going to the same place and could be there at the same time! How incredible!

We Are Going To China!

This morning we learned that our travel acceptance letters from China came in! I wasn't expecting it for a few more weeks so this took us by total surprise! We have been so crazy getting ready for Mark's interview for the Lieutenant position and after 2 days of agonizing waiting we found out yesterday around 4:00 that he made the promotion list and will be promoted in Oct/Nov. We were celebrating and finally starting to relax after weeks of stressing/studying/preparing, when this other exciting call came today. We learned that we could be traveling as soon as Friday or Saturday. We should know by Monday for sure. So now we are frantic! I am somewhat ready but by no means ready for travling to China by next Friday. I guess I will have to be!!! We are so thankful for all of these wonderful blessings that have been coming our way. We are excited about the possibility of having Myah for her first birthday on June 1st. That would be wonderful, especially because Mark's is the day before! Look out China, here we come!!!!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day has become a special day for me for some years now and today was no different. I was actually due on May 14th, which happened to be Mother's Day in 1995 with Dayton. I remember wondering if I would be a mommy or not on Mother's Day. Dayton was born 2 weeks early on May 1st so yes, I was an official mommy 11 years ago. This year I also had wondered if I would be Myah's mommy on Mother's Day. Unlike her brother, she didn' t come early! Nonetheless, I feel like I am her mother. I might not have woke up this morning to my son and daughter showering me with hugs and kisses, but I still felt a connection to her. Mark bought me a beautiful necklace that I have been eyeing for quite a few months from Red Envelope. It has a pearl and silver pendant. The pearl piece is on top and has the symbols for mother and daughter in Chinese and the underlayer is silver and it says mother and daughter in English. We are getting closer and closer to meeting Myah and I feel like there is less distance between us every day. She is in my heart, sometimes my heart actually pounds harder when I am thinking about her. I know that God has placed us together and I know that somewhere she is feeling my love for her in her heart also. So much has happened over the past two weeks since we received her referral. We had more paperwork to send in to make this official. It seemed very real when we signed her name officially. We had always said that we were going to add part of her Chinese name to the American name that we have given her. We want her to always have a connection to her country so we kept her first name Wen and her last name Li as a middle name. I like that her initial is W because that is Mark and Dayton's middle initial too. I also went and met with my adoption buddies for dinner, it was just wonderful sitting down and gabbing about our little girls finally! We were smiling and laughing and it felt so good to finally celebrate together after all of these months of speculation, heartache and uncertainty. It has been so wonderful sharing the news with everyone, we can't wait to bring Myah home to all of our friends and family. We have been busy shopping for items to take to China. We are using this time to prepare the house for a baby. I am anticipating her walking if not when we get her but soon thereafter so I am clearing the house of anything that might hurt her. We have been polling our friends with young children for the must haves and wouldn't live withouts. This time is flying as I figured it would with Dayton's school and baseball schedules. We will be in China before we know it. We have to apply for our visa's this week, one step closer to getting our little girl. Next year on Mother's Day I will have my two kids with me. Dayton and I went into Canton to meet Mark for lunch while he was working. We laugh that our life is never normal and today proved to be another example of that. When we got into Applebees Mark was already sitting waiting for us. We hadn't been there longer than 10 minutes and Dayton spilled his drink all over the table. We were cleaning it up and the waitress was telling Dayton not to feel bad, and that she spills things all of the time, just as she was saying that an elderly lady walking behind her fell to the ground in front of us, Mark rushed to her and helped her up, she seemed to be ok but I am sure she was shook up. Not 5 minutes later I felt something hit my head and this guy sitting behind me stood up and apologized over and over for hitting my head with something, (I still don't know what it was, a spitball, a fork ,food who knows! ) So needless to say dinner was definately memorable! Everybody always stares at us anyhow when Mark is in his uniform and we try to act normal, kind of hard today!!!!!! Canton's finest and his family!!!!!! Always an adventure with the Schultz's!! Happy Mother's Day!!