Monday, Feb 14- Valentine's Day, the day we legally have the girls!

Today is Valentine’s Day! Today is the day that our adoption will be finalized. Today is the day they are legally ours forever! Valentines Day! YAY!!! Best gift ever! While all of you were getting chocolate and fancy dates I got Hope and Lily! Thanks Husband! : )

Our hotel is fabulous. All my friends who had previously adopted in this city had stayed at the JJ Sun hotel. After hearing dreadful stories about the hotel and asking them to please tell our agency, we were placed in the luxurious Landison Lanzhou Hotel. And it was great! Clean, fancy, pretty. I cannot say enough good things about it. The rest of Lanzhou seems smoggy, smoky, drab and cold. Our hotel was everything opposite. Thank you America World.

We have a luxurious breakfast (included with our room) of noodles!, Udon noodles and famous Lanzhou stretchy noodles! I have video of the amazing process of making these noodles! WOW. Fun fun fun! And Adri was addicted to these noodle bowls (glorified ramen noodles) made right before your eyes. We ate rice congee, fried rice, yogurt and fruit for breakfast each day this week.

After this we went to a government office to do all the official paperwork for around 3 hours. We talked with the orphanage directors.

We signed papers, etc. And Lily had to say goodbye to the people she has known as her caretakers for 9 years. I honestly think they were sadder than her.

Although she cried, she is very compassionate, and after they left, she has never showed one bit of grief. Which could be bad. But I just think she is having so much fun with us she hasn’t had time to remember the old life. The assistant director told me that they were very concerned Lily would have a hard time because when she left the orphanage (or Big O as we now all call it) her friends cried hard. But then when she got to Lanzhou and had to wait for HOURS on our bus to arrive she told the assistant director she was scared we weren’t coming!

Lily is adjusting easily. So is Hope. Everything I thought it would be it has been. There was no crying, no breakdowns, no jealousy yet. It’s all good. Lily is having a blast. Hope is getting stronger each day. She can sit up but is wobbly. She is starting to crawl. Hope is easy and easy going. The hardest part about Hope is remembering all the things she needs. Like bottles, liners, diapers, food, etc. It seems everyday I forget something and have to borrow from other families. I feel like such a irresponsible mom. Husband is great and supportive. But I feel ridiculous! One day I forget her food. One day her bottles, etc! It is very hard to get 5 kids up and dressed and remember everything. I am still learning. Ugh!

One day Johnny was taking a shower and Lily busted through the bathroom door to go potty. After she finished she undressed and jumped in the shower with Johnny! We were laughing. Johnny was a little taken back. But we said, oh well, they are siblings now! They play together wild! Johnny and Lily….we call them the TWINS! They play wild and rough and silly and they both love it!

Tuesday, Feb 15- Thursday, Feb. 17: Life in Lanzhou

TuesdayWednesdayThursday- Ok Im sorry but I am writing this days later and now all these days seem to run together so I will bunch them together and tell you what we did the rest of the week in Lanzhou.

We really didn’t have to do anything else adoption paperwork related. I think we have to stay in Lanzhou long enough to get our kids’ passports. And they are so cute. One day we went to the mountain. It was amazing. It’s a giant mountain that surrounds Lanzhou and it’s like it just goes straight up! The mountains surrounding the city hold all the air pollution trapped in the city, causing it to be one of the most polluted cities in the world. It is considered an industrial city. And it’s very drab, except for the artificial flowers planted everywhere! Which faked us out for a day or so! The mountain was enjoyable and we were just about to go to the area where the panda is when Johnny got sick. Vomiting and diarrhea and we were outta there. We had to leave the rest of the group and go straight back to the hotel. I almost lost it. All I could think about was the prescription for traveler’s diarrhea for my children that I left at the pharmacy before we left America because it was over $400! My urgent messages to America for pray paid off. I am so grateful for prayers and God. It seems like He’s all we have here but I’m thankful that’s enough.

The day before we had to go to the hospital with Hope because of a bad diaper rash that she had when she was given to us. There was one spot on her bottom that looked infected. I know that in Ameica our good doctors would put her on an antibiotic so quick. It really concerned me. I was thinking of staph infections, etc. Daniel and I left Adri with all the kids and took Hope to the hospital. It was a very dirty dark place. I thought to myself why don’t they put better lighting in the hospital, but then I realized then you would see how dirty it was. We waited for hours to see three doctors who told me it was excema! UGH! They prescribed us zinc oxide liquid which burned Hope’s bottom so bad she screamed violently. Our doctor bill was around $30.

Then on the way home from the hospital I had another important matter to take care of. I needed a blow dryer! My curling iron, blow dryer, and hot rollers will not work in China. Not even with my $30 Brookstone adapter! So I bought me a blow dryer. Needless to say, my hair has been a “frizzy red mess” since we’ve been here!!! Oh well, we are in CHINA! That’s what we say. And another think we say is WHY ASK WHY IN CHINA! Haha


Everyday we see improvements in both Lily and Hope. They are becoming more and more our family everyday. I think with Hope its her bonding with us and needing us. With Lily it is the opposite. It’s all five of us seeing Lily as one of us, not a stranger here for a time. And every day that happens more and more. It’s actually been so easy it’s kinda strange. We know that God has created our family!

Lily plays with her baby dolls. She has about 5. We laugh and say she plays “orphanage” because she lines them up and feeds them and puts them to bed. We said she only needs about 30 more babies at home to really play! She is gentle and loving. She smiles so much. And she had “a million dollar smile” as daddy says. She is so tiny. Her hair is growing in very cute. I trimmed her bangs but left the rest to grow. Her hair is prettiest away from her face so you can see her pretty face.

We often say we wish we knew what Lily is thinking. 9 years of one way of thinking and in a moment she has the world in front of her. She has adjusted nicely right now. I know there is 9 years though of institutionalization in her that will need to come out and be processed. It’s ok. We will help her. We will love her through it all. And watch her become the person God created her to be…whole. We forget her age. Lily is Lily. I would say she is about on a five year level, except she doesn’t know any English so that puts her further behind. But she is REALLY SMART! The girl has COMMON SENSE. She has life sense. She is a survivor. She is strong willed and stubborn about what she wants. Reminds me of some other Hook kids I know! A perfect fit for our family. I know just how to parent that kind!

Hope is fun and sweet. She giggles and smiles and coos and babbles. She just goes and does what we do. No trouble. We often say if we had only gotten Hope is would be TOO easy. And if we had gotten Lily it would be TOO easy. But getting them together is challenging because we have to split our time with them. Hope demands so much attention because she is a baby. Always needing to be fed or changed or held. So we go out of our way to spread our affection around. I find myself thinking, OK, who do I need to focus on today! Five kids! WOW! It’s sad but true that each child gets less time with mommy and daddy separately. I think that has made me a little sad. I miss that. But at the same time, this is the life we have chosen. To share our love with two others that had none. To spread ourselves a bit thinner for the sake of two that had no family. So it makes me want to be an even better mommy for Phoebe, Rob and Johnny. I never want them to feel jipped. Ever.

Thursday we had a traditional Chinese meal at the restaurant in our hotel. They brought us a free dessert of rice balls. It looks like white balls floating in watered down milk. Ray told us that because today was the last day of the Lantern Festival that out of the 3 million people in the city that day, 90 percent of them would eat this dessert. So almost all of us tried it. It was the consistency of eye balls. When you bit into it you tasted the jet black gooey center of sesame seeds and no telling what else. It didn’t taste bad, but the consistency was impossible to overcome. Adri cheered us on “CHEW CHEW CHEW!!!” while we ate it after she bravely went first! Ray was nice and not offended. We tried! He even bribed Phoebe with a gift to get her to eat it. She had to spit it out. Lily LOVED it of course!

Another memorable meal in Lanzhou was KFC. After Adri, husband and I all agreed we could not identify the popcorn “chicken” as chicken we ate the rolls and decided KFC in China was a no go.

Before I leave Lanzhou I must tell you the most incredible part of the city! We were in Lanzhou during the last few days of the Chinese New Year and the Lantern Festival. The decorations are impossible to describe. I can’t imagine how drab the city would look without them. All of our hotels and flights were more expensive due to coming during this time, but it was incredible. Plus Hope’s name can mean early morning festival, so we found it fitting.

The city was FULL of lanterns and lights and blow up rabbits (it’s the year of the Rabbit). It was like Rhema times a hundred! Well organized, bright, colorful, well designed displays of light! I cannot imagine ANY city in the world outdoing what we saw! We are so grateful to have seen what we did!

The last night, Thursday night, around 7:00 the fireworks started. We were in the hotel safe and sound. Ray had warned us. There were MILLIONS of people on the streets, THOUSANDS of whizzing cars, traffic jams galore and people setting off fireworks everywhere you look. We safely viewed from our hotel window. There are two scenarios I can use to try to describe the six hours that occurred this night. First, it sounded like a war zone. Second, it was like Disney fireworks times a hundred!!!! CONTINUALLY FIREWORKS FOR 6 HOURS. Not a firework here and there….continual! Glancing out our window we could count about 10 different HUGE DISNEY SIZED firework displays. Plus, they were going off downtown through the streets. Right below our window on the street HUGE fireworks were set off! They were bouncing off our hotel windows! I AM NOT EXAGGERATING!!!!! They were being launched from the middle of the street while cars whizzed around both sides of them!!!! I AM NOT EXAGGERATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, I could not exaggerate enough to create a scene more amazing that we saw this night! Awe. Craziness. CHINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, Feb. 13- The Day We Got Them in Our Arms!!!

Sunday—After another breakfast of noodles, eggs, etc. we went to church. While our guide tells that it is legal to be a Christian in China and attend church we find that hard to believe when they asked us to show our foreign passports upon entry to the church and Rosa told us she was not allowed in. Rosa (our guide) doesn’t think much about Christianity. She said she has Taoist beliefs but is not that dedicated to the religion. There are millions of people here who don’t give Jesus a second thought. It’s odd because I think they are so innocent in their beliefs. If you tell them we believe that if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you will not inherit eternal life they don’t care. Most don’t believe in eternal life so why do they care about what we say. It is heart breaking. China is a huge mission field needing many missionaries!

After lunch we went to Dr. Tea! Our guide had to get creative because it was snowing and no one wanted to spend two hours outside touring the Summer Palace in the dead of winter! Dr. Tea is a tea house/tourist trap/Chinese “starbucks” since they don’t drink coffee here. We went into a private room where two adorable petite Chinese girls gave us an educational tea tasting talk. It was fun. Just to hear them talk in their pretty dresses. I told Adri I would buy anything from them cause they were so cute and talked so proper. She agreed! We tasted jasmine tea, oolong tea, some other tea I forgot and then puer tea. Puer tea comes from tall trees and the tea ages like fine wine. It is super healthy for you and helps burn fat (like the Chinese need it!). After the talk we felt a bit compelled to not look like cheap Americans, and we also felt a bit compelled to buy the tea a watch it “change ours lives” as Adri says! So we all bought tea! So maybe I’ll invite you all over for a tea party in my spare time!

Then we went to the Beijing Museum. Something most adoptive families don’t see because they are at more fun places in better weather. The kids were pretty bored. We made the most of it. There was one little exhibit where they had dressed up locust shells like little people that interested the kids. Kinda neat, kinda gross. But interesting.

Then off to the airport! We are now just HOURS away from getting our kids!!! We meet up with another couple from another ameriican adoption agency in the airport. They are adopting a boy from the same orphange as well! They are thankful to see us. We flly about 2 hours and land in Lanzhou at night time. We are picked up from the airport by Ray, a nice Chinese guy. He startes talking about “getting your babies” and such. He says it so normal! Like we do this every day. All I can think is IM GETTING MY BABIES!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not really nervous, but I’m getting emotional at this point. The other couple has butterflys too.

Ray explains to us that usually parents get their babies early in the day and have 24 hours to decide by the next day if they want the baby. He tells us that since it is late, we will only have 10 hours to decide! He says please take care of baby and no accidents! LOL! I cannot believe all the things I’m hearing. THIS IS REAL. Daniel looks at me and says no turning back now! We laugh. We wouldn’t ever.

We arrive at the hotel. I am trying to wake up Johnny who seems to have settled into a long winter’s nap and is UNWAKEABLE! My moment of the whole family walking in holding hands in slow motion with sparkles around us as we greet our babies is smashed to smithereens when Phoebe yells, “I SEE LILY!!!!!!” My emotions unleash when I see Daniel has lost it and begins to cry. I start bawling and run off the bus, hoping Adri or the nice Chinese man I met an hour before will help get my sleeping child off the bus! I head straight through the doors and fall to my knees to embrace little Lily who is remarkably smaller than I remember and had planned on! She is tiny. About the size of Madison Prewitt I think. She looks confused and emotionless and probably confused why I am crying. I try to hug the director and assistant director of the orphanage and quickly before I turn to my little fat hawk Hope and scoop her out of their arms! She too is smaller than I thought. She looks so foreign yet so familiar. She looks emotionless at all of us. After a few minutes I wonder if Johnny made it off the bus and then I see himcurled up next to our unaccompanied backpack full of all our important documents while a crowd of Chinese men as gathered around him smiling and pointing.

They are finally in our arms. And while I cannot gather all my thoughts, I know it is right. The journey has begun! We spend about 30 minutes there and then go up to our hotel rooms where Daniel has massive amounts of money spread out all over the bed while I am cuddling our kids! We had to bring $15,000.00 cash for the girls combined. The night is unforgettable yet completely unable to recall because of the surrealness of it all! It was February 13, 2001!

The girls easily go to bed in their new cute pajamas, and the day ends. 10 hours to decide…..WE”LL TAKE EM NOW!

GOTCHA DAY!- February 13, 2011!

Today we get our two Chinese daughters!
Today they will be given to us and tomorrow they will be legally ours! Today is One of the greatest days of my life and the greatest day of the Hook family of five! No one can sleep. I guess it is jet lag but mixed in is the excitement of this day! Phoebe just came to me and said she is so excited she can't sleep and that she wonders if Lily will run to her and hug her or be shy. I just thought of the day we told Phoebe we were adopting. She was seven years old. Robert was three and not old enough to know or care. Johnny was about to be 2. So we told Phoebe by herself in her room one night before bed. We prefaced it by telling her about orphans not having parents and a family. We told her there are millions of children like this all over the world and even in America. As her little tiny expressive face began to understand the horror of an orphan's reality, especially in relation to her own, we proudly told her that we were going to go to China and get one and make them part of our family forever. In a split second response, her precious face squinched up in confusion and she spoke two words I will never forget, "Just one?" Daniel and I laughed and both realized the purity of a child's heart and the simple response that comes from love. Love doesn't reason. Love doesn't weigh pros and cons. Love doesn't consider cost an issue. Love responds. Love moves. Love (if I say is a verb will I make this moment any less sincere! Lol!) Yes, love is a verb! Love has been cheapened to something that doesn't resemble our Father's love. But by looking into the eyes of a child we can still find it in it's purest form. And today, at 11, my little Phoebe still has that pure heart. And we aren't getting "just one!" We are getting two! Two lives forever changed! By LOVE! Adoption amazes me. It's the heart of God! I'm so grateful to be a part of God's plan for Ning Li and Xiao Dan's lives! I 'm honored to be their mamma!

So today at 5:11 am in Beijing as I write this I'm also thankful for my incredible husband that said YES to TWO as well! Who has worked 18 hours a day for months preparing for this trip! And also for carrying whimpering AND crying Johnny thru the entire 2 and a half hour frigid tour of Tienanmen Square today! : ) And Rob in his many words of wisdom just two days back home, woke up early and went to Husband and explained to him, that the reason our adoption took so long was so that we would get Lily! And he's right because if the backlog hadn't occurred we never would've considered special needs first and then we would've not met Lily and gotten to adopt TWO! What a great big little brother he will be for Lily! (He also turned to Husband before take off from Seattle and said, "Dad, I got a good feelin this is gonna be a great 12 hour flight!") And Johnny in his own way is so excited about being here to get Hope and Lily. It's all he's ever known. That one day we'd go get his Chinese sister from China! And his heart is so sweet! Just the other day we were
watching Animal Hoarders (hey, we were snowed in for two weeks!) and when Johnny watched a sweet old man's story who had 60 chickens in his house Johnny asked, "Mom, is this in real life?" I said yes. He said, "We need to help that man." I know that's a funny story to tell but Johnny was serious and sad for the man and he felt compassion for him. And you know what? Orphans are in real life. They aren't just a religious TV show on we change the channel on. There are millions of Hopes and Lilys! And compassion moves us to act just like the compassion Jesus had on the crowds of people who followed him. And now we have that living inside of us as believers! And that's how the world sees Jesus! Through us! Christianity just isn't a world religion. Christianity is a verb. Christianity responds! It MOVES! I cannot say it enough. We are so grateful to everyone who loves and supported and gave to us to get us to this day!!!! We could not have done it without you. The cost reached over $55,000 with my trip Last summer included and the high cost to get our whole family here in the middle of Chinese New Year (the most expensive time to travel here!) I do not feel like this is the Hook family adoption. It's OUR adoption! To everyone reading this! You have moved out of compassion to change these girls' lives! And it's about to happen! Can u believe it? Yay!!!! I'm not scared or nervous! I am just READY!!!!! I've dreamed of "Gotcha Day" for years. I've watched perfectly edited YouTube videos of glorious moments when the child was given to the adoptive parents with a tear jerking Steven Curtis Chapman song playing in the background. I've waited so long for OUR moment! But right here right now I couldn't care less about that! Just give them to me!!!! Lol!!!!! I don't care if they scream and cry or run and hide! I am ready to be their mamma! (Of course, adri will be capturing the moment on her iPhone so don't get worried!!! We will take whatever moment we get and share it with y'all!!!)

To be continued.... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, Feb 12- GREAT WALL

Saturday- First whole day in China! Breakfast at the hotel. Adri asks us what will happen to her if she eats so many noodles?! We are all gonna find out! We eat them by the plateful. Noodles for breakfast, noodles for lunch, noodles for dinner! The breakfast at the Beijing hotel is nice and tasty. We eat normal looking stuff, along with steamed buns (little white steamed rolls), fried noodles, lemon cake (Johnny’s favorite) and rice congee (like cream of rice). Fun!

Off we went to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City! The first few steps off the bus Johnny starts crying. He begs to go back to the hotel although the bus has dropped us off for 2 hours! So for the next two hours Husband has to carry Johnny around. The Forbidden City “started to all look alike” as Rob said. Everywhere we looked the same. Now in perfect weather conditions I would’ve actually listened to the nice guide (Rosa) explaining how wondrous everything is, but in FREEZING weather (we estimate it was 20 degrees but we all agreed China 20 degrees is colder than Tulsa 20 degrees) the only thing we wanted was to be indoors. It was so cold that I found myself wanting to buy a cup of hot tea from a stranger that had just whipped out there thermos from home! And we even had on our long johns, our ski jackets donated by friends, and our expensive hats and gloves bought just for this day so that we could ENJOY it. But the cold was bitter! And to top it all off, we realize Rob had FORGOT to put his long johns on under his cheap $7 slicky athletic pants from Target! Ridiculous. This is only the FIRST of many things mommy will forget on this trip. Just keep reading.

Onto lunch at a government certified jade factory we had a tour. They showed us how jade is found in the mountains of China and how it is carved into relics in the showroom. It was amazing. The boys even were impressed and all three kids picked out a jade souvenir (which as I am writing this several days later I can say that Johnny has already broke his). The jade is pretty and it is very Chinesey so we bought some. It is a tradition to buy a jade bracelet to wear and then hand down to your daughter when she is older. Daniel asked me if I wanted to do that. I said I would rather save the money for diapers! The bracelets were around $100-$300 each. Maybe our tradition can be a The Vintage Pearl necklace! : )

Onto the GREAT WALL! At this point, I was fearful of frost bite so I said my plan was to step onto the wall, take a photo, and then retreat to the small snack shop with whoever wanted to go. So after paying no telling what, I did just that. Now I am sure others reading this will think that is pretty sissy of me, however, I cannot explain to you how cold it was that day. At one point one of the kids complained of numb fingers (even they had had their gloves on the whole time) so I was fearful of frostbite. We had our neck turtles on pulled up to our eyeballs. STILL COLD! But we endured to take some great forever cherished photos. Adri, Husband and Rob (with his Chinese underpants on now bought by our driver while we were at the Forbidden City) were brave and stayed on the wall for about 30 more minutes. Meanwhile, me, Rosa, PG, and Johnny were enjoying Chinese hot chocolate at the Great Wall snack shop, located just steps away from the wall. Just as memorable! And we met some nice Italians in there!

Let me take this time to mention the nice family that is traveling with us on our whole trip. The Bensons. They came with their 12 year old son and are adopting a little boy from the same orphanage as Hope and Lily. He has a bilateral cleft palate. That means instead of one separation of the mouth, there is two. He is about 2 and a half years old. They are athletic and do not have small kids in tow. They ventured far on the wall and chose the “hard” side. We will be with them in each city.

After the wall we went for supper and then back to the hotel. The supper was a smorgasbord of strange looking Chinese food. Our kids were so tired Nathan Benson (their 12 year old son) gave Phoebe oreos and she fell asleep at the table uninterested. They are experiencing jet lag a bit more than me, Adri and husband.

Friday, Feb 11- The day we never saw

This day we skipped due to the time change. We got to China at 6 am on Friday morning by American time, but it was already 9:00 pm at night Friday evening on China time.

Thursday Feb 10, LEAVING FOR CHINA

Travel Day! We are so thankful to Paul Meuniot, Russell Prewitt, and James Roberts for getting us to the airport in all the snow! What a day to leave for China after Tulsa has received record snowfall in the past week! Praise God we never missed a connection, We scarfed down burgers in Seattle as our plane was boarding knowing it would be our last American meal for a while!

The flight to China was good. Husband did great. Adri did great. Rob turned to husband before the plane took off and said, “Daddy, I gotta feeling this is gonna be a great 12 hour flight” in his classic optimist attitude, and he was right. He did great. Rob barely slept the whole time. Johnny and Phoebe both had near breakdowns because they were so tired and needed to stretch out so I put Phoebe on the floor under mine and Johnny’s seats and I gave my seat up for Johnny to stretch out. I spent hours walking around the plane and praying for my feet! They puffed up like I was pregnant! It scared me so bad. I felt trapped. I started thinking how we are so far away from any place to land, what if my feet bust (I’m sure I was delirous) or what if Phoebe cant breathe! Adri assured me it was just due to flying but I don’t remember my feet doing that last summer. I drank tons of water but then I thought maybe I should drink coke to act as a diuretic. So then I started drinking coke. Needless to say I didn’t sleep a wink and was so thankful to finally get off the plane.

The Beijing airport is fun. We couldn’t believe we were really in China! The kids were great the whole trip! We got to our hotel room and were thankful for beds to sleep on…even if they were hard as a rock. And I mean that literally. It’s like a dining room table with a comforter on top. The Chinese say it promotes health. While I am sure that is true, to Americans used to their termperpedic mattress, the Chinese beds promote sleepless nights!