Quincy has made the next step in swimming: She is doing it without her floaty! She is not the most graceful person in the pool yet---she looks sort of like an amoeba in a Petri dish. However, I have great confidence in her abilities...she is like a fish! There is a great swim team (Dynamo)that feeds our area of the city and I am pretty sure she can become a part of it when she turns four (which is in another year and a half).
Ellie has come a loonnngggg way with the pool since we've been home. She is now fully comfortable swimming along by herself all over the pool (as long as her floaty is on!). Three days ago she took an even bigger step for her: She is now jumping in the pool! This is a HUGE deal for Ellie since four days ago she was adamantly opposed to having any pool water on her face! 
Quincy has always been "One with the Water". 
I love seeing moments like these: Ellie bending down to help Quincy out of the pool.
We went blueberry picking. The girls picked 4 quarts of blueberries and we only paid $2.50 for then all!
Above is our Domestication of the Adoption appointment with the Honorable Henry Newkirk. This is the last step in the crazy journey of adoption---this is where we obtained the order to gain a U.S. Birth Certificate of Foreign Birth for Ellie. Ellie now has a birth certificate on file with the Office of Vital Statistics; this certificate officially lists Tim and me as her birth parents. Yay!
On any typical day, nap-time and bed-time is an experience....too much laughing and not enough sleeping. Perfect, huh? We couldn't have asked for anything more....
Immediately after the visa appointment the majority of our group left the country to travel back home. We didn't, however, as our travel plans had us staying in-country for another day. Since we had no one to hang out with, we went to the local street vendor and purchased a copy of Valkerie (the movie with Tom Cruise) to watch after the kids went to bed. It was a mellow ending to a crazy China excursion.
Here is Ellie as we were waiting to board the boat.
....and then she had her first slice of PIZZA! Yes, we had ordered Papa John's Pizza to eat for dinner on the boat. It was delicious and tasted exactly like Papa John's back home. Yummm....
The cruise turned out to be wonderful. The weather was perfect and the girls behaved beautifully....just like sisters who are friends with each other, too.
Quincy and Ellie pre- group photo.....
The group photo...looks fun, huh?
Above are all the families in our Guangzhou Adoptive Family group.
Midway through our stay in China, Quincy began to do the opposite of anything we asked. For example, if we needed to go somewhere, she would instead plop herself on the floor and then refuse to get up. While this would be very annoying here in the states, it was especially bad in China as she would do it in the middle of the hotel lobby in front of all the native Chinese. I can only imagine what was going through their minds at the kind of parents they thought we were. Just embarrassing.
The playground on Shamian Island (the Island our hotel was located on in Guangzhou) represents China in everyway: Crowded.
The picture above pretty much sets the tone for the day. Quincy was her typical spastic self---just not a good spastic but a bad spastic. Ellie just seemed annoyed with her a lot of the time. 
Ellie's first time in the pool. It went pretty well.
After the swim we just lounged poolside. Quincy was still spastic; Ellie was still annoyed.
But....by the end of pool-time, Ellie was showing signs of happiness at last.
