Adoption Video

A fellow adoptive mom leaves for China TOMORROW and still found the time to put the finishing touches on the video she made of our journey to Kiera and Matteo.  I'm thrilled to be able to share our story in pictures since I was unable to post pictures of our trip to my blog while in China.  The video is super long - 37 minutes - but when I took 1,400 pictures in China alone, it was difficult to whittle down the photos of the kids' early lives, our trip and then their first five months home. 

Our Journey to Kiera and Matteo

The video starts with the first pictures we ever saw or Kiera and Matteo, their "referral" pictures, and then shows pictures from earlier in their life.  We actually got very few updates prior to meeting Kiera and Matteo, and most of the pictures we received after they returned home.

We left for China on January 21, 2015.  The beginning of our trip included a couple of sightseeing days in Beijing and a chance to explore our children's birth country.  Even if you haven't been to Beijing, you might recognize the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and of course the Great Wall. 

From Beijing we flew south to Hefei the capital of Anhui province.  We met Matteo on Monday, January 26, 2015 and finalized his adoption the following morning.  We stayed the week in Hefei and had the opportunity to visit his foster family in Fuyang and the Anhui Healing Home, where Matteo stayed before and after his cleft lip surgery.  The home is operated by the organization Love Without Boundaries. 

At the end of the week we flew with Matteo to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, Kiera's birth province.  Just like with Matteo, Kiera was driven in from her birth city and we met her in a civil affairs office on Monday, February 2, 2015 and finalized her adoption the following day.  We spent a week and a half in Guangzhou, where we attended to official adoption business and did some sightseeing.  We also traveled twice to Shenzhen to visit Kiera's foster family, orphanage and the hospital where she was born.

All adoptions are finalized by the American government in Guangzhou, so we were able to stay put for the final steps of the adoption process.  This included our appointment at the U.S. consulate.  Two days after our appointment, we flew out of Hong Kong back to the United States.  Kiera and Matteo became U.S. citizens when we landed in Seattle and forever part of our family when we landed in Minnesota on February 12, 2015.  

Adoption stories never end at the airport and so final pictures show their first five months home.