introducing....

Hey…this is Kirk. The girls are asleep so I decided to catch up the blog. As you well know I have not written on the blog before now, so here I go!

Well…we have a new daughter…the adoption is complete. On August 20th, 2007, at 1:30 p.m. Nguyen Thi Tuong Vy became Lucy Vy Woodliff. Yes you read that correctly….Her name is Lucy and as for her middle name it is Vy, however we have decided to keep the Vietnamese pronunciation therefore Vy is pronounced Ve.

Lucy is a dainty little gal with big, BIG beautiful brown eyes. Due to the heat and high humidity levels here in her home country she seems to have perpetually bad hair days……poofy…really poofy. Being her father and all, I think it is rather cute, as does her mother. She, Lucy, has been a little sick, but is now being treated for a fever and her smokers cough. Okay, she does not really have smokers cough, though a cough none the less. Oh….did I mention that her big, BIG brown eyes sparkle and the she has a great smile.

Now that the baby announcement has been made, let me back track a bit. We left Ho Chi Minh City Sunday morning around 7:30 on a 20 passenger bus along with two other sets of now proud new parents. We stopped for lunch about half way through….we had rice with a side of rice and for dessert we had some rice. The only thing that would have been icing on the cake was if we could have had some rice milk with our meal. Okay we really did have more than just rice, but I don’t know what it was, so for now I’m sticking with rice.

During our travels, we got to see some amazing country side including about 8 different soil changes, some awesome rock formations, mountains and the South China Sea…..who would have thought that we would have experienced just as many terrain changes as we have back in Oklahoma (just not the same changes).

We arrived in the Ninh Thuan Province around 3:00 and took a 20 minute potty and stretch break at the hotel before heading over to the orphanage/center. The center was very nice, the staff were very friendly and the children were under great care. All the children no matter the age loved the raisins we brought with us to pass out to them. One of the neatest things we witnessed was the creativity and down home ingenuity of the elementary aged kids. We had brought with us a toddler toy……plastic multi-colored snap together chain like toy. You know the ones I’m talking about…they have been around since the invention of plastic. The older kids turned them into spinning tops, by winding them with string and whipping them out on the sidewalk like throwing a Frisbee or starting a pull mower. My explanation can’t do it justice…it was pretty nifty.

After a couple of hours we left the babies and went back to the hotel for dinner and bed. On Monday we awoke and went to the center again to spend a little time with the babies, as well as with the director of the center. (a little interview of sorts) We then left the center, came back to the hotel and decided to skip lunch in lue of swimming in the South China Sea. Yes…I really skipped lunch. We decided we could eat lunch any day, but if we were going to swim in the South China Sea it had to be now or never!

We made a good choice. After an hour of swimming and a quick shower, we headed back to the center to pick up the babies. We traveled with the babies and their primary care givers to the government building where we became new parents during the GNR (giving and receiving) ceremony; aka, gotcha day!)

After that we returned to the hotel for a couple of hours of alone time before having an interesting dinner with the director and staff from the center, as well as with some of the government officials who were present at the GNR ceremony.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Ho Chi Minh City at 8:00. We’ll catch up some more from there……Peace, Kirk