Some photos so far......the view from our hotel room, a Chinese temple, a building down the street and little miss smiley face. We are getting ready for breakfast, there is a marching band outside our window, they started at 530 am.

We leave for the Mekong Delta at 8:00. we'll post later.
Jen

Friday

Sorry we haven't posted in a while, we've been busy. Yesterday we went to Jill's doctors appointment and then we went to and interesting dinner by the water somewhere......You'll have to wait for us to get home to tell you about that.

The video is of Jill playing before bedtime. She was cracking herself up, and we discovered her "monkey face" I'm telling you...this girl is a ham. What a crack up.

We thought she was coming down with something, but she seems fine now. She was probably just worn out.

Today we went sightseeing with Thuy, to a local food market which was cool, a jewelry store, and to the War Remnants Museum. The museum was a little bit of a downer, but they had lots of army tanks and planes that I'm sure Henry and Charlie would have liked a lot. Tonight we went to Texas Barbecue.......yes really, the Vietnamese woman said Howdy Y'all when we walked in. Thuy thought we could use some familiar food by now. It was pretty nice to have.
Oh, and Daniel also got measured for a suit. Big day.

Tomorrow we go on a Mekong River Delta tour. That is about all day, so we may not post pics for a while. I'm sure we will be worn out after a whole day in the heat.

Sunday we are free, and Monday we go to the beach! Yay!

Hope everything at home is going well. We can't wait to see everyone. Henry and Charlie, your mommy misses you soooo much. hope to hear from you soon.
Jen, Jill, Daniel and Tracy

long day

We had today on our own. Jilly is a little fussy, I think she has a little bug. She is showing us that she knows how to cry. No pictures today, not much smiling. Tomorrow we are supposed to meet Thuy and the other families that went to Ken Giang. Hue was supposed to call us today and let us know, we haven't heard anything. We feel a little out of the loop. We did some shopping today, and watched Vietnam Idol.
Hopefully we'll have more to update tomorrow.

Finally got video to post!!

She is a little ham. Once we got her "home" she started smiling and playing and really came out of her shell. She has a lot of teeth and likes to use them! she grins and shows them off.

We are doing much better today too. Tracy is not showing up in the pictures because she is taking them all. She makes really funny faces when we show her the shrimp jello stuff at breakfast. Priceless.

Jilly is a giggle bug. We gave her a bath, she is so happy in this video. she laughs and shows her teeth. she has 8 of them as far as we know. She likes to use them too. She bites and grinds at the spoon when you feed her. It's pretty funny.

We went for her G&R yesterday, then Daniel got to ride on a scooter to apply for her passport. We also had her picture taken for her visa. Things are moving along. CHI staff is awesome, we have been working with Hue so far, she is really sweet.

I have lots of pictures and video of TB1 kids. I'll work on posting those too.

We miss everyone and cant wait to bring home Jilly so she can ham it up for all of you.
Jen, Daniel, Jilly and Tracy.

Here she is! She is so serious, and a little shy for the camera. I think it was a bit overwhelming for Miss Jill today. We will pick her up tomorrow morning at 8:00. Boy was it hard to leave her there. We are all about to go to sleep now. We are so tired that we are getting slap happy. What a sensory overload Vietnam is. We can't wait to share video, but we are going to pass out now. See you all soon.
Jen, Dan and Tracy

last minute stuff

Okay....we're ready to go. Good thing because it is almost 2:30 on Saturday. I'm going to pack up the computer so I wanted to post really quick.
Thanks to everyone who helped us get ourselves together, and keep it together for this trip. Thank you to Bobbe, Bev and Becca for all of the goodies for Jill, and Sue for her books and my chocolate. We've got it all packed!
Most of all...thanks to everyone who had to put up with our roller coaster. Here we go on another one.

This one should be a little funnier to watch though.....the three of us whiteys in Vietnam...dorks are us!

Yay! We got our travel date! We are leaving on Saturday the 25th. Our G&R date is Wednesday the 29th. I've got to figure out how to get video on the blog....I've had a lot of requests from other families to get pictures of their little ones. I am going to try really hard to do that, and if I can I will post pics and video. I may have to do YouTube or something. If anyone has suggestions, or if you have a child at Tam Binh 1, feel free to post in the comments.

Jilly Bean

This is Jill Kim Oanh Calvert. She was born on August 4, 2006 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She was 2 months premature (2 lbs 12 oz) and had to stay in the hospital for a couple of months. This is the first picture we got of her with our referral, on February 14, 2007.















As you can see she is very healthy and doing fine in Tam Binh 1 orphanage in HCMC.

We don't have our travel date yet, but it should be around the 23rd or 24th of August. Right now we are getting her room ready for her, and trying to get ourselves ready for the trip.


We wanted to start this blog so we could keep in touch with everyone at home while we are in Vietnam. My sister is travelling with us to Vietnam. That means that her husband Denny will be home with the boys for two weeks. Denny is going to add to this blog as well to keep us up to date on what is happening in St. Louis with our family while we are gone. I'm sure it will be interesting.