Fun In Shanghai!

I wasn't sure how today was going to go since I had only slept from 8:30 til 12:30am the night before, and then Annie woke up at 4:30 ready to play! It ended up being a super fun day, though, and she did great! After breakfast we headed over to the aquarium, which was really amazing! They had lots of moving walkways through tunnels of sharks and other kinds of exotic fish.

Next we got onto a double decker bus, which drove us through the streets of Shanghai, where we saw so many amazing buildings. Stephen was in architectural heaven! Then we got onto a ferry and went across the water to The Bund which is Shanghai's boardwalk that looks over to the beautiful buildings we had just seen.

After walking the boardwalk we headed back to the hotel to drop off Annie's treasures from the aquarium gift shop, and to get the stroller. She wasn't sure about the stroller at first, but after cruising around in it a bit she loved it! We took another cab back to the aquarium area because we had passed by Yang's famous panfried dumplings, and wanted to have lunch there. They were delicious, but it was crazy crowded, and didn't work to well with the stroller. Next we went over to a humongous shopping mall. I really wasn't planning on popping into any children's clothing stores (really!), but when we were passing by one store I saw that there was a 50 percent off rack (so you can't blame me!) with girl's tutus attached to leggings. I wasn't sure that Annie would like tutus, but boy did she!!! She pointed at the color she wanted and put them on in the changing area, and then wanted the tag off so she could wear them right then!

Next we headed across the street to a huge Disney store that had a big castle displayed in it. Annie had just pointed out a poster we had seen of a Disney castle, so I think she was pretty excited to see it. She has really enjoyed the Disney princess stickers I brought along, and so she was really excited when we saw all of the Disney princess dresses and shoes at the store! I love that she is a girly girl! We are going to have some fun!!!

We decided to do some more walking along the waterfront, where the views are spectacular with all of the amazing buildings in the background, and the boats going by on the river in front of them.

We headed back to the hotel for some downtime, and to give Annie (and Stephen!) a chance to play with her new toys from the aquarium.

It was such a wonderful day. Later at dinner Stephen expressed something that I had just been thinking. What if anything were to ever happen to this little girl! She is so precious, and already we can't imagine life with out her. He also wanted reassurance that there was nothing that could change her from being ours anymore. I told him that once we signed those papers yesterday, she was as ours as if she had been born biologically to us!

We are just gaga over Annie. I held her like a baby once while she was drinking out of her sippy cup, and she just ate that up. She has asked me several times to do that again. I just hope that she will be willing to share some of this attention with her new little brother next week. I want to be able to make him feel as loved and special to us as we have Annie these last few days.

Friday is our orphanage visit! Please pray for Annie as we go back and say goodbye to her nannies and friends there. I have been concerned about how going back will affect her, but our director assured me that it is really good for closure for her to see that her nannies are happy that she is with her new family. I will also ask our guide to give her a pep talk ahead of time about how we are just visiting to say goodbye, and that then she will be going home with us. This will be our last full day in Shanghai, and then on Saturday we take the high speed train to Nanjing to get Wyatt!