Today is a big day.  I will attempt to walk back into the US Consulate without be whisked off to an undisclosed location in the bowels of the basement.  But in the meantime, Patrick Hao was up at 12:45 A.M. and then went back to sleep.  He finally woke up at 5:00 A.M.  Mary dealt with Patrick while Lucas Ming and I slept.  Well, one of us slept, the other prayed that Mary would take care of the early riser.  This was wishful thinking because at 6:30 A.M. Mary put Patrick back in his crib.  This was a shrewd calculated move on Mary’s part.  Step one: I ignore the crying and whining and pretend to be asleep.  Step two: Patrick screams and cries so loud that he wakes up Lucas.  Step three: Lucas joins Patrick in screaming because he doesn’t want his brother to feel left out.  Step four: I get out of bed at 6:45 A.M. because we only have four pillows and I can hear the screaming through all four.  Step five:  I bring the boys out to the sitting room and they stop screaming  Step six: The bedroom is vacated, Mary runs in and dives under the covers for a nap…mommy is very sneaky, boys…

Mary only sleeps for a half hour (HA!!!).  We start getting ready for the day and we get downstairs to breakfast at 9:00 A.M.  This is the latest that we have eaten during the whole trip.  It doesn’t feel half bad.  After breakfast we went for a walkabout around the hotel.  We stopped at the indoor waterfalls and Koi pond.  The boys loved the pond and the big fish that were easy to work into a frenzy.  Patrick Hao was so interested he almost fell in.

We met Jason at 11:00 A.M. for our Consulate appointment.  At this appointment we are to swear that all of the information we have put down on all of our paperwork is true.  Mary has made me promise that I will swear TO this, not AT the Consulate officer…This is the last step of the process.  So, they herd about 40 couples into this room.  There are screaming children everywhere.  And out comes the consulate officer and he has a great big smile on his face.  This must be because his kids are no longer infants or toddlers.  He then asks if we solemnly swear that all of the information we provided is true.   All of us said “Yes”.  This part of the process is very anticlimactic.  Although at this point I was thinking; “Can we make it out of the country without the boys knowing”?  Then the officer told us that it was official, we could leave China with our little bundles of joy.  And he could go back to his office where there were no screaming children.

This official process cut into the boys nap time which is not a good thing.  We got the boys back to the hotel and put them down for a nap.  After the boys fell asleep Cindy, Mary and I took naps.  All of the early mornings are getting to us.  We are very glad that we are going home tomorrow but are not looking forward to the 24 hours of travel to get there. 

After the nap we hung out in the room.  We were under strict orders to stay in our rooms until the boys passports were returned with the US entry visas.  Jason was supposed to deliver them to our room at 3:00 P.M..  Jason called us and told us that he had Lucas Ming’s but the machine that prints the visas broke when it was time for Patrick’s.  We are leaving tomorrow with/without the visa.  We can put both boys in the slings on my front and back.  Then I can keep turning around, after all they look alike to everyone else.

Since we are leaving tomorrow for the US of A, we celebrated with a dinner of Pizza, Mac and Cheese, and Wonton Soup from Danny’s Pizza. The boys ate the Mac and Cheese and all the Wontons in the soup. The rest of us had the pizza (Okay – the boys had some pizza too).