Hello from China!

We managed to fit all this and MUCH MUCH more in our 2 suitcases and 2 carry ons - quite impressive!

 
 Of course we found Coke in China

 Umm this was my large coffee?  I am going to have to find bigger cups for sure!!

                                Beijing Airport.. we spent about 11 hours hanging out in here!

                             Not hard to spot my hubby the only Pittsburgh fan around!

             Also isnt hard to spot me, just find the only tall blond in Jinan today ahahh

            Just moments before we took off for Jinan to land in our sons hometown!

We are here in China, it was surely quite a travel experiance and I am not sure I know what the word SLEEP means, but we are here safe and sound. Our flights were all great and smooth no problems at all. We were met in the Jinan airport by our guide Missy and she is adorable and sweeetttt!  She got us checked into our hotel.. (after a scary as heck car ride.. I might have to apologize to my hubby for picking on his driving as WOW, there is some scary driving going on here and it isnt exactly safe being a pedestrian either! ) we are checked into our hotel, ate some authentic Chinese lunch.  Our guide took us out to lunch and it was one of those places where if  you didnt live here, you would never find it. There were all kinds of neat food to see and some that didnt smell to pretty, but our lunch was great! We hit Walmart (whew it is croweded here, not used to seas of people) and got a few snacks for our room. We are going to chill for the rest of the day as it is almost 4pm here and we havent slept in days. We meet Luke tomorrow at 9:30am. We are so excited we dont know what to do with ourselves! We promise to update you when we  can! Pray for us and our son tomorrow!

At JFK leaving in a few hours for Chicago and then to Beijing!!!

Hi all!




We are safely in JFK airport and are now waiting for our flight to Chicago. My father-in –law took us to a hotel last night in Newark and we had a great night sleep and then woke this morning, showered, ate and made our way to JFK. Smooth sailing!! My mother in law has the kids, they did pretty good saying good-bye to us. Tommy gave me a little bit of heart ache when saying good-bye but he made me proud and it is good to feel his strong hug when I was leaving. I know he sad we are leaving but he is so excited to soon meet his new brother. Paige did pretty good, she just expects us back tomorrow as she is too young to understand the time concept. I cant believe our journey is underway and we are actually on our way to China in just a few short hours!

Tonight we head out!!! China here we come!

Today we are in New Jersey.. Tonight we drive to New York to get a hotel and tomorrow we will fly out of JFK to head to Chicago and then we fly out of Chicago to Beijing and hit Beijing at 11:30pm Saturday China time. We get a hotel and then wake up the next morning to fly to Jinan to get to our sons Province!


So we will soon be found here:

I cant believe we are going to be in China and on Monday we will get our son! It seems so surreal right now! We are all packed (that took quite awhile but we had some expert help! :)    We are doing last minute things today and left a million notes, called all the schools, doctors etc... I believe we are prepared (as prepared as we can be!)... Our kids are beyond excited! We are beyond excited!!!! Thank you Lord for paving the way. We KNOW many of you have been praying for us for this journey and we truly want to let you know we FEEL the prayer and we are truly blessed! Please pray for my children here (all 3 of them) and for my in-laws who will be taking care of Tommy and Paige for the next 17 days! We are grateful for all of the love and support we have received and we promise to try and blog, add pictures as often as we can. I believe I should be able to blog from China with the software I loaded!  We send love to all of you and ask for continued prayers please! OK... HERE WE GOOOOO!!!!!   China here we come! LUKE .. WE ARE SO CLOSE WE CANT WAIT TO SHOW YOU OUR LOVE!! PRAY FOR PEACE FOR OUR SON AS HE HAS A LOT TO DEAL WITH AND A LOT OF ADJUSTMENT AND CHANGES!!!!!

CHIIINNNNNNAAAAAA!!!!!!!

our plan while we are there!

Following is the schedule for Family:

Jan.16: Arrive in Jinan on flight___ guide will meet you at the airport and transfer to Crown Plaza Hotel Jinan.

Jan.17: Go to the orphanage to meet the child and sign the adoption agreement. (LUKE is officially our son on this day!)

Jan.18: Go to the Civil Affairs for adoption registration, notarization and child’s

       passport.

Jan.19: Guide will go with the family to the local department store to buy some daily necessities for the child.

Jan.20: Visit Baotu Spouting Spring.

Jan.21: Pick up passport. Jinan to Guangzhou on Flight____, transfer to Victory Hotel.

Jan.22: Take visa photo for the child first, then do medical and TB test for the child.

Jan.23: Visit the Safari park.

Jan.24: Pick up TB test result.

Jan.25: Visit the Six Banyan Temple.

Jan.26: 09:30am visa appointment at the Consulate, Oath-taking ceremony.

Jan.27: Rest on this day.

Jan.28: Pick up the visa in the afternoon.

 Jan.29: Leave Guangzhou for Beijing on flight __, transfer to airport. Family will stay overnight in Beijing,

Jan.30: Family leave Beijing for home(When we land in Chicago Luke is Officially an American Citizen!!!

This is the last few days he will have to hold a picture of his mommy and daddy, from now on he can HOLD his mommy and daddy!!!!!! 

Update on how we are doing... T minus 2 and counting!

Things are starting to line up for us! Praise the Lord! My in-laws are here!!!!!! They got out a day earlier so they could be sure to get here! Amazing!    I have a laptop for the journey thanks to Will! We set it up with everything needed so I can keep in touch during the journey!   We have our flights all fixed, hotels set up in Beijing for each time we hit there for our very long lay overs there (hmm great opportunity for me to stretch my 5'10" frame is a good thing I am thinking! )  My work just called and I have a snow day tomorrow so tomorrow is officially now going to be called " PACKING DAY!!!"  We have things all laid out but need to physically get it all in suitcases and then get them weighing less then 44lbs. NO easy feat considering it is VERY cold in Luke's province!  But it shall be done!!!  I am officially done work now until March 7th so that feels good to know that I am going to be able to take this journey and then have the time I need to be at home with my kids where I cant wait to be!   I think we have just about everything we need, we are getting there.  I got contacted today for another grant but I dont think it will happen as this organization will not give you a grant if you have already traveled and travel is in 2 days.....


I want to leave you with a note I posted on my adoption yahoo group as it is how I am feeling for sure!

The time is almost here and our sweet son is just about ready to meet his mommy and daddy! We first saw Luke (called Boyd when we first saw him)10 months,3 weeks and 3 days ago.. Not that this momma was counting or anything!! We are getting ready to fly out to Jinan and go get our son! We cant believe the time has finally come. It was starting to seem like it never would. We were told we would travel in October and the months just kept clicking by. I am glad I did not have to pack a shaving kit for Luke. I do love when we tell people that we are adopting for the first time, the first question is always "How old is the baby?" and I love the eye popping response when I say. "10 years old!" He is still my baby and always will be in my heart. No, I never had the chance to rock him to sleep as a baby, comfort him when he was crying for his momma as an infant or toddler. Change his diapers, read him bedtime stories, watch him walk for the first time, run for the first time or any of those other precious moments we cherish.. all the firsts of a child's life have been missed, BUT you can rest assured that there are going to be a MILLION firsts in our sons life from now on and they are all mine and his and our families to cherish and hold onto!!! I will be the first momma to tell him I love you and I will ALWAYS be here for you and truly mean it! For that I am so grateful! The Lord our God has blessed me immensely! I am in awe of how this handsome young man in just a few days is actually going to be my precious son and I am ready for whenever he is ready for me to lavish him with a million hugs, kisses, raspberries, laughs, tears of joy, sadness and laughter to share with him! He may be 10 and not be a baby, but he will always be MY BABY!!!!

I will get to hold you for the first time ever on Monday January 17th, 2011... Pretty good day and already a special day in my family as it is my sister, Heathers, Birthday!  So Heath I hope you dont mind but your Birthday is officially Luke's Gotcha day too!!!!!  

Our preliminary itinerary

Jan.16: Arrive in Jinan on flight   , guide will meet you at the airport and transfer to Hotel.

Jan.17: Go to the orphanage to meet the child and sign the adoption agreement.

Jan.18: Go to the Civil Affairs for adoption registration, notarization and child’s

       passport.

Jan.19: Guide will go with the family to the local department store to buy some daily necessities for the child.

Jan.20: Visit Baotu Spouting Spring.

Jan.21: Pick up passport. Jinan to Guangzhou on Flight_ transfer to  Hotel.

Jan.22: Take visa photo for the child first, then do medical and TB test for the child.

Jan.23: Visit the Safari park.

Jan.24: Pick up TB test result.

Jan.25: Visit the Six Banyan Temple.

Jan.26: 09:30am visa appointment at the Consulate, Oath-taking ceremony.

Jan.27: Rest on this day.

Jan.28: Pick up the visa in the afternoon.

 Jan.29: Leave Guangzhou for home on flight   , transfer to airport.

Getting oh so excited and trying to keep a few brain cells intact but it is not really happening!!!! Hang on Luke baby we are coming!!!

We leave in 6 days!

Well the last 36 hours have been intense to say the least!  We had a crazy crazy time booking our airline tickets. The ones we had on hold we lost and all of the prices went through the roof.  It is now going to be 2 days of traveling on each end to even get us a halfway decent ticket, but it is what it is and I am trying not to dwell on it. Apparently you need to be a brain surgeon to book tickets to China... Whoa!   That said our plans are still not done as there is an error in one of the tickets that I found as we were having the travel agent book them at lightening speed as the tickets prices kept skyrocketing every time she would try to get one for us, flights are full and the Chinese new Year is soon and it is only a week till we fly = huge headache.  I wont know until Monday if the tickets are fixed but they must get fixed as Luke cant fly alone from Chicago the JFK.....

That said we had an unexpected snow storm this morning and my son had a wrestling tournament so it was a nice side track from the Chaos of yesterday!  It is still snowing lightly and it looks beautiful outside.  Tomorrow Aaron goes back to college for his Second semester at Valley Forge Christian and I am praying for him that he can buckle down and focus and enjoy his second semester.  He is very happy at college and loves the school!

Our preliminary itinerary is:
Drive up to New York on Thursday stay over night in hotel
Leave JFK Friday Arrive in Beijing Saturday
Stay over night in Beijing
Fly from Beijing to Jinan on Sunday(short flight Thank God)
Sorta nuts but that is what has to happen to get us to our sons province and doing tickets last minute was not easy.

I am off to make a few more lists and try and get organized as I can!  Off to get the suitcases packed and let the weighing of the bags begin ( no more then 44 lbs for in China flights).  I will put the rest of our itinerary on here later, it isnt set in stone yet so not posting it.

Test

This is a test to see if I can post from my yahoo email while I am away and post pictures at the same time, so all of you that arent in China with me can keep up on our journey!

Hopefully this is a photo of Luke we got in April from our first update, he is oh so handsome! He looks talllllll too!