We made it!

We made it!! We ate at a noodle shop near our hotel last night.  It was so good! I even got to use my small chinese vocabulary to help order a Sprite.   We are so tired!  

Beijing Flight

I am typing this as we finish the last part of our airplane ride to Beijing.  If your reading this we made it! We actually had a shorter flight time then expected.  Poor Matt is so exhausted.  He had a small cat nap at the beginning and didn't fall asleep until the last quarter of the flight.  I haven't been able to wake him to eat.  Unfortunately he also had two pretty significant nose bleeds .  He is more susceptible to have a bloody nose, my guess is due to his vascular malformation.  We went through all of our Kleenex and had to get a box from the stewardess.  Otherwise Matthew did awesome on this flight - what difference from his last flight on the way home from Hong Kong. He watched several movies and we were able to play some card games.  There were several children on this flight and they all seemed to do amazingly well.  

While we were in DC, we met 3 other adoptive families at the airport who all from the Ohio, WV, PA areas.   One of the families, I had been in touch for a couple of months, the other two are travelling with another adoption agency.  I It was neat to see pictures of the children they are preparing to adopt and compare stories.  It sounds like there will be around 20 families in Henan alone adopting from our agencies.  

After we get off the plan and go through customs, we will meet our agency guide.  We also will meet up with a representative from Show Hope to give them the suitcases of supplies.  As I have been in touch with them, I was able to find out that the person meeting us actually met Matthew before.  She was a preschool teacher at Maria's when Matthew was there.  She remembers that Matthew always wanted to attend preschool with the other little one that was in his nanny's care.  She said she would let Matthew sit in his stroller and watch what the other kids were doing. He was only 1 at the time.  

We made it to the airport!  Even got a few hours of sleep! 

One more video

I got another video of Grace uploaded to Youtube.  This video was taken at the same time as her other one in August 2014.  She makes a lot of funny faces in this video, so neat to see little glimpses of her personality.  

We're going to China!

One week from now we will be on a very long plane ride!!!  Can't wait!!! I am pretty sure I have been to Walmart or Target a million times these past few weeks for "one more" thing.  I have probably bought out all the remaining Thermacare back heat wraps in the tricounty area to tide me over in China.  They have been really hard to find.  Thankfully my back is feeling a lot better though.  I started physical therapy and it is really helping, too.  Thank you for all the prayers! 

We have big piles of things to be packed, but nothing in the suitcases.  The hard part is yet to come when I have to start pairing things down.  I have a bit of a control issue and would like to have every convenience item, clothes for every season/situation and medicine available at my fingertips, but four suitcases aren't holding all of that.  Suitcases also arrived from Show Hope today, too.  We are able to bring some supplies to China for them as a small token for the amazing care they gave to Matthew in China.  Shelby has being knitting up a storm, hoping to sneak some baby hats into their bags, too.  

All the plane and train tickets are bought and hotels are booked booked!  And when I first announced that we would hopefully be bringing Grace home in the spring, well it will be the very first day of spring/Matthew's birthday.  Matthew will get to spend his 4th birthday on the plane ride home, poor boy!   We also had a minor glitch with plane tickets, they had Grace sitting by herself on the way home.  I guess that wouldn't have helped the screaming toddler on a plane problem, but she was successfully ticketed back with us.  Thank you again for praying us through this journey! Next post hopefully is from China! 

                                

Travel Approval Received!

We received our travel approval!! Waiting to have our dates confirmed!

Still Waiting...

I didn't  want anyone to think we weren't updating the blog... but we are still waiting to hear about our travel approval.  It could be tomorrow or even two weeks from now.   We are going into Chinese New Year and government operations will be shutting down for 7 days next week. So if we don't hear something very soon, we will be waiting some more.  We should still be leaving during March, we just might have a shorter notice to leave than I would like. 

We sure could use your prayers during the last part of our wait

• that our travel approval would come soon!
• prepare Grace's heart for when we rock her world upside down
• Matthew would be at peace with all the travel back to China and changes in our family
• for my back to feel better, it's just bothersome for the most part but I don't want it to get any worse