The picture that started it all

Well, here's the picture that we looked at for almost 2 months before we finally decided "this is our son, we need to bring him home." My heart ached for the little boy in this picture......hoping that a family would commit to adopt him. God almost had to hit us over the head, trying to tell us that this little guy was meant to be ours. Now we're almost there.

Today has been super busy as you can imagine. We made a trip to the bank to pick up our "stash of cash." Then I dropped Audrey off with the family that is going to take care of her while we're gone. I can't even imagine being away from her for two weeks, I'm so glad to know that she'll be in great hands. She gave me a hug and kiss and said "bye mom" and then kindly pointed to the van as if to say " Mom, I'll be fine....you can leave already." Then I went home to finish up the packing. This time around I feel more confident with my packing. I made sure to pack more junk food and less clothes. I also have 4 care packages to give to the orphanage director from families who are waiting to travel to Chenzhou to adopt their daughters.

We will drop Andrew of at the neighbors before we head to the airport. He says he's going to miss us, but he is looking forward to having fun at with all of the different places he is staying. We fly out of Ft. Wayne at 9:30am to Chicago. Then comes the long flight.....Chicago to Beijing. We should arrive in Beijing around 4:00pm Saturday afternoon. If all goes well I hope to post a message Saturday night (Saturday morning back home).

Two of the families we are traveling with have blogs/adoption journals also. Here's their links if your interested:

http://maryupdates.blogspot.com/

http://myadoptionwebsite.com/sophiemei/

Here's the forecast for the 3 cities we will be staying in:

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/CHXX0008?from=search_10day

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/CHXX0013?from=36hr_fcst10DayLink_business

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/CHXX0037?from=search_10day

Well, say lots of prayers for us. Our biggest prayer is that Paul will adjust to us as quickly as possible. We've had 9 months to fall in love with him....he's going to be put in our arms in just a matter of seconds......with no warning or understanding of what is going on. So he's bound to be confused and upset about the whole thing.

Thanks to everyone who has called or emailed to wish us well!!!! Next stop....China!!!!!

Alison

Somebody's missing.................

This will probably be our last family photo without Paul. ( Don't even ask why Andrew looks the way he does, ughh!) We had Thanksgiving at my brother's house. Now that Troy and Sarah are into their own adoption there was lots of talk about homestudies, DTC, LID and all of the China adopt lingo. Natalie got to open her birthday presents tonight since we will be in China on her actual birthdate. Grandma gave her activity books for the long plane ride and we gave her a Leap Frog Leap Pad (with head phones) for the long plane ride. Did I mention the long plane ride.I'm about half packed, tickets are bought, visas are on their way and the Panda phone is reserved. Just a few more things on the list to do and we'll be all ready for China.

Don't feel too sorry for us

When we adopted Audrey a common misconception by most of our friends and family was that we would be "roughing it" while we were in China. We had been told by our agency that we would stay in 4 and 5 star hotels, but we ourselves didn't know what to expect. Of course once we got to China we stayed in nicer hotels than we would have ever dreamed of staying at here. We feel pretty high class when we stay at a Holiday Inn verses a Super 8. Here are links to the three hotels we'll be staying at. You can tell by the pictures that we definitely won't be "roughing it." Natalie is all about the indoor pool in Changsha and Ted thinks it's cool that there is bowling alley there too. He asked if he could pack his bowling ball ( I think he was kidding) but I reminded him who has to carry ALL of the luggage.

We'll stay 2 nights in Beijing at http://www.hotelclub.net/DirectHotel.asp?id=34402#

7 nights in Changsha at http://www.huatian-hotel.com/about/about_en.jsp

3 nights in Guangzhou at http://www.white-swan-hotel.com/eng/Public/index.asp

Hold that thought????

Dear friends and family,
If you have already been thinking about what you may give us as a gift to welcome Paul home.....put that thought on hold. Since Paul is our 4th child we have everything we need for him. Plus with Christmas around the corner I'm sure he'll get plenty of stuff then. One of my friends gave me her son's clothes so we are set on clothes for awhile too. Once we have been home for a few weeks we will be doing a slide show of our trip at our church. At that time I would like to do a mini-fundraiser for Half the Sky. Half the Sky is a organization that helps out orphanages in China. Chenzhou is one of the lucky orphanages to be sponsored by Half the Sky. This means that there are more care takers and they are better trained in nurturing the children. If you would like to learn more please visit their web site, I dare you to watch their video without crying. http://www.halfthesky.org/children/index.php

Chenzhou Scrapbook

I just had to share my latest project with all of you. Most of you who know me personally know that I am an avid scrapbooker. Almost 2 months ago, while our wait for travel approval was starting to drive me crazy, I came up with an idea. I wanted to make a scrapbook of kids who had started their lives at Chenzhou and now live with their forever families. I will give this book to the orphanage director at the time that we meet Paul. I went to the Chenzhou Yahoo group and offered to do this book for anyone who was interested. The response has been over whelming. More than 50 families have contacted me through email saying that they wanted to send me photos of their child/ children from Chenzhou. So far I have received 23 sets of photos not only from the USA but also Canada, the Netherlands and Holland. All of these children are beautiful and you can tell by their pictures that "life is good!!" I have had so much fun putting this book together. Families who have been able to visit Chenzhou have told me that the staff will really appreciate this book. They are proud of these kids and happy that they are in loving homes. The pages with the 2 girls side by side really tugs at my heart. These girls were adopted on the exact same day that Paul was left at the front gate of the orphanage, March 28,2005. Just when they find homes for some of the little ones, another child is left. I'm so thankful that Paul is not going to be left behind for too much longer.

On a side note we figured out tonight when all of our kids will graduate from high school. Here's the run down: Andrew - 2017, Natalie - 2019, Audrey - 2022, Paul - 2023............yikes !!!!!

Only 16 until we leave!!!!

Travel dates are confirmed

We are for sure going to China Dec. 1-14th. I am working on getting our plane tickets to and from China and also applying for our visas.

China here we come!!

Yesterday, after waiting for 97 long days we received our travel approval to bring Paul home. Over the weekend we had what I called a "sign" that our TA was on our way. I was feeling pretty down about the wait since we had really hoped to have TA almost a month ago. On Saturday we decided to go to the Chinese buffet. Natalie opened her fortune cookie. On the "learn Chinese" side of the fortune her word was "Di Di" which means little brother. I thought it was cool that Natalie choose that cookie since she is going to China with us and will be the first of the kids to meet her "Di Di."

As of now our travel plans are still tentative. The adoption agency has to confirm some of our appointments in China yet. It sounds like we will leave Dec. 1st and return Dec. 14 th. If these dates hold true I'm guessing that we will meet Paul on Dec. 4th. Natalie will celebrate her 6th birthday while we are in China. I told her that we would try to find a cake on her birthday ( Dec. 6th).

I looks like we will be traveling with just 3 other families, who are also adopting special needs kids. Wow, that's a big difference from our group when we adopted Audrey. Our agency had 39 families in China for that trip and we spent the whole 14 days with 8 of those families. The way it will probably work is that we will sight see in Beijing with the 3 families and then we will all go our separate ways to meet our children in their province capitol's. Then the last 5 days or so of the trip we will all meet up in Guangzhou where the US consulate is to finalize our paperwork. This is all guessing on my part. I'm sure we will have more information as the days go by. Two of the three families actually live fairly close to us....Indiana and Michigan.

The most important news is that we will finally get to meet this little guy who has absolutely stole our hearts.

Alison