Packing

Thank God for great friends!
Shannon, (lower right) Christie, (next) and Jenn, (in green) came to help the night before we left for Beijing.
This was taken in Hope's room and we are making sure that we have all our documents in order, for the bajillionth time.
So many family and friends and people we don't even know, helped us to get to this day...how can we thank all of you? You helped us get to our precious daughter....we are eternally grateful.
You were part of a miracle, the miracle of family.
The sweetest blessings on all of you and your
loved ones!

Let's GO!

Our travel day has finally arrived and we feel pretty good for not having more than a couple hours of rest. Not sleep - rest!
We couldn't sleep!
We are ready - lets GO!!

At the bus stop - on the way to the airport

We are so excited we can't hardly stand it!
All these months of praying, paper chasing and waiting...and here we are...finally!
What a beautiful day!
(No, all that luggage isn't ours )

Santa's neck of the woods

Much to our surprise, we didn't fly west to go China!
After some hours of our flight we noticed that the view out the window looked pretty frozen...then the GPS informed us why it looked that way...we were near the North Pole!
We continued on over Siberia and Mongolia then down to Beijing.
The flight was really enjoyable. We watched 5 movies, ate and visited with very nice and interesting people. By the time we arrived in Beijing we hadn't really slept in 2 days. But we had a great time!
Nate and I kept looking at each other through
out the flight saying, "Can you believe it? We are
finally on our way!" " We are getting our
daughter!"

The begining of our trip

First sights of China as we taxied down the runway. You can see the wing of the plane is about 30 yards from these homes. The people at Midway think they have it bad.

Beijing - View from hotel room

This is the view outside of our hotel window.
The men to the far left are digging and the dirt is being carried out by hand with the wheel barrows to the street by the men to the right. A truck is then loaded, by hand with shovels.
They began working like this shortly after 5am this morning.
We also watched as a woman hung clean clothes out to dry.
Every day life for these people.