Playing tourist in Beijing

Today we went to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City. Spiders and snakes on the dinner menu. Waiting mostly to get our baby girl.

Beijing

1st night in Beijing. Our group is awesome and have already made friends with a lovely couple Jason and Angela who are adopting a little boy from Miriam's province. Off to bed. Let's hope the jet lag doesn't get the best of us tomorrow.

At the airport!

We are sitting at the airport waiting to board the plane. 14 long hours to Beijing. But we packed earplugs and ambien so hopefully we will get a little sleep. We are super excited but a little nervous. We are not sure if we will be able to access this in China due to their controls but we will do our best to keep this blog updated! Still trying to figure out how to upload pics from iPad onto blog. Use iCloud? If you know how give me a heads up!

J4M: Gotcha Day will be 25 June!!!! Prayer requests...

Only a little more than 2 weeks from now I will be holding my precious new daughter. (yes, she will most likely be crying or screaming bloody murder wondering why this yellow haired crazy woman has just taken her away from everything she has ever known).  But I'm excited.  Now I'm busily creating packing lists and getting the house ready.  The crib is up but I still haven't hauled out the giant bin of little lady clothes yet.

Email today gave us lots of info!  We are officially in travel group 1868.  We must be in Beijing by the 21st latest.  We will get our precious Miriam on 25 June (woohoo!)  Our consulate appointment is on July 5th; we will take the oath that afternoon.  On 26 June we will be able to pick up her visa and be on an airplane bringing her home on the 7th.

Prayer requests: Pray for Miriam (she's got a rough transition ahead).  Pray for our safe travels.  Pray for my parents' sanity and patience as they watch our other two kiddos.  Pray for G and J (especially grumpy J) that they manage 3 weeks away from mommy and daddy. 

Journey for Miriam: Got our Travel Approval Today!

We received our travel approval today!  CCAI is going to request our Consulate appointment date which will secure our travel dates.  They think we will be going 20 Jun- 7 Jul.  WOOHOO!  Hold on Miriam, not too much longer!

All Boy- for IHeartFaces June Challenge

The June Photo Challenge on IHeartFaces.com is "All Boy".  Although I am far from a professional (read- I am a momma with a camera who has read a few blogs on photography).  But I thought why not?  So the picture is big J sporting his Lightning McQueen shirt pointing to the sky at a jet.

Journey for Miriam: Passports back. Chinese visas inside!

Our passports with Chinese visas arrived in the mail from the courier. This means we are only waiting on one thing... Final travel approval. Then we're on that airplane to pick up our little girl!