Last Post From the USA!

Well you all....I am up packing for the 3rd night in a row and still have LOTS to do and organize in my house before I feel like all my "ducks are in a row"...

I can't believe the time has finally come for us to get our sweet children. In the last hour it seems that most of our fees have been paid. I am grateful to the Lord, those He calls His Saints, and the hardest working husband in the Husband Business.

Here I am up way too late...It is almost 1 AM.. But I have so much still to do. I wanted to send one last update with a little brief of our itinerary for those of you following us.

Today, May 22nd  2013, (Day after Jay's birthday.. Happy Birthday Honey!) we will be getting on a plane toward the West Coast about 1 PM in the afternoon. We have LA to fly into with a, gulp, 9 hour layover!!! Please pray for that afternoon and evening.. Then we fly for 12 hours straight (NOT my favorite at all) into Seoul Korea (actually looking forward to seeing that airport and flying Korean Air for the first time) with another much shorter layover of  3 hours. Then we fly into Hong Kong and arrive at 11 AM on Friday May 24th. Yes, that was 2 days folks...Keep in mind that we are about 13 hours jumping into time..Now that is exciting, but nonetheless it will be a Long day, with a capital "L"...

We are staying in Hong Kong until Sunday afternoon. We hope to rest, shop and look around the city a bit. But mostly rest and do some shopping. We are hoping to get some shopping done before we get our new children, but we don't have a lot of luggage space as of now either, so not sure how that will play out.

On Sunday, we will be taking a 2 hour train ride into Guangzhou. I did that same train ride backwards when I brought Asher home and flew out of Hong Kong. It was beautiful and my first time on a "real" train, besides the ride at Disneyland. I loved it.. So we will take the train to GZ then get to the airport some how, (TAXI)..And our flights leave in the evening to our provinces. Jay and Jacob will be flying to Chongqing to receive and Eliza, Asher and I will be going to Zengzhou to receive Elliana. Our guides pick us up at the airport and take us to our hotels where we will promptly go to sleep, as the next day is "Gotcha Day". Which for your information, will be Sunday evening/night here, depending on the time of Gotcha and location in the US.

Monday is Gotcha Day, which typically happens first thing in the morning.  This meeting takes place as the Province's Civil Affairs Office and takes only about an hour or as long as needed for you to be ready to leave. We will sign temporary paperwork basically saying we will "Foster" the child for the next 24 hours and that is our time to make sure we approve of our children. The next day we will return and adopt the children. Jay will have a Power of Attorney from me and I will have one from him, stating we do desire to adopt and that the other spouse can sign on our behalf. That becomes our legal adoption day.

From then on we stay in the provincial city until Friday when we depart and head back to Guangzhou. All of us will be reunited at our 5 star hotel. I don't think I have ever stayed at a 5 star hotel!!! Yippee... We will remain there the rest of the time. June 6th is our Consulate Appointment and June 7th we will have a swearing ceremony at the US Consulate and our children's Visas will be issued. We get to fly out of GZ on Saturday June 8th and arrive back home 10:30 PM that same day. Remember how going to China we took 2 days? This time we only take 1, because we go back in time now. It is the never ending day. We definitely need your prayers for that day, as travel is hard anyway, but with 3 little ones, it just might feel impossible. And at this point we have seats caddy corner from each other instead of in one entire row, which will be hard.

Please pray for our family back home. Makenna, my amazing daughter, is staying here and acting as Mommy. She has 3 little pips to take care of Moriah, Toby and Lenea. She will do great.

I hope to write on here if possible, PM me if you want to be on the email loop, which I am sure will be easier to keep up on for me.