The Beginning of the End of Our Journey

I cant believe I am finally writing a post from China! This has been a long time coming and we are so very grateful to be here. Its almost 7pm here in Beijing which means its 6am back home. That is taking some getting used to.

We arrived on Thursday around 330pm Beijing time and it was an incredibly long flight. This picture was so depressing. We thought we would be much closer by the time we took this!

 

 

As you can see we still had a long way to go! By the time we got to our hotel we were exhausted and ready to go to bed. We spent some time meeting the other family's that will be on this journey with us and we have already come to love them and its been a blessing to hear their stories and share ours with them.

 

China is a beautiful country and Beijing is a lot cleaner and safer than I expected. Especially considering there are over 10 million people that live here. We spent today (Friday) wondering around Beijing with our guide Delia. She is a sweetheart. We started out at the Great Wall about 45 minutes outside Beijing and it was awesome! I know that both of us are going to be sore tomorrow. It is amazing how steep of a climb that is.

 

 

 

The view from the top was spectacular to say the least. After the Great Wall we had lunch at a famous jade factory and then we toured the Olympic village and had dinner before heading back to the hotel. The food has been great and Brian and I are both enjoying this time together before we fly to Easton's province on Sunday!!!

 

Tomorrow we visit the summer palace and Tien an men square. We will try to update at the end of each day if we can, if not every other day. Keep us in your prayers and pray that Sunday will go smoothly and that Easton won't be afraid.

 

Until next time, here are a couple pictures of the rest of today.

 



 



Easton is 4!!

Today is Easton's 4th birthday!

We are super sad that we can't be with him today, but we keep reminding ourselves that we get to celebrate plenty of birthdays in the future.

If you look closely, you can see he is looking at pictures of us!

We would like to suggest subscribing to our blog if you want to follow our trip while we are in China.  Just type your email address in the box under 'Follow By Email' on the right hand side; you might have to scroll down a little bit to find it. 

We won't be making any posts to Facebook while we are there, but Brian wants me to try and update the blog daily. (I will do my best!)

That being said, this will be the last blog til then.... it's so very real now. 

And yes, I still feel like a gorilla is sitting on my chest and that I could vomit at any moment.

Until next time... from CHINA!!!

Please fasten your seatbelts and return your tray table to its full upright and locked position....

That's right people!

We got our travel approval on 1-29-15!!

Flights were confirmed 1-30-15!

Hotels and intercountry travel arrangements will take place in a week or so.


I was working on the computer when the phone call came in. Normally I don't answer numbers I don't recognize, but the call was coming from Virginia.
Virginia!!
I new it was the agency... it had to be.
Sure enough, it was. They were calling to let us know that our TA was in the system but that they hadn't received the 'hard copy' yet. They wanted to know if we wanted them to go ahead and book all our consulate appointments or if we wanted to wait. Ummm.... kind of a dumb question.

The phone call was short and sweet, saying she'd be in contact with us to discuss flight options.
Fast forward about a day.
I randomly checked my email before going into the Dollar Tree and there are 2 flight itineraries waiting for us to decide on. I freaked out, called Brian, decided on a flight and then immediately felt like I was going to vomit. That feeling really hasn't gone away yet...

SO.... for obvious reasons I'm not going to post our exact travel dates. However, I can say that it's soon(ish) and we are beyond excited!

We want to thank everyone who has purchased a t-shirt and made donations through Booster. We are thrilled to be able to wear our shirts on the plane! We also want to thank everyone else who has donated or participated in the many other fundraisers we've had. Lastly, (at the moment) we want to thank our neighbors who will be watching our cat, Righteous, while we are gone and Brian's parents who will be keeping our Great Dane, Jake, at their house while we are gone. Oh! And thanks to Tom and Lindsay for keeping our van and transporting us to and from O'Hare!! I could go on and on with all the people that we are thankful for. THANK YOU!!

It's been amazing and stressful, overwhelming and fascinating. But, it will be worth it.