Gotcha day!!!!

ZHENGZHOU!

We are here! We landed in Zhengzhou on Sunday at about 1230 and are at the hotel getting everything together to meet the boys tomorrow. We spent the last few days in Beijing doing the normal tourist stuff and getting to know the other families. There are 14 families total - they came in anywhere from Thur - Sat. They are all wonderful! Most are getting younger children ages 18-30 months. There is another family adopting an 11 year old girl :)

All of the families with the exception of us and one other family, will travel to the registration office to receive their children. Since our boys and another child are coming from Xinyang which is very far away, we will wait at the hotel and receive our children here. I am kind of sad to miss everyone else getting their kids, it's so emotional and lovely.

We are staying in the same hotel we did when we adopted Micah, and are only a few rooms down from where we stayed before. It's like reliving Micah's adoption..makes me miss the kids at home and our first travel group!

I attached pictures of Dad and I at the birds nest, Caleb with our guide George and our travel group at Tinaneman square (minus a few families who hadn't arrived yet).

I guess that is it for now, now we sit and wait anxiously for all our children. You can feel the joy and nervousness of everyone as we pass each other in the hallways :) We can't wait until we can share more with you as we take this journey.

Jennifer

Schedule

Looks like we are leaving tomorrow instead of today - we arrive in Beijing on Thur night, tour a couple days (or goof around on our own), then on to Zhengzhou on Sunday and get the boys on Monday!!! YAYAYAY
We are in Zhengzhou for about 5 days where I hope to take the boys and do some fun things in their province before heading down to Guangzhou for 8 days - then on to home:).  We will be sure to post while we are gone.

Pray for safe travels, healthy minds and bodies, safe watch over all our children in the states and smooth paperwork processing.  Thanks!  I can't wait to show pictures of us with our boys - we are almost there!!

Leaving on a Jet Plane!

Did I tell you I am excited about going to get our boys?! Well I am!!! We are on our way next week. I plan on using this blog to journal our trip. My daughter will probably post for me

Jennifer

TRAVEL APPROVAL

We got THE phone call today - we are finally traveling to get the boys. We are asking for the 25thish of May to depart. We will know more later this week. I guess God knew I needed to come home first to do laundry and prepare for this trip. More later!

Frustrations

I planned on posting to our blog while I was in China for our trip to Hope Foster Home, but it didn't work and hubby couldn't figure it out while I was gone. So I hope to post it later this week.
While I was in China our agency informed us that we had to retroactively do some paperwork that was previously not required. Thankfully we were able to get it done and it should be back to us and off to our agency by Monday. But I do believe it delayed our travel even more. There has been on delay after another which is more than frustrating. I know it will eventually happen but the thought of my boys sitting there and wondering if it really is going to happen, is disheartening to me.
We really though we would get our travel approval this week, in fact there were two batches that came in, which almost never happens, but guess who's was not in there? Yep, ours. We were told it could be another full week before we get it and another 2-3 weeks after that before we travel. We should travel in June but with Titus's 14th bday coming in July - it is too close for comfort.
Anyhoo...it will all work out, just wanted to post and let everyone know why yet again, we haven't traveled.

China!

Yay, our team made it to China and are enjoying New Hope Foundation and all the babies. Our team arrived in three different groups coming from CA, TX and WA. We got right up this morning after arriving at 1030 Wed night and went to see the Great Wall. Tomorrow we spend the day with babies, so will try to post some more pics. I was able to give Micah's nanny the photo albums I made for her - she was so excited...along with the little girl she use to nanny (her mom sent me photos to take to her as well)

Prayer request! We found out today that two of our documents are going to have be notorized, authenticated and Certified before we can travel...a new requirement from China, so guess what, we are back to being delayed at least another month. Even though our documents were already in china and all we had to do was get travel approval. This is cutting too close for comfort! Please pray they will make an exception and we can still travel this month.