Happy first day of school!

Happy first day of school to these little sweeties!  1st and 3rd grade!

The final countdown!

The time is finally almost here. Time to start counting down the final 10 days until we leave to get our boy. 15 days until we get to see his sweet face. My emotions are all over the place as we get the final preparations in place for this big trip. I am anxious about leaving Reagan and Ben behind, excited to meet Eli and see China, nervous he might really dislike us, happy that the waiting game is almost over and on and on and on...

Here's some details....

We leave Wednesday, August 3rd around noon and head to Beijing, arriving there in Thursday. We will stay there a couple days, get used to China, do some touristy-type stuff. Then we will travel to Zhengzhou (where Eli lives) on Sunday afternoon. We will get our boy on Monday, August 8th. Stay in his province until about Saturday and then will travel to Guangzhou to finalize the US side of things. On Thursday August 18th we will take a van from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and will fly home from there on Friday, August 19th. After a super long flight home we will arrive back in Atlanta around 11:45 pm on the 19th. Whew!  It's going to be quite the adventure!

Travel Approval!

These last few weeks have flown by as we are anxiously getting closer and closer to bringing our little boy home.  Today we got our travel approval!  This is basically the last step before we travel, it is China's way of saying we can come on over and get our boy.  We should have our consulate appointment set by tomorrow and then we can get booking our trip.  We have been a little shocked to see travel prices for August.  Apparently, this is the most expensive time of year to be flying to China.  We will be working over the next few days to pull all these details together! 

As always we would appreciate prayers for the remainder of the travel details to come together and for Eli's transition to our family.  Also, if you feel led to contribute financially to our final travel expenses we would so appreciate that.  We will keep everyone posted as we have more details!

Sweet pictures from our last update. Eli, we are coming for you real soon!

Orlando trip

A couple days after Hannah's birthday we ventured down to Orlando to visit my family. It was a short but fun visit and my first time in a while driving by myself with all 3 kiddos. The drive down was okay but the drive back home was pretty terrible. The kiddos were all grouchy and ready to be home and out of the car! While we were down there we went to the beach for the day and visited the Crayola Experience which was pretty cool. Ben really enjoyed hanging out with "grandfather". We were cracking up hearing him keep calling dad that! We got to see my grandma too and hang out with its my sisters. Hoping we can visit with them all again soon!

Happy 8th birthday to our wacky, smart, sweet girl. We love you!

That's our girl on top. She's gearing up for her first season cheerleading. Pictures in her adorable uniform soon to come!

Slumber party shenanigans

Hannah turned 8 last week and for her celebration she wanted to have her first slumber party!  She had 5 sweet little girls over and they had a great time eating pizza, painting nails, doing face masks on each other, eating ice cream, doing karoke and watching a movie. They stayed up until 11 which I though was pretty good (I expected them to be up much later!) and then we fed them breakfast and called it a success!

Sweet guitar baby

It's getting real!

We are excited to say that today we received our letter of approval from China! This says that we have been approved to adopt Eli.  A super exciting point along this journey!  Now to start the processing of arranging travel, obtaining visas, immigration approval and then packing! We leave in 9-12 weeks to go get our boy!