Taking off

We are on the plane ready to go. More later!

Ready

we are ready. the count down clock is ticking and we have t-minus 9 hours until we board our plane. ohhh, man are we excited. i can't wait to get to china!

love to all our family and friends!

Almost There

well, since my last post, things have been getting a lot easier. i am feeling so much better, not perfect but almost. i have had the last 3 days to start to put things together and go shopping for last minute items and pack our bags. here is a list of a few things we have done this week.

Stop mail with post office
Called health insurance to add babies
Called credit cards to let them know we are traveling
Arrange a ride to airport, we leave ridiculously early, thanks CT&DT
Got a bunch of “new money” from bank, the Chinese like crisp new dollar bills
2 certified checks to pay for orphanage fees and inside china travel
Got the vaccination letters notarized for each girl
Made plans for an additional day of sight seeing (more info to come about this)
Washed the girls clothes we are taking with us
Put the car seats into the car
Packing, packing, packing...

We are almost there and can't believe it! In just 2.5 days we are leaving for China!
Please pray for our travel. that we stay healthy, safe and there are no delays or issues. This time we go straight to NY and leave for China (going to VN we had to go to Chicago, SF, Taipei, then VN, yuck). Keep that snow away from NY this weekend and we will be good:-)!

We have been working on pushing Nate's bedtime back to get ready for the time change, it's been challenging but we know it will help with the 12 hour difference. Pray that it is an easy time change for us. Also pray that China gets a ridiculous heat wave for just 6 days while we are there. Bring on the heat, it is going to be really cold, pray we keep warm with all the sight seeing!

thank you for following our journey to our girls. We have been so blessed and look forward to sharing this wonderful journey with you. Please feel free to leave a comment along the way, i know we will love to hear from you and it will help with home sickness.

love
kare

Ughhh

For the last 10-12 days i have been battling illness. i had a head cold that went into the flu that went right into another cold with bad congestion and then i had a stomach bug. With only a day or two of semi-health between illnesses it has been very difficult to get things accomplished. DH has been doing lots of errands and phone calls and we are slowly chugging along. Our Christmas was wonderful and quiet and peaceful. We had a lovely day together and really enjoyed our holiday.

We have one week left and we are leaving for China. We are ready to pick up the pace and get all the things we need to get done before this weekend, then we can relax for the New Year celebration. Amazing how this time is flying by, can't wait to see our little babies. I was hoping for an update of our girls, maybe a picture or even just weight and size but nothing has come yet. It has been unusually cold in Nanchang lately, we are praying our babies are staying warm and healthy.

Our Itinerary

I can't tell you how much more work this takes with three holidays occurring while trying to get ready for our trip. We are making it all happen, but it has been a lot of work. We have ordered our tickets and we are packing our bags. We leave in 13 more days! Boy it would be nice to have some master list of things we have to do and when to get them done, i am so afraid that we are going to forget to do something REALLY big. i have lists upon lists of things to do and remember.
We are counting down the days until we can see our precious babies.
here is our itinerary for our trip:


Jan 3: Depart for Beijing
Jan 4: Arrive in Beijing
Jan 8: Group Sightseeing in Beijing: Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City and the Great Wall
Jan 9: travel to province, meet our daughters
Jan 10: do lots of paperwork
Jan 11: do lots of paperwork
Jan 12: Sightseeing or free day
Jan 13: sightseeing or free day
Jan 14: get paperwork back and fly to Guangzhou
Jan 15: medical exams
Jan 16: free day
Jan 17: free day
Jan 18: a big appointment
Jan 19: Free day
Jan 20: take a train to Hong Kong in order to catch a flight for the next day
Jan 21: depart for the US

it's been a busy few weeks

We got our referral in early November and the time is passing by so quickly, we are getting so many things done, yet it feels like we have a ton more to do.

Here are a few of the things we have accomplished so far:

-We bought a new car, we didn’t have enough room in our previous car for 3 car seats! Right after our referral we kicked it into high gear and started looking for a car in our price range. We have been looking for some time, and we really liked the Acadia. We finally found one and we love it.
-We signed our LSC, letter of seeking confirmation, and sent that paperwork off to our agency. This came about 6-7 days after our referral call. This came in a packet that had their medical information and a few pictures.
-We got our visa pictures taken and sent off our passports to get our visas for China. Because we are adopting twins we will need 4-5 photos for each of us. We got this all done at once and sent our passports off to get our visas to enter china. It is difficult to send your passport in the mail and hope and pray that you will get it back. All is good and we got them back a week ago.
-Nate got his last round of shots for travel.
-We had Thanksgiving Dinner with my family at our home
-My friends threw me a baby shower and we got some amazing things for the girls. The theme for the party was Asian, so there were fortune cookies with scriptures, rubber duckys with hats and Chinese characters, chop sticks and Asian food. it was so much fun, we are so blessed to have such great friends.
-Our TA, travel approval, arrived on Dec 6. This allows us the permission to travel to China, this was a bit uneventful however. We got an email stating it was on the way then another when it officially arrived. We will get the document right before we leave to take with us.
-Our CA, consulate appointment, was made on Dec 7. Our appointment is for Jan 18. This too was just an email notification, but we were also told we could book our flights at the same time. this was amazingly exciting, we had 3 days to do so.
-We booked our flights and will be in China on Jan 4, we meet the girls on Jan 9. The plans are to go to Beijing, the girls province and then Guangzhou for final paperwork. i will list our itinerary in the next week or so.
Let me say that again, we will be leaving on Jan 3 and we are meeting our girls on Jan 9th!


This is a picture of what our car looks like, we love it so much.

signing our letter of seeking confirmation

A few photos from my baby shower

Referral Call

we wanted to share a small piece of our referral phone call. We are thankful that we were able to take video of this moment. it's amazing to watch and has me in tears just about every time i watch it. November 2 was an amazing day for us, for our entire family. Enjoy.

Finally

We have been hard at work trying to pick out names for the girls. this was so much harder than we expected. We loved so many names, but we were not sure if we should choose names that started with the same first letter or with the same letter as big brother or make them all completely different. We also wanted to include some of our family into it too. It was a hard decision but we are so happy with what we came up with.

So let me introduce to you:

Paige Elizabeth

Phoebe Louise

Jiangxi

i have to admit that i have loved having their picture at the top of the blog. i have almost not wanted to post anything, just so i can keep the "introducing" post the most current and the first thing i see when i open the page. So now you will have to scroll down a bit to see their first picture. :-)

i have been doing a little research on where the girls are from and about that part of China. so here is a little information about Jiangxi.

The Gan River dominates the province, flowing through the entire length of the province from south to north. It enters Lake Poyang in the north, the largest freshwater lake of China; that lake in turn empties into the Yangtze River, which forms part of the northern border of Jiangxi. Important reservoirs include the Xiushui Tuolin Reservoir in the northwest of the province on the Xiushui River, and the Wan'an Reservoir in the upper section of the Gan.

Jiangxi's climate is subtropical. Average temperatures are about 3 to 9°C (35-48F) in January and 27 to 31°C (80-87F) in July. Annual precipitation is 1200 to 1900 mm.

Nanchang, the region's capital and the most densely populated city, is one of China's largest metropolis. Nanchang is the hub of Jiangxi civilization throughout its history, which plays a leading role in the commercial, intellectual and industrial and political fields. While Ganzhou is the largest subdivision of Jiangxi.

Although little known outside of the province, Jiangxi cuisine is rich and distinctive. Flavors are some of the strongest in China, with heavy use of chile peppers and especially pickled and fermented products.