An picture from the plane of Beijing as we are descending.

Dan is getting veryyyy sleepy..

WE MADE IT!!!

We flew out of Washington D.C. to Beijing and it was a great flight.

The plane was at about 25% capacity so we were able to spread out and relax a little. The crew was friendly and the food pretty good.

We arrived and met our guide, Mary, who is also our facilitators sister-in-law. She is very nice. She didn't waist any time getting started on sightseeing. We went directly from the airport to "The Summer Place" What a beautiful and well preserved landmark. The architecture, sculpture and paintings are finely detailed and brilliantly colored. Many locals found Dan to be quite interesting again. As in Changsha and Guangzhou on our last trip, They wanted their pictures taken with "the lucky red head" :) He gets a lot of looks from the people. They are all really friendly and curious.

After "The Summer Place" we went to our hotel and I took a shower and we then went out to eat. Mary took us to a very nice restaurant and the food was delicious. We ate fried noodles, which were kindof spicy, a beef dish in a gravy, sweet dumplings and broccolli.

Here are a few pictures from our travels so far.

Waiting for the Easter Bunny to come!

Today we continued to prepare for our journey. We went to the reservation in hopes of finding a gift to give the orphanage director and our guide. I found a couple of books and a couple of dream catchers. One book is about Native American tales from the northwoods. It tells the stories that have been passed from generation to generation of Native Americans. The second book is titled "The Iroquois" and discusses the different nations of Iroquois such as the Saint Regis (our local), Seneca, Onondaga, Onieda etc and their lives and struggles in the early nineteen hundreds. I hope they find it interesting and informative and hope they share this with their family and friends. I think they will see how some of their cultural beliefs are similarly shared by others as well.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. We are planning on sharing it with family and watching the little ones go nutso from having a "sugar high".

Happy Easter everyone!!!!!

LWB Cleft Nutrition Video

If you have some extra money and want to help, please consider donating to Love Without Boundries and The Smile Train. There are so many children like Max, who need the surgery, which could increase their chance of finding their Forever Family.

Smile Train Music Video -- 2nd Chance at Life

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We received our T. A. (travel approval)

Today we received a call from New Life, our agency. I saw on the call I.D. that it was New Life and Dan answered the phone. I listened to his end of the conversation and knew that it was our T.A. but he looked concerned and I started to worry. After he hung up the phone he said that we may not be able to take the Beijing portion of our journey due to limited time. He said that if we were to take the tour, it would be cut short. We pondered on whether we would in fact do it at all.

I e mailed our travel agency and she said not to worry, everything will be o.k. and we will enjoy our trip.

We expect to leave sometime either Tuesday or Wednesday, possibly even Monday but we will know on Monday.

We are doing the last minute preparations (which means we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off) checking off as we go.

I'm so excited to go again and bring Max home but I'm also very sad that Sonja will not be coming with us. I know she is in great hands but I can't help feeling sad that I won't be there when she calls for me or needs a little hug, or if she cries in the night. I know Grandma and Grandpa are pros but I still worry. Nana will be visiting as well as Aunt Vicky, Uncle Dean, Aunt Becky and cousins Drew, Luci and Ana. I'm sure she will be so busy playing and having fun, she will hardly miss us (I hope).

We will post more in the coming days when we have a definite departure date and other particulars.