It's getting closer

We are getting closer everyday. What we find most comical as we get closer to getting Sarah Beth is that, like a biological birth, we are going through a nesting phase. Chad has put up Sarah Beth's crib and we are going through the play room and storage area cleaning up and rearranging for a toddler.

We are also very close to finalizing all of our travel arrangements--the only thing we lack are hotel reservations in Beijing and Guangzhou. We are working through some conflicting information to get these set up. The travel parts are all booked.

We will fly out of Bloomington to Detroit on a morning red-eye on Friday, November 9th. From Detroit we will fly to Tokyo (the kids are hopeful that we will fly over the North Pole which is a route that many airlines use for routes to the Pacific Rim). From Tokyo we will fly to Beijing.

We will cross over the International Dateline on the flight to Tokyo so we will lose a day on that leg. We will arrive in Beijing on Saturday night.

On Sunday, we will visit the Great Wall of China and the Temple of Heaven (this picture).

On Monday, we will visit Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and will take a rickshaw ride to a neighborhood where we will eat lunch at a local's home.

On Tuesday, we will fly from Beijing to Guangzhou. Originally, we thought there was a chance that we would get Sarah Beth on Tuesday (11/13) afternoon, however, we are now being told that we will get her on Wednesday morning.

We will be in Guangzhou from the 13th to 28th due to the delays in processing passports in the Guangdong province.

We will complete all of the Chinese requirements to adopt Sarah Beth during that time, then will have our US Consulate appointment on Monday, 11/26. We will swear in on the 27th, and then fly home on the 28th.