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Good Morning from Xi'an!

I am here in Xi'an, counting the minutes until I meet Bella this afternoon.

We are 12 hours ahead of EST for those who may be wondering.

I had the smoothest ever flight over here! Highly recommend China Southern, I found their service pretty equal to Korean Air except they have fewer movies to chose from. Important stuff, right? ;)

I flew out of Cincinnati at 4:15 Thursday afternoon. Arrived in L.A. 4.5 hours later. He to walk outside to reach the international terminal and it was such a gorgeous day. I had never been to California before. I ate some McDonalds for supper, then got checked in for my 11:15pm flight to CHINA!!!!!

Let me tell you, if you can choose, choose a night flight! I had only ever done daytime flights (always left around noon) and wow, what a difference! I slept off and on for a total of about 7 hours of the 15 hour flight. Made it much more bearable. We had zero turbulence. Amazing.

I arrived in Guangzhou bright and early Saturday morning, went through customs (why is it USA makes this part so miserable? Everyone in Asia is always so kind and efficient!) and then took my 2.5 hour flight to Xi'an.

Staying with my friend Jennifer and her sweet family. She and her husband have 7 kids, including three adopted from Korea and the sweetest foster baby girl who I couldn't stop snuggling last night. I am so thankful to have a friend here, since I had to travel alone. It makes such a huge difference!

Today I will meet our precious Bella. In just over 8 hours I will be holding her and telling her how much we love her and how we have loved her for so very long. Amazing this journey we have come on and here I am, so very close to being her Mama!

No pictures yet, but I will post lots later! Going to run some errands in Xi'an today.

Much love to you all!

It's Time!

Sitting at the airport waiting to board my flight to LA!

Bella, here I come!!!!!!!

TRAVEL APPROVAL!!!!!!

Travel approval came very quickly! What a wonderful surprise yesterday!

Hoping to leave 10/11 and return home by 10/25!

Please pray for us as we try to come up with the last minute funds we need for our in country fees. We are still waiting to hear back from one final grant organization and praying that God will provide!

So Close

We are so very close to meeting our precious Bella!

We are waiting for our Travel Approval!!!! The very last step! Please pray with us that the needed funds come in before travel time. It is a little stressful, but we know God has this adoption in His hands and trust it will all work out!

We can not wait to hold this precious little girl!

One Day Closer

Every day is me day closer to holding this precious little girl in our arms. We received new pictures and an update this past week!










She weighs 26 pounds and is 31 inches tall. She sleeps deeply (hooray, that makes 6 for 6 kids! Lol!) and loves to eat cake and other sweets. My kinda gal!

We have been told to prepare for October travel. Our I800 was approved last week and will be cabled to the US Embassy in China sometime this week. We only have a few steps of this journey left before we start our new journey as a family of EIGHT!

LOA and Waiting for I800 Approval!

We received notice from our agency that our long-awaited LOA was approved on 8/2! We received the actual hard copy on 8/5. What a blessing to know that China has officially approved us to be Bella's family!

We are now 10 days into our wait for I800 approval. As little as 6 weeks away from traveling to China.

We are still working hard to raise money for our orphanage donation and other fees. Trusting that God will continue to provide as we finish this journey and bring our amazing daughter home!




Bella says, "Yay, my family has LOA!!!!!!!"