Hello! Emilee crahsed at 7pm tonight, so I am able to post a few more pictures. We made it to the Great Wall today, what an awesome sight! Emilee & I only made itabout a quarter of the way to the first landing, but Brian went all the way. Wow was it high! After that we had lunch and then went to the Summer Palace on a lake. After all the walking and the cold air, we are all pretty tired. We leave for the Beijing airport at 830 in the morning, I think it is a 2.5 hour flight. Hope everyone is having an wonderful weekend.

Morning! I have a few minutes before we leave this morning, so I am posting some pictures from our trip. We are feeling more rested today, though we were all up at 4:00am!

Another exhausting day! We had breakfast, and then met with the other people in our group - 30 total! We drove to The Forbidden City, and walked for about 3hrs! We went to an acrobat show this evening - wow, what they can do with their bodies! Had supper at McDonalds, a cheese burger is a cheese burger no matter what country you are in. Emilee feel asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Hopefully tomorrow our bodies will be caught up with the time change. We have to be ready at 830am tomorrow for the Great Wall & Summer Palace. We will also get to stop by Olympic Village. Tomorrow will be a long day, so I may not be able to write, and then we leave early Sunday morning for the airport to head South. We will meet Kaycee Monday afternoon at 230pm in a government building. Love to everyone! We miss you all!

We are in Bejing now! Our plane arrived early and safe. We are all very tired and will be going to bed shortly. We will be meeting up with the rest of our group tomorrow morning. There are several sight seeing trips tomorrow. No rest for the wicked!

We are ready! Four suitcases & three carry-on's! Emilee is sleeping, and I soon will be also. I caved with Emilee's carry-on, she is bringing one dog and several outfits for the dog, PLUS a baby doll and outfits & accessories for the doll. It was not worth an argument. Unfortunately that means that my carry-on is full of things to occupy her time - books, nintendo ds, homework, games & movies. Oh well! We leave KC at 640am, arrive in New Jersey at 1015am, then take off for Bejing at 1215pm and arrive in China at 3pm on Thursday. Should be an exciting day. I will write again after we get to China. Happy Trails!

Wow am I glad this weekend is over! The bags are packed, but I wll go through again to make sure that we have everything. The pile of paperwork that we have to bring is in a special folder. Kaycee's room has sheets on the bed, toys & books in baskets and the drawers are filled with clothes. For today, Emilee has narrowed it down to taking one stuffed animal and one babydoll, but that changes on a daily basis, or by the hour. Monday is my last day at work until May, so Tuesday I will be able to do any little things that we have not thought of. Julie will be picking taking us to the airport Wednesday morning - 445am - yes you read that right! We will arrive in Bejing at 300pm on Thursday, or about 1:00am Thursday central time in the USA. We will spend 4 days in Bejing resting and sightseeing. There are 11 other couples that we are traveling with, within the same adoption agency. On Monday afternoon we will finally get to meet Kaycee!

We put the finishing touches on Kaycee's room today. Brian painted the room last weekend, and then Brian & Emilee put the rainbow, clouds & stars up. This weekend she got toys & clothes put in her room. Next weekend she gets sheets on her bed! Everything is coming together! We begin our journey in 11 days! Emilee took Kaycee's picture to school Friday so that all of her friends could see her new picture. Friday was Valentine party day - it was so cute because several of Emilee's friends made Kaycee a Valentine. Tomorrow we will begin packing - right now everything is just laying on the bed. We also have lots of little things to do. The weekends go wayyyyyyyy to fast.

We began our adoption process in March of 2008 with taking a leap of faith! We dove into all of the paperwork to prepare our dossier - paperwork, homestudy, certificates, state fingerprints, federal fingerprints, child abuse registery, state criminal investigations, Homeland Security investigations, doctor appointments, notorizations, state certifications, Chinese Embassy authentications. Finally on September 22nd we found Chan Hong Xing and notified China that we were interested in adopting this beautiful little 4 year old girl. On October 24th we were told that we had been pre-approved to adopt Kaycee. Now China gets all of our dossier and looks it over and on December 31st China said that we looked ok to adopt, but one more group of people in China needs to review our dossier and then we will be good to go. On February 6th we found out that we have our the official word to travel to China to adopt Kaycee. On February 10th we got our travel dates, we leave February 25th and return to the USA on March 12th!

"We witness a miracle every time a child enters into life. But those who make their journey home across time & miles, growing within the hearts of those who wait to love them, are carried on the wings of destiny and placed among usby God's very own hands."