7 days!

Still many many things happening around here as we get ready to leave just one week from today!  We finally got our updated itinerary, which had a few changes on it, after finding a couple of surprises on our original one.  On our first itinerary, the big thing that was different than we expected was, we originally expected that Gotcha Day (the day we meet and pick up Lydia) was going to be on March 22.  When we got our actual itinerary from the Chinese travel service, Gotcha Day was set for three days after that on March 25.  That was later than we preferred, and it definately made the first part of our trip by ourselves longer than we intended.  It took a few days of communication between our corrdinator, the travel service, the orphange, and the adoption registration office, but the messages finally traveled the right routes and we did get Gotcha Day changed.  So we will officially get Lydia on March 23!  We also now have our final flight plans for our in China travel as well as hotels and everything else!

It's very chaotic to get ready for a trip like this, and most of the time I feel like I am walking in circles.  There are still so many things to take care of, and the list doesn't seem to get any shorter.  I'm completely torn every day between running the last few errands to take care of things or pick up needed travel items, and staying home to actually pack and get things done at home.  In all honesty I'm seriously wondering how it's all going to come together!  Everything is scattered it seems - little lists of a variety of random things - very hard to organize into some sort of order.  So for example, we know that we need to take plastic document folders (one specifically clear and able to be closed), plastic containers to store water that has been boiled for safe drinking in our hotel room, contact cases and solution plus our eyeglasses for our 24 hours of travel, and a photo album of family pictures for Lydia to look through.  These are all random, seemingly unrelated items and we somehow have to make note of them all and make sure they get put in somewhere! 

I've been wanting to post some pictures for days.  These are some photos of the orphanage in Beijing where Lydia is living. 


                           

Keep praying for our little girl!
and