3 days!

Originally this would have been the night before our flight.  I am so relieved, actually, to have gotten two extra days.  Especially since it doesn't change the adoption timeline of our trip at all, only some of the sightseeing before we get Lydia.  And I seriously needed the two extra days.  Now I'm trying to use them to the absolute best of my ability.  So I won't stay at this computer long tonight - too many things to do.

The only thing I'll share right now is some phrases we have gotten in fortune cookies lately that are humourously applicable.  Now, we don't put any value at all in the papers in our fortune cookies, but we always have fun reading them and laughing about them as a family.  But in the past month or so, we have gotten some great ones that made us say, "Wow!  How'd we happen to end up with that one!"  It's just been a fun thing to chuckle at each time we go for Chinese food.  Here are our favorites...

"You will soon gain something you have always desired."

"Good things come in small packages.  One is coming to you."

"When the flowers bloom, so will great joy in your life."

And my personal favorite...

"You will soon bring joy to someone new in your life."

I sure hope so....

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4 days

Last week the girls made a countdown chain to count the days until they meet their little sister.  We made all the links red, with only 4 special yellow links.  One yellow link for the day mom and dad leave, one for the day we get Lydia, one for the day we have our appointment at the US Consulate, and one for the day we come home with her.  With our flight change last night it messed up their chain a little bit so now we have to shuffle some of the red links and the yellow one for the day we leave.  It was fun to put Lydia's picture at the top, and we loved that on the day we completed it, the chain reached just to the floor!



As the girls we making the chain, Violet of course had to be right in the middle of the action!

The completed chain!

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5 days....time has been ADDED to our clock!!

After another hour and a half on the phone with Delta tonight, Jim was amazingly successful at not only getting them to route us not through Japan, but at getting an WAAYYYY better flight for us.  Oh and the best part...a way better flight for no change in cost!  The only curve it throws us is that we now leave two days later, on March 17 instead.  However, the good news for us is that we get to take a direct flight from Detroit to Shanghai and only fly for 14 hours instead of 24 hours through 3 cities with layovers!  Now we get on our plane at 4:45pm and get off at what feels like 7:30 the next morning in our final destination.  It will of course be 12 hours ahead of that on China time.  So, while everyone is setting their clocks ahead tonight, we set our countdown clock BACK by two days!
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3 days and wondering about changes.....

3 days until we leave...we think.  We've been talking around in circles with Delta for the past couple of days trying to see if we can change our flight to NOT go through Japan.  Just seems like a much better idea to stay away from that region altogether.  So far they have been more than difficult even though we paid for adoption fares which are changable.  "Yes, we can change you,"..."No, we can't,"..."Yes, we can do that now,"..."No, sorry we can't".  Getting really old....just moving toward Tuesday still but wishing we could get Delta to actually help reroute us.  It's like they enjoy putting people in the situation of having last minute changes a day before you leave.  You'd think they would like getting just one more reservation taken care of and changed a couple of days in advance.
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4 days!

Closer every day!

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5 days - The invisible creatures on my shoulders are battling for my mind!!!

Really down to the last minute things now!  Too bad the last minute things in my world are finishing setting up our new daughter's room, packing, and getting school ready for my girls for while we are gone!  Those just don't feel like last minute details to me - but yet those are the things I'm still working on.  Yikes, yikes, and yikes again!  The perfectionist devil on my shoulder says that I am the only adoptive parent in history who didn't have their new child's room perfectly set up months in advance!  The reasoning angel on my other shoulder reminds me that I do see progress every day so I should feel good about that and let go of details that don't matter.  I just hope the progress is fast enough to get through it all.  I'm trying to silence that annoying perfectionist devil and resign myself to the knowledge that I will never in a lifetime finish everything I might like done.  But that little perfectionist continues to poison my mind with the strong desire that every little detail in life be picture perfect before I leave!  Of course the quiet voice of the reasoning angel sitting on my other shoulder replies to the devil that every little detail in my life will never be picture perfect, trip or no trip, so to let it go and stop letting that little perfectionist steal my joy and peace!  And thus, the war of the perfectionist devil and the reasoning angel continues daily - sometimes moment by moment! 

I've been continually enjoying a song in the last few weeks, knowing that the closer travel got the more I would relate to this song in lots of humorous ways.  It's called, "This is the stuff" by Francesca Battistelli.  My stuff just happens to be sniffles and coughs, roller shades, filing, and piles everywhere!

Had a neat idea...

6 days and counting!  Or rather, making them count, as my new sign says.  (I got a sign about a week ago that reads, "Don't count the days, Make the days count") 

We had a really neat idea recently that we just today got completed.  Perhaps you've heard of the recordable books that Hallmark sells?  They have quite a selection now, where you record the text on each page and as the child turns each page they hear your voice reading the story.  Well we decided to pick up a simple recordable book, and have a friend read and record it in Chinese!  We are lucky enough to have several friends from China that Jim worked with at his previous job.  One of them, Cong, is actually from Beijing, so we even knew that her dialect of Chinese would match that of Lydia.  So today, Jim met up with her and had her record this book in Chinese for us.  Now we have a picture book, titled "All the Ways I Love You," recorded in Chinese, that we can take with us on our trip and Qian Ting will have a book she can "read" with us that she will understand.  I find it absolutely amazing how God places people in our lives, sometimes years in advance, that can play a specific role sometimes much further down the road.  Many many thanks to Cong for her help with this!  I'm going to hopefully post a video of the book recording here...

The upload quality of the video isn't good enough to read the words on the pages, so here are the words from each page...

(for proper credit, this book is written by Theresa Trinder)

"I love you quicker than a minute, I love you longer than an hour"

"I love you like the honeybee loves buzzing round a flower"

I love you stronger than the wind, I love you softer than a cloud"

"I love when you are quiet, and I love when you are loud"

"I love you closer than your shadow, I love you further than the sun"

"I love you, too, when raindrops fall, one, by one, by one"

"I love you round and round the world, I love you through and through"

"And when it seems impossible to love you more....I do."

What a wonderful blessing to have words of such reassurance and love for Lydia to hear in a language she understands in those early days of being with us.  Thank you Cong!

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