Morning in Beijing

We feel great after a good night's sleep, at least for Abbey and me. Of course, we woke up at 5 a.m.! The hotel had a wonderful breakfast buffet, and in an hour we are going to go do a little shopping before we go to the airport for our flight to Lanzhou. We should receive Alex around 5:30 p.m. China time today (China is 14 hours ahead of Oklahoma time). I'm trying to prepare to be a mom for the second time. Everything is about to change!

Abbey did pretty well on the plane. I don't think we could ask more of a 2 1/2-year-old! We had great seats on the plane. I think they took pity on us. We were in Economy Plus, which has about 5 inches more leg room, and we had 4 seats for the 3 of us, so Abbey could lay down and sleep. A 12-hour plane ride is mind-numbing, as you can imagine. And with a baby it is like a carnival. I know we will have an "interesting" time on the way home - but I can't really think about that right now.

My health is great right now. Abbey is doing great, but Tony isn't feeling so well. I imagine the stress of getting us here has affected him. I think he spent a total of 3 hours on the phone with United over the last 3 days -- in addition to waiting about 4 hours in the airport in Oklahoma City for the weather to clear -- twice (Wednesday and Thursday evenings). He had to change our reservations so many times we stopped counting. We finally got to Denver on Thursday night. We missed our connection to San Franscisco, so we spent the night in Denver. Then we flew to San Francisco on Friday morning and made our Beijing connection just fine. Complications that made the trip interesting were: our plane in OKC had been struck by lightning on its way in to OKC, so the mechanics had to check everything out; the same plane had to be completely de-iced before we took off; our plane from San Francisco to Beijing blew the front tire as we were backing out of the terminal, so they had to change that (I'm super grateful that happened when it did); then we missed our routing over the Pacific and Russia, so they had to reroute the plane. That all took 2 hours. And on and on it goes.

On the flight to Beijing we met 3 other families who are adopting in China, including one family adopting their 8th child here! That family has their Consulate appointment on the same day we do in Guangzhou on Dec. 11th. So does an Asian couple from San Francisco who are adopting from Chongqing, where Abbey spent the first year of her life. Spending some time with Abbey on the plane seemed to heighten their excitement. They were smitten with our little girl.

All and all, this journey here has been a great learning experience -- we are being taught to trust God more and more. We have to know He is always in the details. To tell you the truth, I'm grateful we got here to Beijing a day late. It is very, very smoky here right now (like forest fire smoky). I don't think it would have been beneficial for my lungs to be here longer than necessary. It was also probably the best for Abbey to break the trip up into several days with rest in between.

Well, the next time we post we will have Alex. I'm nervous, but not stressed. Right about now, his nanny is probably packing his things and preparing him for the long car ride to meet us -- maybe the first time in a car since the day he was found outside a pharmacy. We wonder what will be going through his mind during that ride, and how his caretakers are preparing him for his new life.

Thanks for all your prayers and love. -- Gayle