Close, but no cigar

The ice storm has us stranded for one more day.

Once United Airlines issued a weather waiver yesterday afternoon, we decided to try to leave OKC before our scheduled departure time, ahead of what local weathermen began calling the worst winter storm in several years. We finally got cleared about 7:30 p.m. to leave for Chicago on a 10 p.m. flight (which originally was supposed to leave at 2:30 p.m.). Gayle's parents took us to the airport, and we waited at the gate with our plane in sight the entire time. About 10:15, shortly after ice began falling, the pilot canceled the flight.

We spent the night at Gayle's parents' home and got rebooked for this afternoon. The first leg takes us to L.A. After a seven-hour layover, we leave L.A. at 12:30 a.m. for a direct flight that lands in Beijing at 5:30 a.m. Saturday (about 13 hours after we were scheduled to arrive there).

All of this is rather iffy. We don't know yet whether the flight leaving OKC will be delayed or canceled.

Meanwhile, the flight we originally were to leave on apparently left as scheduled at 7:45 a.m. today. Arrggh.

Warm Hats for Orphanage Babies

I wanted to share with you all about a wonderful gift that has been made by one of the girls in my church high school small group and her mother. Jenna, who has been a part of my small group for 4 years, has been crocheting baby hats for months.(Our daughter Abbey models a few of the hats in the photo) Jenna's mom Julie has been helping her and together they have made dozens of baby hats for us to take to the children at the Pingliang orphanage where Alex has been living. Pingliang is located in Northwest China in Gansu Province. Gansu lies just south of Inner Mongolia - and it is very cold there in the winter. Although we don't know the specifics for our sons' orphanage, our guess is that they do not have heat. These warm wonderful hats are going to make lots of babies and children very happy. And these hats are soo cute too! Jenna and Julie have made them colorful and whimsical. The best thing about these hats to us, is that they were made by hand and they took lots of time to make. As a person who (badly) knits on occasion, each stitch made is like a little prayer for the recipient. It is impossible to not think about the person who will be receiving your gift as you are making it. So thank you Jenna and Julie, for your precious gift.

We are going to China!

We finally received our travel approval today to go to China! We couldn't have asked for a better morning - we got a call from our agency at 8:30am and they told us the great news. We are scheduling to leave next week and returning mid-December. Alex is now 20 months old and we will most likely schedule his first cleft palate repair surgery for some time in January. We are so blessed and happy that he will be home with us for Christmas.

Say a prayer for us as we learn the whole new world of having not one, but two toddlers. Say a prayer too for the nice people sitting by us on the plane ride home:) We are going to offer all of them some ear plugs as a peace offering.

Still Waiting

We had hoped to be in China by Halloween. That benchmark date came and went. Now, here we are, four days before Thanksgiving, still waiting for the call.

Because of the 13-hour time difference between here and Beijing, our case manager at Dillon International will know within moments after her arrival at work each morning whether our travel approval has been faxed from China overnight. Since our last blog post, she has been gracious enough to e-mail us by 8:30 each morning with a message along the lines of, "Sorry, not yet."

So many reasons to hope and pray for travel approval soon: The quickly changing weather in northern China; the knowledge that our son's bed is next to an exterior door with what appears to be lousy or no insulation; the plane ticket costs that escalate to nearly triple the normal fare around the Christmas holidays; our son's need to begin the surgeries and subsequent speech therapy that will change his life forever; and, of course, our desire to begin our life as a family with him as soon as possible.

Instead, we wait, and we pray for patience and for God's will to be done. This is the hardest part. God just doesn't seem to be cooperating. Then, I'm reminded that we thought the same thing the month before we received our referral for Abbey. It came late, meaning our referral came separately -- and to a different city and province in China -- from the group we expected to travel with. We were devastated. And then, three weeks later, totally out of the blue, we received the phone call and the photo of Abbey. It was enough to make us wonder how we could ever doubt God's timing again.

But now we do. At least for today.

Waiting for Travel Clearance

We are anxiously awaiting our travel clearance to go to China to receive Alex. It is day 60 of our wait for TA (travel approval). We are hoping that it comes this week. If it does, we think we might get to leave in 2 or 3 weeks. We are so curious about Alex. We wonder how big he is and if he has hair... We haven't seen any new pictures of him since June. The only thing that we have learned is that he hasn't had his cleft palate repaired and that he won't have it done in China. As soon as we receive our TA we can make our hospital appointments here in the states to have his surgery done when we return home. We will most likely have it done very quickly so he can begin to catch up with his speech development.

It has been easier to prepare for this trip to China. We already know what to take and we are familiar with the paper work etc... Mostly, we are trying to prepare mentally for having 2 busy toddlers! We are taking Abbey with us to China so we will definately have our hands full on the trip. It will be a big adjustment for both kids getting used to each other. We would appreciate your prayers for a smooth transistion. We believe that Abbey will be a great big sister as soon as she gets okay with sharing mom and dad. She is such a little mommy and she is really good at helping now - it shouldn't take her long to get used to the idea of a little brother (di di in Chinese).

We received some new photos of Alex (we decided on a name!) last weekend from some other families with our agency who travelled to adopt from the same orphanage that he is in. It was awesome to see him - he has grown so much. He looks like he is healthy and loved and we couldn't ask for more while we wait to travel. Bless his heart though, he is dressed in little girl's clothing. They most likely don't get many donations of clothing for boys there, so they probably just make do with what is available.

Referral pictures

The Thornton Family

This fall we plan to travel to China to adopt our second child, Xiao Bei, who is in Gansu Province in Northwest China.