Saying goodbye

It was a little hard to tell when the night ended and the day began as we pretty much pulled an all nighter. The children were nestled soundly in bed but it was 5am before we got to sleep in attempts to get all the medical supplies safely packed in crates. We ended up with approx. 200 pounds of urgent needs for the orphanage! The generosity of several local pharmacists have overwhelmed us. We have everything from colostomy bags and IV start kits to vitamins and so much more.

It was bittersweet saying goodbye to E'beth as we know she will have so much fun with at her Grandmothers and THE COUSINS! but we will miss her greatly. She might be having so much fun with all the extra attention she might cry when we come home! Thank you Mom and Chris!!



Two of our 11 flights are now behind us and we are snug in our amazing hotel courtesy of priceline.com. At the last moment, we plugged in a ‘name your own price’ for a luxury hotel just for grins near our layover destination, Washington D.C. --and got what would normally be a room going for over $300/ night for $50.00! !(five, zero!!) Love priceline.

A big thank you to Joel Sanders for helping us get all the crates of supplies and our luggage to the airport and safely tucked into the belly of our CRJ900 aircraft, then driving our car home.

We enjoyed a brief layover in Charlotte NC where John enjoyed a ‘last meal’ of Salsaritas with lots of lettuce and tomatoes (that you can’t have in China) then North to Washington DC where we will spend the night in an attempt to rest for our LONG day tomorrow.





Our day will begin at 7:00 am, with breakfast at our swanky 50/300.00/ night priceline hotel then off to the airport. If you are a die hard China adoption junkie follower you can track the flight via http://www.flightview.com/. Its really quite interesting to follow the progress of an international flight (if you know someone on that particular plane) I guess you really have lead a pretty dull life to sit and watch the little screen change miniscule amounts over the course of 14+ hours!

Our flight leaves at 12:16 p.m. Friday and the path will take us North over Canada, up and over the Arctic circle, over Russia, and then finally about 14 hours later land in Beijing China. China is 12 hours ahead of our time at home, so we actually loose part of a day in flight. (and it happens to be Dave’s birthday.. so we will have to celebrate thinking outside the box We land in Beijing at approx. 2:20 in the afternoon Saturday May 1 and then have about 5 ½ hours to deliver all the medical supplies to our precious friends who run the orphanage ‘Morningstar project’. They will meet us at the airport and we are so excited to see their facility! A whirlwind trip to visit them and then back to the Beijing airport for our continuation onto Guilin which will be 3 more hours of flying.

Guilin will be our final destination for the next 6 days and I KNOW we will be happy to see a flat bed instead of barely reclining airline seats!


Swanky hotel :)