We're going to China!

Two days ago, we got a call from our adoption agency and they told us to pack our bags for China!  Our paperwork has finally been processed by the bureau in China and we got our travel dates.  We will be leaving the country on Tues., January 13, 2015 which is less than 2 weeks from now.

So our preparations have swung into high gear...

We bought another car seat for Xiao Yu and here is Elvin installing it into our minivan.  We will need it to bring Xiao Yu home from the airport.

We have made our bedroom a staging area for packing our bags.  We hope to take 3 large rolling duffel bags that we've borrowed from Emily's sister.  We are trying to pack sooner rather than later, in case we realize that we need a 4th bag and need to re-organize things.  There is also a 40 pound weight limit in China, so we can't stuff our bags too full!

We will be flying into Beijing and it can be really cold there.  So we are making sure that our kids have warm clothes.  So we had Gabey try on a down jacket with a thick fleece sweatshirt underneath.  The verdict?  "Too SMALL!" he said.

According to him, he couldn't move his arms.

We found a larger down jacket that he'll be wearing and this one will go to Xiao Yu.

Yesterday we also booked our flights to and from China.  Emily spent the entire day with several travel agents nailing down the best itinerary for our family.  We were worried about not getting seats close to each other and feel lucky and blessed that we were able to get seats clumped close together both going there and coming back.  We'll be flying from Portland to Seattle to Beijing, with the transpacific flight being 12 hours long...  Yes, we are bringing iPads, iPhones, iPods--basically iAnything that will keep the kids occupied.  We are also bringing a bag of cheese puffs from Trader Joe's.  Elvin calls it cocaine for the kids.

And what happens when Mommy is busy all day long and not paying attention to the kids?  Well, it looks like a tornado has swept through our living room...