We made it to China!

This morning we got up and left for the airport at 9am.  Two of Emily's brothers, Charles and Hugh, came over to drive a second car, so that one of them could drive our van home.  Thanks Charles and Hugh!

We needed a driver to come in a different car because we no longer have room for any passengers...Xiao Yu's car seat takes up our last extra seat!

Here is a family picture in PDX before checking in...

Here is our mess of luggage and carry-ons before checking in.  The two black bags are coming along for the ride.  There are many organizations in the U.S. that run orphanages in China.  One U.S. agency gets a huge amount of donations and given that it costs a lot to ship packages to China, they are asking for volunteers who can take luggage there.  The orphanage representative met us at the airport and picked up his black suitcases.

After we weighed all the duffel bags, Gabriel also wanted to weigh his carry-on bag and dumped it onto the scale.  It weighed one pound.  We explained to him that we are not checking in his stuffed animal and toys.

 At PDX, it was Gabey's first time on the rolling walkways.  He thought it was fun.

And how did we pass time at the gate?  Reading books and stuffing goldfish into one's face.

The airline stewardess had Elvin put Gabey on his own seat during take off, which he did NOT like.  In unfamiliar situations, he wants Daddy to hold him.  After the 10 minutes of screaming during take off, Gabey felt especially clingy.

 In SeaTac, we had the kids burn off energy in the airport playground.

In Seattle, we boarded a 4pm flight to Beijing.  It was about an 11 hour flight, one hour less than we had thought!

All the seats has television screens in the back, with tons of kid's programming, so that the kids could watch what they wanted.  This augmented the toys and iPads we brought and definitely helped.  Here are the kids occupying themselves with videos plus toys and books.

Two hours later...more of the same.  You'll see in the far seat next to Eliana was Erica.  She is our 20-something niece that we invited along to help out with corralling all the kids.  She flew out of Boise and met up with us in Seattle.

The hours slowly rolled along...

By that time Gabriel dozed off, sitting straight up in his chair (a first for him!)... and slept for only one hour.  It turned out that this was his "nap" since he missed the one he usually takes at around noon.

By this time, it was about 11pm Pacific Time.  This is the latest Karina has ever stayed up...she fell asleep soon after that.  And then Gabriel feel asleep too.

We were getting really close to Beijing.

Gabey and Karina were dead asleep.

Eliana, on the other hand, had a hard time on the flight.  With about 3 hours to go, she started feeling airsick and started throwing up.  It was a really tough time for her and we all felt very bad.  She threw up more on the van ride to the hotel and more at the hotel.  She collapsed exhausted in bed.  If you can remember to pray for her, especially for the plane ride back home, we would be grateful.  She is really apprehensive about that.

We were able to get two rooms that are connected.  We are designating one room at the "sleeping room" (picture above) and one for the kids that are awake (picture below).  You can see the various "beds" on the ground for the kids in the sleeping room.  

As of right now, it's 11pm local time and 7am Pacific Time (China is 16 hours ahead of Pacific Time). Gabe and Karina are still awake and watching a video since they got a good chunk of sleep on the plane.  Elvin is staying up with them until it seems like they are tired...hopefully soon!