The Countdown is On!

That's right...we're a mere FOUR days from being on a plane to China! It has been a ridiculously busy week, and we know that the weekend will be even busier, but it will be SO worth it! We leave for China on Tuesday morning! We will be in Beijing for a few days to do some sight-seeing and adjust to the 12-hour time difference. We have booked a private tour for the three days we are there (ooh...so fancy!), and we will get to see all of the major sites. Then we are off on flight #2 (well, really flight #3 as we have to fly though Chicago to get to Beijing on Tuesday) to Kunming, the city where Hannah is! We'll arrive the evening of March 28, and we are scheduled to get Hannah around noon on March 29 - exactly four years to the day after we sent our paperwork to China! We will be spending a week in Kunming, finalizing the adoption, getting Hannah's passport, and soaking in the sights and sounds of her city. We're excited to have a few extra days here before flying to Guangzhou, the city where the US Consulate is. In Guangzhou we'll be getting Hannah's visa and taking care of all of the paperwork to ensure that the moment we set foot on US soil, she will become a US citizen! We'll be taking the oath at the US Consulate and flying home on April 10. It's a long trip - longer than we had anticipated, due to a few weekends and a minor holiday thrown into the mix (Tomb Sweeping Day anyone?), but I'm sure it will be wonderful. Anyone who knows us knows that Chris is a super traveler and Mara isn't at all (prescription-strength Dramamine = packed!), but it will all be well worth it. And my mantra is that 15 hours in coach is better than 15 hours in labor! :)

This all also means that we will be celebrating Passover in China. Mara has been saying all along that we would be in China for Passover...sure, we thought Passover 2007, but still...Passover. :) "My First Passover" bibs from Auntie Shana, Passover picture books, and a box of matzah are packed. Not really how I anticipated celebrating her first Passover, but Passover in China with Hannah is way better than Passover at home without her.

We're mostly ready to go here. Her room is ready for her, and we are starting to get packed. Sure, the house isn't as clean as I would like (my plan of getting all of the carpets steam cleaned will just have to wait until we get home!), but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that in just over a week, Hannah will be in our arms.

Visas in hand...one step closer to Hannah!

It has been a CRAZY month! It is hard to believe that one month ago we had just seen our baby's face for the first time. As you might imagine, I haven't slept much since we received our referral! Sure, I'm exhausted, but it's good practice (and good to know that I can function on much less sleep than I usually get!). So, what have we been up to? Well, other than being in full-blown panic mode (which Mara has been in for most of the past month), we are trying very hard to get everything ready for Hannah! We had NOTHING ready at all. We have used Hannah's room for storage for nearly 10 years. This was not a great idea. :) So we have cleaned everything out, made many many trips to the thrift store and the dump, and are down to the last few boxes (which have now been moved to our basement!). We ordered her furniture (thanks Bubbie & Zaide!) two weeks ago, and this past weekend painted the walls a beautiful princess pink! Mara will be steam cleaning the carpet tomorrow (that DOES sound like fun, right?), and the furniture arrives on Thursday! Just need to go and buy a mattress, some bedding (we picked out this set), and a bookcase and the room will be ready (well, ready enough) for Hannah! Sure, we don't have a lot of clothes (or anything else yet!), but it doesn't really matter, does it?

We've also been working on lots of paperwork. Mara went to the Chinese Embassy today with DeeDee & George, our new friends and travel partners (they received a referral for an ADORABLE little boy the same day as us from the same orphanage - we will be traveling to Kunming together) and got our Chinese Visas! The visa office for the Embassy is quite an experience, but the people who work there might be some of the nicest people we have dealt with through the entire process. If everyone in China is as nice as the women we dealt with today, we may never come home! :) Now we just wait for our TAs...our Approval to Travel to China. Once we receive our TA, our agency can make our appointments at the US Consulate, we can book our airplane tickets, and we can go get Hannah! I have no idea when this will happen. Our agency thinks it may be another few weeks, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that they are wrong and we will receive them this week (other families with other agencies who received their referrals on the same day as us have been told that their TAs are on their way...hopefully ours are too!). We will travel 1-3 weeks after we receive our TA, so keep your fingers crossed that they are in the mail!! :)

A big thank you again to everyone for all the kind wishes. I haven't been able to email or call everyone back, but please know how much it means to us. This has been a VERY long journey (ugh...whenever a contestant on a reality show says that, Chris rolls his eyes and says "Don't Stop BELIEVING!!"), but it is amazing to know how much Hannah is loved. I cannot wait to tell her how many people were waiting for her!

Thank You!

It's been a few days since we first saw our little peanut's face, and it's still hard to believe it's real. I don't think I can even begin to describe how overwhelmed we are with all of the messages and calls of love we have received in the past few days. I cannot wait to tell our daughter how many people were waiting for her and were so excited for her to be coming home. She might be on the other side of the world from us, but I think she might be the most loved little girl in the whole world.

We have decided to name her Hannah Christine (since "peanut" isn't going to be great for a teenager!). She's named for her great-grandmothers, who we know would be over the moon with love with her. We now know that she was a preemie - she weighed just under 4 pounds when she arrived at the orphanage (she was found on July 3, just a few days after she was born). She is still tiny - at the end of October she was 24" long and weighed just under 12 1/2 pounds. The health records look pretty good, though I am going to have my doctor take a look at them next week (we're expecting a massive snowstorm starting tomorrow, so it'll be a couple of days before we can get out of the house!). In Kunming, where Hannah is, most of the children spend time in foster care, so it is highly likely that she is with a foster family right now, though we don't know for sure. All we know is that we are ready to have her home now! :)