Hoping For Hannah

Our journal doesn't stop here. You can find details of our trip in the Travel Journal and post-adoption updates under the Updates menu item.

	1 Day To Liftoff: Our bags are packed and we're ready to go! There's nothing left to do but get on a plane and head to Hannah. Nobody has a right to be this happy! Please keep us in your prayers. Pray for a safe journey, for Hannah's heart to be prepared for the changes ahead of her and to be open to us as her parents, and that we will have incredible peace, patience, and love for this beautiful young girl. (Posted: 3/17/2009)
	2 Days To Liftoff: Yes, we’ll be on our way in less than 2 days. More importantly, one week from today we’ll meet our daughter. This wonderful thought has occupied our minds all day. We’re almost ready to go. We packed and weighed everything today. After redistributing the load a bit, we were able to make the weight limits, more or less. As long as we can carry the 5 pounds of adoption documents as a personal item, we should be alright. If not, we’ll just pay the fee and be on our way to Nanning. What’s a few more bucks after all the money we’ve already spent? (Posted: 3/16/2009)
	3 Days To Liftoff: We finished terrorizing the family with our new cameras today. Since we needed to get some experience using them, we could find no more deserving subjects than the same family who tortures us with their cameras at family functions. Turn about is fair play, people. To that end, we had grandma, grandpa and some of the aunts, uncles, and cousins make short videos for Hannah in which they introduced themselves and welcomed her into the family. We’ve put them on our laptop so Hannah can see them while we’re in China. Let’s hope she doesn’t see these videos and go running back to the orphanage. Attention family function photo freaks: We won’t hesitate to put these videos on our website if you photograph us at the next family function. (Posted: 3/15/2009)
	4 Days To Liftoff: We went to Schoop's Hamburgers today to have our last 100% beef burger for quite some time. We've been going just about every Saturday during our adoption to commemorate the passing of another week of waiting for Hannah — that's a lot of burgers. It's hard for us to believe this ritual is coming to an end. Anyway, two of our regular waitresses, Amy and Carrie, surprised us with a 50th anniversary Barbie for Hannah. What a heartwarming and thoughtful gesture. Thanks you guys! She will be so excited. If you click the picture, you can see most of the fun stuff we're taking for Hannah. A lot of it was given to us by family and friends. We'd like to thank the Dykstras, Vrees, Karen's co-workers, and, of course, grandma and grandpa for these gifts. They're sure to put a smile on Hannah's face. For the record the Nintendo DS we purchased for Hannah isn't in the picture because we're too busy playing with it — so we can show Hannah how to use it, of course. (Posted: 3/14/2009)
	5 Days To Liftoff: We're still running around picking up odds & ends, BUT we think we finally have it all surrounded. We'll go to Target tomorrow for our Saturday night date and finish off the list ... or so we hope. If only we could figure out how to pack all this stuff so we can actually find it during our trip. (Posted: 3/13/2009)
	6 Days To Liftoff: We had a phone conference with our travel group today. Topics discussed included itineraries, documents, packing lists, and, of course, luggage restrictions. It seems most of our group is facing the same problem we are: The packed luggage weighs far too much. This weekend we'll be doing some serious luggage liposuction. Everything will be fine for us once we have Hannah because we'll have another suitcase and carry-on to use. Until then, we'll pack our pockets and hope for the best at the airports in China. (Posted: 3/12/2009)
	7 Days To Liftoff: Busy, busy, busy just about sums it up. We’re running around like nuts trying to get all the stuff we need for the trip. Last Saturday we entered Target at 6:00 pm with our packing list and checked out at 9:30 pm. That was a very long and grueling trip for us since neither of us really likes shopping. Even though we’re still making daily trips to pick up odds & ends, we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now we’re a bit concerned with packing all this stuff. The luggage restrictions in China are 11 lbs for the carry-on and 44 lbs for the checked bag. The big problem is that our empty carry-on weighs 9 lbs, leaving a measly 2 lbs for packed goods. Yikes! We’ve already dumped one carry-on suitcase in favor of a backpack that is considerably lighter. We’re also considering the possibility of investing in cargo pants that have numerous, large pockets. (Posted: 3/11/2009)
	We received our China visas today. This was the last bit of paperwork we needed to complete in order to go to China. It's nearly impossible for us to believe there's no more paperwork standing between us and Hannah — so weird we even had Betty at FTIA repeatedly confirm this fact. Barring an act of God, we're positively leaving for China next Wednesday to be united with Hannah. (Posted: 3/10/2009)
	Yesterday, Anne from Red Thread confirmed that Hannah received her care package "several days ago." We'll take that to mean she got it last Thursday or Friday. We're very happy the care package finally got to her after being in transit for 2 weeks. Let's hope she likes it! (Posted: 3/10/2009)
	We received our Final Travel Approval last Friday. It's very pretty with the red star and all. Oddly enough, there is a very faint, photocopied image of Yuzhu on the TA that doesn't look very much her at all. At least her name is correct. In case you're wondering what the heck a Final Travel Approval is, think of it as a formal invitation from the Chinese government for us to travel to China to complete our adoption. (Posted: 3/10/2009)
	The full itinerary for our trip was emailed to us today. Drum roll please. On the afternoon of Monday, March 23rd, we will go to the Civil Affairs Bureau of Guangxi Province to be united with Hannah! Put another way, 18 days from now we'll be wrapping our arms around our beautiful daughter for the first time. We are soooooooo unbelievably excited! We've posted our full itinerary on the Travel page. Enjoy! (Posted: 3/05/2009)
	Our care package arrived at Red Thread's office in Guangzhou, China on Monday. According to Ann, everything arrived in good shape except the tiara that came with Barbie. Apparently it was cracked. Our package was then combined with the items we purchased from Red Thread and mailed. (Click the teddy bear to see the whole thing.) Hannah should get it by the end of this week. We're just hoping she doesn't write us a letter because we'll probably be in China before it reaches us. (Posted: 3/02/2009)
	We're going to China baby! FTIA successfully scheduled an appointment for us at the US Consulate in Guangzhou. We're leaving on March 18th and returning on April 2nd. We don't have our itinerary yet, but we have begun planning the trip. In roughly 22 days we'll meet our daughter for the first time. This seems like a dream! We will be traveling with our friends as we'd hoped. We're very excited about that. It should make the trip a little easier. (Posted: 2/27/2009)
	We asked FTIA for updates and boy did we get 'em. It took us the better part of 3 hours to drag ourselves off the floor and post these pictures for you. There just aren't words to describe how amazed we are that this beautiful girl is our daughter. (Posted: 2/25/2009)

Enough with the chit chat. Let's move on to the star of our show ...