We received an email from our agency today with our travel dates.  We will be leaving from Tri-Cities airport in Blountville on August 30th and will arrive back home on September 14th.  With Guangdong province's confirmation to our agency regarding the extended stay of 5 additional days, we were expecting to be in China for at least 3 weeks.  As it turns out, our facilitator was somehow able to trim those five extra days down to one.  Amazingly so, our actual time in China will be one day LESS than we were there when we traveled for Jada.

We are SO excited to finally have these dates set and will work these last few days to prepare for the LONG trip to Beijing.  With our first trip, we had a non-stop flight from Chicago to Beijing.  This time, we fly to Detroit, then to Tokyo, and then on to Beijing.  With the scheduled layovers, we will land in Beijing approximately 25 hours after we take off from Tri-Cities.  And on top of all that, we will have a feisty and VERY energetic 3.5 year old who hasn't been on a plane since she was 11 months old.  Somebody shoot me now!

I realize this journal has been pretty sparse as far as news and pictures are concerned.  I hope all that will be forgotten and forgiven when we begin our forever lives with our sweet Ruby.  We are SO looking forward to having her home and watching her grow and mature into a wonderful little girl just as Jada has.  Jada is SO excited and mentions going to China to get Ruby several times a day.

Okay, I'll sign off for now.  If you have not yet subscribed for journal update notification emails, I hope you will check back here often while we are in China.  I guarantee there will be listed experiences worth reading and posted pictures worth seeing.  If not, I'll be happy to refund your money - no questions asked.

See you FROM China!