Down to the wire

It's 4 days before we leave and time to start packing. OK, everyone else has been doing this for weeks now, but we're experienced China travellers and we're not planning on bringing all the stuff we did last time. The three duffle bags came down last night, and we'll start putting things together today/tomorrow. Clothes, antibiotics, all our paperwork, and electronics - see, a short list :) We'll just purchase whatever else we need overseas. We still need to put together the Qianjiang photo collages to bring, asking the orphanage Director if we happen to already have photos of any of the aunties who took care of Chloe (while she was there) or Lily; Sunday is getting to be an ever-busier day for me.

Chloe had a great time at Disney last w/e, even though Daddy forgot to bring her blue flower swimsuit ring; she made do with the "wife jakit" that the Boardwalk pool had instead, and pretty much jumped in and swam all over for several hours over a couple days with or without our consent it seemed. How we're ever going to leave this little girl on Tuesday night and go away for two weeks escapes me; I hope she does better than we're likely to.... and given her learning progress rate lately, she'll probably be doing long division and writing a followup to Harry Potter 7 when we get back.

We'll post as often as we can, including movies and pix of Lily so let's hope that she does a few cute things along the way. And maybe by the time we get home, she won't be in time-out anymore -- Chloe's been saying this a lot lately talking about her little sister, but it's not quite clear why baby Lily is spending so much time there.

TA's, consulate appointment and our travel dates!

OK, we received our travel authorizations from the Chinese government last week, our appointment in the American consulate was confirmed on Monday, and our travel dates are now set. Whew, it's great to finally have our plans on solid ground.

The 3 week countdown has now begun - we leave for China on Wed 8/1 and return to Tampa on Thur 8/16. 23+ hours flying back with a 11 month old in tow, but it will hopefully be made easier by our being in Business/First class. Plus, I doubt that Lily is going to sleep much after we get home at 6pm since her world will still be in China time, 12 hours off. In the meantime, I get to plan how to get all the Chinese Barbie dolls home for the girls :).

Chloe is all into the countdown now too - first Saturday (this week) sleepover at Grandma's, second Saturday going to Disney to see Nemo (the last chance in her favorite place as an only child), and the third Saturday Nana and Grampa arrive to stay with her while Mommy and Daddy go to China. We're taking a webcam with the laptop, and hopefully the broadband speed in China will be good enough for the video calls to work and we can still talk to her while we're gone.

--troy

Lily's travel blog goes live!

So with the start of the final month before we travel to meet Lily and bring her home, all of the background testing and prep for her Blog is now done. Seems fitting that we should start this on the 1st day of the month too. The link to this page is www.chloesmeimeilily.blogspot.com/. We'll probably be posting periodically in the next few weeks, as final travel preparations begin for our tentative dates Aug 2-16. This time I think we're going to pack a lot lighter than Chloe's trip, the more room to have for chinese Barbie dolls on the way home :))

So come along and enjoy the trip with us. Until later........

--troy