Hello China!

After a very loooong plane ride, we made it to Beijing.  The boys all did GREAT on the plane.  They enjoyed watching the in-flight movies on their own personal screens and, of course, playing their DS's without Mommy hounding them to get off (at least not too often)!  We were met at the airport by our guide from Bethany who had a van with a driver waiting to take us to our hotel.  The hotel (The Chang An Grand) is lovely for the most part and the people are all so friendly, even when they don't have a clue what you are saying to them!  By the time we got into our room it was about 5:30pm Monday Beijing time (or 5:30am Monday morning Baltimore time) and we had been up over 24 hours with just a couple hours of sleep.  We were all so tired we just decided to eat granola bars and pretty much crash.  Although we had barely slept, none of us was able to sleep really well last night except Patrick, who seems to have transitioned to the new time already.  Christopher woke up after just 4 hours of sleep (about 12:30 am) and was pretty much awake the rest of the night.  Stan and I only got a couple of hours each, so please pray that we sleep better tonight.  Tomorrow morning at 8 we meet our guide to go to the orphanage to receive Fu Juan, and we want to be well-rested for that.

Lying awake last night I was wondering how in the world we would survive this trip but things looked much brighter in the morning after eating a yummy breakfast (quite an usual array of food on the hotel's buffet) and drinking a really good cup of coffee (doesn't everything always look better after coffee?!)

After breakfast we were able to skype with family which was a tremendous blessing!  We just got back from exploring a grocery store in the area which was a fun trip.  Next on the agenda is the hotel's pool, which is quite large by hotel standards so the kids may even get a few laps swum :)

Thank you all for your many prayers...we can feel them!  I will try to post tomorrow evening after our precious Catherine is with us...we are counting the hours until we have our new daughter/sister with us!