Our Itinerary

Just wanted to post our itinerary so that you could follow along:
Wednesday, October 24 - depart for Beijing
Thursday, October 25 - arrive in Beijing
Friday, October 26 - free day in Beijing
Saturday, October 27 - Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City & Great Wall
Sunday, October 28 - Church and Summer Palace; Evening flight to Taiyuan
Monday, October 29 - MORNING, MEET CALEB FRANKLIN YOUMAN WEIKEL!
Tuesday, October 30 - Civil Affair Registration and Notarization
Wednesday, October 31 - Sight-seeing and Shopping in Taiyuan
Thursday, November 1 - Sight-seeing and Shopping in Taiyuan
Friday, November 2 - Pick up Caleb's passport and fly to Guangzhou
Saturday, November 3 - Medical Appointment and Filling out consulate forms
Sunday, November 4 - Church and Shopping
Monday, November 5 - Sightseeing and shopping
Tuesday, November 6 - Sightseeing and shopping
Wednesday, November 7 - Consulate Appointment
Thursday, November 8 - Pick up Caleb's visa
Friday, November 9 - Depart from Guangzhou for Beijing
Depart from Beijing and arrive at Dulles 7:21pm

The most important dates -
Gotcha day - will probably take place around 11pm your time on Sunday night. We are anticipating a tough transition for Caleb so you probably won't get an update until Monday morning. Please be in prayer for our little guy. His world is about to turn upside down yet again and we are praying that God will ease his fears and give us wisdom.

Arriving home - we will have to go through customs and immigration so that will probably take us awhile. I wouldn't anticipate seeing our dragging rears, I mean our smiling faces right away.

Thanks again for all your prayers. We covet them and cling to them!

new photos

We got a couple of new photos today :) (he is in the brown jacket and green pants) He is once again not looking all that happy about the picture thing but the pictures help me get a good idea how big he is. Only a week left and we'll be on our way to China and Caleb!

Update: We found out that they had to wake him up from his nap again for pictures. I guess we know that his nap time is around 11am and that he does NOT like being woken up!

15 Years

Tonight we celebrated our 15th anniversary with dinner at our favorite restaurant. Awaiting me at our table was the collection of 15 red roses, one for every year we've been married. At some point this tradition might get a little crazy but for right now, the rose bush is managable :) These great candy signs were on our dessert plates (along with some mighty fine desserts!). I thought that was such a nice touch! We have both been musing this past week that if we had known 15 years ago that we'd be getting ready to bring our 5th child home, homeschooling, running a successful business - well we might have high tailed it out of there :) Instead, God has given us each step as we needed it and the path behind us has been one of joy and fullfillment beyond what either of us could ever have hoped for. I am so thankful for my wonderful husband - I can't imagine being on this journey without him!
I love you Ken!!!!!

Caleb's special place

We put the finishing touches on Caleb's spot in the room he and Jacob will be sharing. Mom made the great quilt :)

My new found computer skills

Yes, I'm self taught and I am easily impressed with my new found skills. I know some of you are snickering but this is definitly not my forte! I think I've finally figured out how to use our photobucket account so that we can download lots of photos without having to put them in the body of our blog. I know all of you want to see ALL of our photos :) Check out the beginnings of our packing at the link to the left - Getting Ready under our photobucket account.

Our sweet boy!

Guy Time

This past weekend was our Boys' Night Out at Church. This is the guy version of a mother/daughter banquet. Instead of dresses and a seated meal served by the men, the guys get to tailgate on the church grounds on burgers/dogs and the fixins. They had a good time doing guy stuff (throwing footballs, eating on the ground, wearing their jerseys...) Next year there will be another Weikel boy to join the mayhem!!