Some Beijing Sights

Today we met our guide, George, and spent the day seeing some of Beijing.  We also met the rest of our travel group, so it was fun to get to know them a little.  We packed a lot into one day!  We started out after breakfast with a visit to the jade factory, then we went to the Great Wall for a hot, steep climb!  We had lunch together before heading to see some of the venues from the 2008 Olympics and ending the day with an acrobatics show.  We are told that the show was awesome, but we spent the better portion of it in the lobby after the "stacking chairs" acrobat and loud drumbeat freaked Mary Helen out!  Oh well, at least I got a diet Coke in the lobby!  We head to Zhengzhou tomorrow, but here are a few pictures from today.

The Great Wall

Daddy and Mary Helen on the Great Wall

Very steep...and my fear of heights got the best of me right about here!

Heading back down

Looking up a portion of the Wall

In front of the "Bird's Nest" Olympic venue

The acrobatic act that pushed Mary Helen over the edge

Opening of the Acrobatics Show

Saw her in the lobby as the others left the show...beautiful!



We Made it to Beijing!

It's very late, so this will be a short post.  But, we made it to Beijing safe and sound and had wonderful flights!  Great weather, nice clean planes with plenty of space, all flights on time, and Mary Helen slept about 7-8 hours of the long flight.  Early tours for us tomorrow, so that's all for now.  I'll post after we've seen some of Beijing later today!

Detroit to Beijing

Mary Helen texting on her pink Dollar Tree calculator!

We're Finally Going!

It's official! We are finally leaving to bring Maggie home on July 14th! My head is spinning trying to plan what to pack. There's just so much we don't know about her!

For those of you who haven't "met" Maggie, she was born on October 15, 2009. So she'll be just over 21 months when we finally hold her. She is currently in foster care in Henan province, which will make this a very different trip than our trip for Mary Helen. We saw Maggie last October on our agency's Waiting Child photolisting. She had not been matched to another family, so we asked to review her file...and here we are! Mary Helen is so excited to be a big sister! We are almost ready to board that plane and take a giant leap of faith!!

The first picture we saw of Maggie

Our most recent picture...obviously after a tumble and in need of TLC!