10 Days From Now

It has been a whirlwind of a week! We received our Travel Approval on Thursday of last week. I was taking a nap and when I woke up I checked my email and there it was! It was very exciting! Dave was home from work so that was wonderful too! The next day we were busy packing for our weekend trip to the Riverhouse to celebrate Christmas with the Koppe family. We left the house at about 11:30. We had just gotten on the interstate and I checked my email again and saw that our US Consulate appointment date had been set! It is scheduled to be on January 23, 2013 which requires us to be in Beijing on January 10, 2013. We were like,"wow, that is only 12 days away"! We decided we needed to go back home and get Dave's travel visa application in the mail ASAP as well as do some flight research. We grabbed some Chick-fil-A, went home and got busy on the paperwork. We were able to get Dave's application overnighted to the Courier in Chicago and make contact with two travel agents. By the time we got to the Riverhouse it was 6:30 pm and we were very close to booking our flights! It was so exciting to be able to share this news with our family AFTER the little ones went to bed. We were surrounded by people who love us and love Cuyler and we were able to share our excitement with them! Fast forward to Monday and we were home to welcome 11 college kids to our home for the week who are in town for Passion. We also booked our flights. We are flying on Korean Airlines and will have a  short layover in Seoul, Korea. We leave on January 9 and arrive on January 10. We meet our son on January 14 in Henan. It still has not sunk in yet that we are going to hold our son for the very first time in just 13 days. Wow! I cannot wait to see him smile. I hope we get that opportunity fairly quickly. This week we have lots to do as we begin to pack and shop for our trip. My mind feels pretty scattered, but it will all begin to fall into place. We are so thankful for this gift of adoption and are so excited to meet Cuyler.