Welcome to my family blog. I have been married to Mike for over half of my life. I love my Savior, Jesus. I am a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom to six terrific, interesting children. My 3 oldest were born to me in my younger years, while my 3 youngest were given to me by God in my older years. I am very blessed. ~Cheri
Greetings from Beijing! We arrived today, Friday around 3:00 p.m. It was a pleasant flight, but it is so long. Everything went very smooth and we had no problems with delays, nothing was lost or broken. We praise the Lord for answering our prayers and watching over the entire trip half way around the world. None of us could sleep very much at all. Jack slept the longest at about 2-3 hours. I think I slept 5 minutes. Words cannot express how good it felt to get a shower and brush our teeth. We were greeted at the airport by Lisa, who brought us to our hotel. We have connecting rooms at the Novotel Peace Hotel in downtown Beijing. Beijing reminds me of other large US cities. You can see much construction in preparation of the 2008 Olympics. It is very beautiful.
One funny story; the bellhop brought our bags into our rooms. He noticed an old dog tag that was on my daughter's bag. It was actually our dog's ID tag when we lived in Illinois. Jordan kept it. So, the bellhop asked if he could have it to give to his girlfriend! He didn't speak much English and he never could get across why his girlfriend would like it, but he insisted she would. Now, there is some girl in China who has an ID tag with Millie's name and address.
This evening Mike, Jordan and Jack ventured out for a walk. They tried a tasty fried banana snack from a streat vendor.and liked it very much. They saw a lot of fresh sea food you could pick out and have cooked. They were not brave enough yet to try any. Mike showed Jack some scorpion on a stick but he didn't have any. Seth and I stayed in the room because Seth was out cold and we couldn't wake him up. We will be in bed early tonight and be rested well for a full day tomorrow.
Hotel Lobby
Street vendors in Beijing
Well, it's 5:00 am Thursday morning and we are getting ready to leave for the airport, off we go. Last night while having family prayer time I believe the Lord gave me a scripture for me and all of us to meditate and be mindful of today and for the entire trip.
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Thy consolations delight my soul.
Psalm 94:19
By the way, this is Mike posting this. I'm sure that Cheri will be doing most of the posting on here so I thought I would mention that.
More to come later.
To view our travel for Eva, click here.
You'll have to read the blog backward.
We are so proud to announce the referral of our daughter, Ling Xu Hong. She was born on 9/12/05 and is in the Shangrao Children's Welfare Center in the city of Shangrao, in the Province of Jiangxi, China. At her last check up on 3/30/06 she weighed 13 pounds and was 24.96 inches long. She is said to be a deep sleeper, can sit up on her own and can distinguish a stranger. She's active and restless, and readily laughs, loves picture books and can be obstinate sometimes.
We will now wait on our translated medical report and we will be sending back our acceptance letter. How could anyone turn down this child!? We then have to wait on China to send back our travel approvals to come into their country. After we receive those, our agency will get appointments at the Consulate Office, passport and visa departments, doctor and probably more appointments that I'm not aware of. After all that gets done, we'll start searching high and low for the best flight fare and start our journey to bring our daughter home.
