Hi everyone!! Things are great, we are all doing well and feeling great!! Today we went to the Tianamin square and the Forbidden city. Tonight we went to an acrobatic show and afterwards we went to a chinese restaurant that was very, very good. It was a fun but long day. We did have a surprise that everyone here is very attracted to Heather and they love to look at her and some of them even would like to take pictures of her because they hardly see anyone with her hair color. She was a little scared at first but after awhile got used to it and is having a ton of fun. She really loved the acrobatic show and thought the chinese dinner was awesome. Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall and fly onto Guangzhou to get Hannah. Here are a few pictures of our day. It may be a few days before we can update again as we will get into Guangzhou late and we are not sure yet what time we will be picking up Hannah. One of the families we are with also has a blog and she will have some great pictueres of our time on her blog. The computer uploaded some pictures that I was not planning on and included some pictures of the acrobatic team.



http://www.grantps.net/PC/Media_Center/Meet%20the%20Staff/Index.htm

Nehow!
We are safe in China. We are really roughing it! Bejing is a very large city with 13 million people. There are bikes everywhere. The one picture is of a resturant and as you can see they are honest about their service! It was nice to just hang out today as tommorrow we will be busy doing the turist thing. We will try to keep updating as much as possible. God bless you all!

A big hello from Beijing, China. Our flights were some of the smoothest flights we have ever had. Our suitcases even arrived just fine. I always said that I would never fly

Northwest and they were wonderful. We arrived last night at 9:00pm China time. We are exactly 12 hours ahead of Michigan time. It is strange because in Russia I felt uncomfortable being their the first few days and here in China it feels like Home.

Heather was a huge trooper on the flight and did awesome!!! She was very happy as on our last flight she got to watch the movie 8 below on her own personal screen. She loved the whole experience and truly enjoyed her self. We had no melt downs at all and we were so proud of. She only asked one time we there yet one time and that was in the van on the way to the airport.

We were met at the airport by a nice young lady name Silena. She was quite perky and happy and talked non stop about the city and things we are doing. Today is a free day and we are going to leave in a few minutes to walk around Beijing and do some shopping.

We had a wonderful breakfast at the buffet which is included in our room price.

We felt your prayers so much. Last night I had tears in my eyes when I realized we are now in Hannah’s home country. Tomorrow is her birthday if you would stop and remember a small prayer for tomorrow that would be great. (or I should say on Saturday)

We love and miss you guys but so far its been wonderful to be here.

Nikolas here is your special message for the day. Congratulations on making it to the 4^th grade and take special care of Aunty.

Katie, congrats on making it to the 2^nd grade.

Caleb, Hope you had a really fun day fishing with Grandpa!!

Here are a few pictures. Our camera is not hooking up well but from now on we will share with Teresa's pictures and when we can get ours figured out we will share the few new pictures we got this morning.

Not really a whole lot to report but I had a few minutes so I thought I would post something. I can hardly believe that in 3 days we will be on our way. The kids are all packed. Katie and Nikolas will be leaving on Tuesday night. Caleb will be coming back to the airport with us and then riding home with Grandpa Visser as Grandpa has promised to take him fishing for a couple of days. In fact Caleb is so excited about this he came up to me on Saturday night and said that we could leave now. He just kind of did is Caleb smirk and laughed. Crazy kid.

I have to say it makes me feel so much better that they are happy about staying with Relatives. It gives me so much peace to know they are very well taken care of and loved so much back here. I will have a few minutes of Sadness Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and then our big adventure will begin.

more later

Not really a whole lot to report but I had a few minutes so I thought I would post something. I can hardly believe that in 3 days we will be on our way. The kids are all packed. Katie and Nikolas will be leaving on Tuesday night. Caleb will be coming back to the airport with us and then riding home with Grandpa Visser as Grandpa has promised to take him fishing for a couple of days. In fact Caleb is so excited about this he came up to me on Saturday night and said that we could leave now. He just kind of did is Caleb smirk and laughed. Crazy kid.

I have to say it makes me feel so much better that they are happy about staying with Relatives. It gives me so much peace to know they are very well taken care of and loved so much back here. I will have a few minutes of Sadness Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and then our big adventure will begin.

more later

We just received an email with our in-China itinerary!! This seems more real each and every day.
For those of you who would like to follow along with our journey I will post what we will be doing!!

June 8 - Arrive in Beijing at 9:25 pm

June 9 - Free day

June 10 - Visit Tinanmen Square, the Forbidden city and we go on some Hutong tour. We then go to an Acrobatic show in the the evening.

June 11 - Visit Great wall and the Closionne Factory. We then fly out that night to Guangzhou and to the famous White Swan Hotel.

June 12 - Gotcha day!!!!! Today we meet Hannah!!!!!!!!

June 13 - Adoption registration and notarization

June 14 - Nate's birthday and we get a free day!

June 15 - Visit Guanzhou folk Art Museum

June 16 - Visa pictures and medical exam

June 17 - Free day

June 18 - Visit Yuexiu Park

June 19 - Visa appointment (we get Hannah's visa to
come to the United States

June 20 - 3:00 pm. Go to the consulsate and take the
oath to pick up visa.

June 21 - We come home.

Hard to believe in 20 more days we will have another daughter!!!!

I have to laugh. We found out this past Thursday that we were saying our daughters name all wrong!!! :)

We thought our daughters name was Fang Yan when in reality her name is Yan Fang!! We found out when we filled out the embassy paperwork and had fogotten that other countries always put the last name first!!

Of course I still have no idea how to pronounce it!!!

Hard to believe in 2 1/2 weeks we will be leaving to meet her!!!

Last night we met with our SW and went over all the last minute documents and items we would need for the embassy in Guangzhou. We also got great news when we found out one of the families we were hoping to travel with got their travel approval last night!!! We were very happy!!! It looks like there will be 8 of us traveling and they even have us together on the airline!! I don't think Northwest will know what hit them!!!

Hard to believe in 19 days we will be going to see our new daughter!!!!!!! I am nervous, scared and excited all wrapped up in one!!!!

Not a ton to update today. We are waiting for our E-tickets to arrive and then it will really seem real.

We know for sure that one family is traveling with us and that will be nice. I know so many of you have been praying a long with us for the Bonks. They have take a leap of faith and purchased Adoption fare tickets on Northwest so that WHEN their Travel approval comes they are all set!!! The nice thing with Adoption fare tickets is that you can change them or cancel them with no penalty!!

Here is our little sweetie!!!

Her birthday is June 10 and she will be 6!

As you can see we will be in China over her birthday and as it looks may possibly even get her on her birthday!!!

The First post was actually done back in February but I realized I had never finished working on my blog and I had forgotten I had started it!! Thanks to my good friend Cheri pushing me on this I guess I will have to try to work at it again!!

Okay! Wow it was quite a night last night. I think I had every emotion go through and I forget how I get when everything has to be done at once. It was so nice to go to the spring banquet and church last night with my mom and just relax!!!

So this is our update!

It looks like we are leaving on June 7th at 10:30 am. and of all things we will be on Northwest and God is amazing as I have such a peace about this. I was set on United until my husband and I started looking at the pros and cons.

With United we had to go to Hong Kong and spend at least $250 on a hotel in the airport not to mention another flight to get to Hong Kong and food while we were there for one night. It really kind of looked like it was adding up to be a lot of extra money. Also with United we had 1 1/2 hours to get through Customs. I am not sure how Chicago is with that but when we went through Cincinnati one it took us almost 2 hours to get through everything and that just did not seem like a lot of time. Also we would not get home until June 22.

With Northwest we have a 3 hour lay over in Detroit to get through customs and we do not have to go to Hong Kong as they fly directly out of Guangzhou and we will get home on June 21st.

I am in shock with how much plane fare is right now. It was the same price for United or Northwest so that didn't even matter. Also the prices for the sales fare was about the same as the adoption fare right now so we went with the adoption fare. I have to tell you though that Tempo Travel with Bethany has been wonderful. They answered all my dumb questions yesterday without batting an eye!!! :) I will let you know that I had a lot of them!!! You would think this being the 3rd adoption I would have it all down pat but I forgot everything I needed to know. We should have all the final arrangements made by today.

We will be flying home on June 21 at 6:05 pm so if any of you are in the Grand Rapids area on that day feel free to join us!!!

Its been a whilrwind to say the last but what an awesome time it has been to follow the Lord leading in our newest adoption adventure.We have 4 children in our home already.Nikolas, was adopted from Russia in 1997. He was born in 1996.Ekaterina was adopted from Russia in 2002 and was born in 1998Heather was born in 1998Caleb was born in 2001In September we were asked about adopting one of Bethany's children of Promise and after a lot of prayer and discernment realized that the Lord indeed wanted us to adopt this little girl. We started the paperchase the same month and our Dossier went to China on January 24th, 2006. We are waiting for our Dossier to be Logged in with CCAA in China and then we will be waiting for our TA (travel approval) We are hoping for Spring travel but know that we will wait on God's timing.