First day in Taiwan

Here are some photos from our first day.

Made it to Tawian!!

So we made it to Taiwan! We arrived last night and Fion met us and brought us to the Golden China.

A quick pity party: I hate long flights. I especially hate long flights when I have a sinus infection. I especially hate long flights when I have every possible side effect on the amoxicillin bottle! I will say that United has some nice bathrooms where I spent much time! Okay-that’s done. We are so excited to be in Taiwan. We love the hotel. It is uniquely Taiwanese but everyone has been really nice and understanding of our lack of Mandarin.

Today we are going sightseeing with Fion.

Off to Taiwan!

So we fly out tomorrow! After over a year of waiting we will be a family of three very soon. Here are some things to pray for while we're traveling:
Sara has a sinus infection and was given antibiotics at the urgent care on Thursday-pray that the medicine helps quickly and that she doesn't have trouble on the flight
Pray that we are able to make the transition from her foster home easy for Abby.
General travel prayer-Jon may be an experienced world traveler but Sara is quite the "home body" and may be anxious.
That we can find a church for our first Easter as a family-we are excited to meet some Taiwanese Christians!

Thank you to our families and friends who have been so supportive. We will try to post while we are in Taiwan....but no promises!

Packing Chaos

We just wanted to post a little about our preparations. For everyone who thinks I am uber-organized and tidy-here is what my kitchen table looks like right now!
Our teddy-PopBelly has been a very valuable model for all things baby. Here he is helping Jon practice with our ergo carrier:

And here he is in one of our car seats!

More pre-travel news to come!

AIT Appointment!!

So we just got an email yesterday saying that the American Institute in Taiwan has given us an appointment for picking up Abby's visa. This means we have our travel dates!! We fly out on the 4th but fon't arrive till the 5th. We will have the 6th to organize and rest and then we pick up Abby on the 7th! We have our appointment on the 8th and then we could leave but we think we will stay till the 13th to get some sightseeing in. Who knows when we will be able to come back to Taiwan?
More details and pics of our packing to come!

Final Ruling!!!! and more waiting.....

We recieved our final ruling yesterday!! Very exciting news that means that we are officially Abigail Heng-Chen's parents.
We are going to have to hustle to be ready to travel. We still have quite a to-do list. We still have to wait for an AIT (American Institute of Taiwan) appointment, but once we have that we will fly out. The appointments are usually made in 2 weeks. My last day at school will be Friday April 3 and we will travel right after that, hopefully!
The end is definately in sight. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for our adoption journey and keep on praying!

Surprise March Update!

We were excited and surprised to see a new update in our mailbox yesterday. Usually the updates come near the very end of the month so this was a fun surprise. We had to wait until 9pm to open it because we wanted to be together. Mondays are busy because of Sara's tutoring and Jon's fencing ministry at the church. Anyway-here is our angel!! She now weighs 11.7 pounds and is 23.1 inches tall. She is about 4 and a half months in the pics.

This may be our last update if we travel early in April. We are praying for a fast final ruling.

Here is a link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTv4TmxuFX0