Last post from China.....

Today we received Morgan's visa packet, the very important "brown envelope" that we hand over to customes and immigration in Chicago...this means that as soon as we go thru immiigration in CHicago, our layover she is a US  CItizen YAY!! It was a bittersweet day....this afternoon, 2 of the families we became close with these past 3 weeks left for Hong Kong, then board their plane tomorrowm orning for home. We said our goodbyes and a few of us got teary. We know that we will keep in touch and have reunions, as these wonderful people have become life ling friends, and are like family to us now.  It was weird for dinner tonight just beinng alone...also no hallway parties, as we are the only ones left on this floor...floor 11.

We both can not believe that we have been in China for almost 3 weeks now! It has been a trip of a lifetime, something we will always remember sharing with eachother, and we were blessed with the best gift ever, our beautiful daughter Morgan. SHe is the light of our lives now, and she always makes us giggle.  We have become closer, as we have learned new things about eachother as well...we knew we worked well as a team, but boy have we become even stronger at it these past few weeks, with having our daughter now to take care of. It is such a wonderful feeling. We had talked about going to China for 19 months, and now all of our bags are packed up, the room looks cleaner again haha, as you can only imagine what it looked like when we were living here for so long.....it had blown up! and we start our first leg of our journey HOME tomorrow morning. We were planning on taking the train to Hong Kong, but after talking with another family and our guide, we realized that taking the van would be much easier, and they will drop us off right at our hotel (which we also changed to be closer to the hotel) Yes, it was more expensive, but at this point easy is a nice word for us.....THe van will pick us up at the hotel tomorrow mornng at 9am and take us 3 hours to Hong Kong, where we will spend the night. Patrick has already found the observation deck at the airport, so we can watch the airplanes land and take off...that will be fun! We will board a 747 (I can't wait for that!!) on Sunday morning around 11am or so and fly HOME!!!!!!! We will both miss it here, as this has been a trip that has been so special.....but we are ready to get home, get Morgan into a routine (well after jet lag settles down) and sleep in our own bed, see the cats and dogs whom I miss so much!! and ofcourse our family.  Even having good internet again, clean bathrooms to use, drink water from the faucet and not be so dang hot and humid (the humidity here in CHina has been Atlanta times a million) and lay on our couch and watch tv...oh my goodness so excited to come home......I am not sure if I will get online in Hong Kong, so this will most likely be my last post until we get home or at least in CHicago if I can jump on my phone really quick.....I want to thank everyone who followed our journey, all the wonderful comments on here, facebook and emails...I know I did not reply to each and every comment, as the internet really has not been so great, but I read each one and smiled.....For those of you who would like to meet us at the airport when we land, we would LOVE to see familar smiling faces!! I would suggest looking back in the posts to the itinerary post, and getting our flight #, so you can track us to be sure we are on time, or have a heads up if we are running late.....We land at 6:57pm and will be coming up the elevators.....Again, thank you for following along, and a VERY SPECIAL thank you to Mysty, who with out you I am not sure how I would have been able to keep the blog as up to date as I did....thank you fromthe bottom of both our hearts for posting on our blog the majority of our entire trip, it has meant so very much.

Goodnight one last time from China......hope to see you at the airport!!
Amanda, Patrick and Morgan. HUGS to all!!