Day 1 Beijing

Today we headed out to the Great Wall. It took about 1.5 hours and some crazy driving to get to our destination. I(mom) slept the entire drive. The jet lag and this cold I brought with me on this trip is kicking my butt. We took the gondola up and back while we walked many steps to enjoy the sites. Thankfully it wasn't too cold or windy and while their was fog we were still able to see far and wide. I'm glad we were able to see such history in person. We arrived back to our room around 3pm and all passed out for a short nap that ended up being a 6 hour nap. I've never experienced such a hard time with jet lag. So after enjoying a very late dinner in our hotel we are all going to enjoy a melatonin nite cap in the hopes we can adjust our clocks.

Travel Day

Monday November 14, 2016 Today we embark on our journey to bring our son home. It is a very long travel day and I couldn't be happier that Finley is such an easy going kid. We packed all carry on which has required her to help out as we navigate the airports. Our travels today started in Orlando, through Detroit and onto Seattle. The longest leg at 11.5 hours is Seattle to Beijing. Hoping we can all sleep so the time will pass quickly. Fingers crossed. We will arrive in Beijing at 7:55pm Tuesday, back home it will be 7:55am Tuesday. We chose to spend some time sightseeing before the day we meet our son. So this week will be full of traveling and seeing history.

We are the Arbolino's!

While many reading this blog know our background some new readers may not. A quick version of who we are stems back to my own version of a fairytale. In 2009 I was blessed to become a mom by way of international adoption through Kazkahstan. Little did I know that our family would become a family of 3 when we got married October 17, 2010. Imagine two grown ups, never married, joining forces to become not just husband and wife but an instant family. Certainly wasn't all roses but for us it was a match made in heaven. As we navigated our family, we openly discussed growing our family through adoption and well you know timing is everything. So fast forward to April 2015 and we were finally ready to complete our family. International Adoption was our answer. We had already started there so why not continue that way. Kazkahstan is closed to adoptions for Americans, so after some searching China was the right option for us. Luckily we were able to start with our original agency Little Miracles and for us that was a great and secure starting point. As luck would have it we started reviewing files and then this momma got cold feet. Should we grow our family? We had a great thing going and we were at an age that Finley was growing up and things were getting easier. Thankfully I overcame my fears of upsetting the apple cart and here we are today.

We started the process and moved swiftly through all the paperwork and we secured our sons file At the end of October 2015. He had just turned 2 and we figured for sure he would be home by the time he turned 3, but as we all know things don't always go the way you want. So while we navigated some bumps and slow downs we were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief when our invitation to travel showed up just a few short weeks ago. This blog is to document our story for our son and for our family. Join us as we venture to Nanjing China, November 2016.