We are on our way!!!!

We are officially on our way. I actually managed to get both bags below the magical 44 lbs, even with all of the baby stuff we are bringing. I could have actually fit all of our stuff into carry on bags, but I guess I am learning that baby's really do require a lot of stuff. At least most of the things will be used during the trip, leaving us room for all of the shopping that I will do while in China. :)

We left the house this morning at 4:15, which is a bit early for me, but surprisingly enough, I was very pleasant and chipper. I guess that is a second miracle from this long awaited trip. My VERY GOOD friend, and I can't stress good enough, Stephanie woke up early and rode with us to the airport so she could drive my car back to her place and save us a ton of money on parking. I can't even begin to thank her enough for that, but I'm sure I can think of something to at least get a start.

When we got to the airport to check in, Veronica was working the desk, and she moved us to an earlier flight to Newark. Of course our Beijing flight leaves at the same time, but at least there are more breakfast options in Newark. We made it through security pretty quickly, in spite of one rude lady who basically cut in line between Brian and I when the TSA was checking our boarding passes. And yes, I still remained pleasant and chipper. It may be due to sleep deprivation, but it might just be that I am too excited to let that annoy me too much. See.. I told you miracle!

I managed to sleep during most of the flight to Newark. Brian said this is the first time I slept this soundly in weeks, and he is convinced it is because there is nothing I could actually do on the plane to prepare for the trip. He's probably right. But I will say that even though it was on a plane, the sleep did feel good.

So now we are in Newark, waiting to board our flight to Beijing. It's a pretty long flight, so I'm not looking forward to 14 hours on an airplane. Brian did load a lot of movies onto the laptop, and there are power ports on the plane so we can keep the computer charged. I am also sure that I can find a few opportunities to nap on the flight and try to catch up on what I've lost over the last couple of weeks. I also promise to get up and move around during the flight to prevent deep vein thrombosis after the warnings from Mom and Patricia.

We are wondering if we will actually see any night since we will be chasing the sun west, but we are thinking we probably won't. I do know that I will probably be very tired of looking at the ocean after so many hours of nothing but blue below me. I will be very happy when we finally land in Beijing. We arrive tomorrow at 1:30 PM, Beijing time, which is 1:30 AM EDT. We will try to stay up until 9, just so we can get onto China time. I think that after such a long day of travel, even I can slow my mind enough to fall asleep.