It's Travel Time!

Christmas came and we had the grandgirls and their parents over and feasted with extended family. Grandpa and Uncle Steve came and stayed a few days. The house was littered with wrapping paper and bows and plastic cups with names written in marker script on them. Noodle got the My Little Pony Castle which unfolds itself with a touch of a wand and majestic pony music. She later told me that the two things she loved most in life were her pony castle and me. My heart swelled with love and pride at being right up there with the pony castle. Ten-month old Hopers got wrapping paper, boxes, and bows. I think there were some toys in there but she didn't let them get in the way. She did have a fatal attraction to the pony castle which had to be put away since the ponies didn't come with lances and weren't very good at defense.

Then there was New Year's, otherwise known as Christmas Celebration Part II, where Doc T drove up from Tampa with Joe and little Nathan and we filled the living room with another round of wrapping paper and presents. Nathan got Thomas the tank engine stuff and the living room was converted into his personal train station. Doc T and Joe got us LUGGAGE. Now how did they know we needed that?

And now it's travel time! All that waiting and struggling to get the I171H and now we're moving like the gigantic snowball you see in cartoons, rolling down hill, getting bigger and bigger, with ski poles and legs sticking out. Except we have luggage and diapers and 3 ounce toiletry bottles in quart size bags and passports and...well you get the picture. We leave January 10 for an overnight in Tampa then on to Chicago Ohare where we will board the plane for Hong Kong. Fifteen hours and 37 minutes later we will actually be in Hong Kong and it will be Friday, January 12. Too bad hypersleep only exists in science fiction. We leave Hong Kong on January 14 for Changsha, Hunan and on Monday, January 15 we will finally meet our beautiful daughter. There's a whole bunch of stuff after that and we'll go to Guangzhou and do more stuff but I can't seem to focus on those details right now. In fact, I don't seem to be able to focus on much right now. I have lots of details to attend to, packing being the most immediate, but I keep drifting off and forgetting where I am. My grown children will tell you that one of their duties in life has always been to finish my sentences for me, so will one of you Ts get over here and finish this blog? I've got to go look at the