This journey now feels real...

We received our itinerary on Tuesday. Now it's feeling official! Our favorite day of our trip is Monday July 19th, the paper reads "Meet Baby"-what a great feeling to finally see it on paper the day that we will meet our daughter!

We still can't believe that we are 8 days away from leaving for China, and getting our Avery and finally becoming a family...surreal. That really is the only word for this feeling we have. All of those feelings that we have had over the last 3 years, all of the tears, and feeling like it would never happen. Feeling like we had done something wrong somewhere in our lives, that we weren't able to have a family. All of the frustrations, and all of the depression, and all of the wishing, now we are seeing our dream come true. It seemed as if the light at the end of this tunnel would never get bright, would never be something we could ever see. It had been dim for so long, and sometimes we felt like it had gone completely out. We would go through times of being mad at the world, and I guess jealous, but not really the kind of jealousy that everyone understands. We would have days where this journey, this process, would be so heavy on our hearts that there were no words to describe how we felt, no words could cover the emotional turmoil, and frustration we were going through. But we had eachother, and thank goodness we did, because we got eachother through it. Were there some people that felt the wraith of this frustration-probably, but we will never apologize for the way we felt at any time during this journey. If you've never been through this, then you really have no idea...it's different. 

We are so overjoyed right now, knowing we will be able to hold our baby in 10 days. We keep wondering how she has changed. How long her hair is now, and what she sounds like, what she smells like, and if she has the lower dimples on her cheeks when she smiles like we've seen in some of our friends pictures of their children. I selfishly keep hoping that she is not walking yet. We've missed so much of her life so far, I would really like to experience that milestone with her and Gary. We wonder how she will handle all the changes that she is going to experience. There are so many changes that she is going to go through in such a short period of time. It will really be an assault on all her senses at once. We also will be experiencing a lot of changes, welcome ones for us though. We are excited and nervous, and chomping at the bit to get there!

We hope our trip goes and smoothly, and Avery adjusts quickly. But we will let her have all the time she needs, and we will be there to wipe the tears, and soothe the pain, and hug and kiss all the fears away. We are so excited to finally start this next phase of our life. We welcome all the surprises, and look forward to all of the amazing things that are going to happen. We are thankful for this journey, and now that light at the end of the tunnel is so very bright, and we are now watching it in HD, and surround sound!!  :)

Life is a journey...not a destination. We are looking forward to this journey and it just getting better and better.