Too excited!

This is Allie (with bits from the rest of the family)...just wanted to share a few thoughts. (9 more hours till we meet her!!)

First of all, praise God for everything that has happened on our journey so far! Thank You for MeiLi's life, and for all of the doors that have been opened for us to get to her.

We have all been journaling like crazy (and, of course, blogging as well) - It will be interesting once we get her to go back and read what we said about preparing ourselves for it.

We are trying not to have unrealistic expectations - trying to grasp an idea of what ShiQiao is about to go through and to let her transition without pushing expectations on her. However, we ARE expecting God to do huge things. We already know He will do huge things in her life, and it will be in His timing. What we are expecting now, and praying for, is that He will move in our lives - giving us grace and patience and faith.

A couple of things that we found out today - first, that the pictures we have received of MeiLi were not taken at the orphanage, but actually at the day school that the children attend. This is interesting because now we dont really know anything about the place she's been living.
Second, the 2 other girls (also being adopted tomorrow by the 2 other families traveling with us) already know her! We hope that this will make the transition a little bit easier because the 3 of them will be able to continue seeing each other every day for the rest of the trip.

MeiLi -

We already love you so much. We cannot wait to be your family. We bought you some gifts today! We went to the Chinese Walmart (which was very different from the American Walmart) and bought you some coloring books, and stickers, and bubbles, and bilingual fairy tale books to help us learn some more Chinese and you to learn some English.
Our family is very close. We are all very good friends, and we cannot wait to share that with you. I am happy to share mom and dad with you, because they will be so good to you. Someday your sisters will tell you all about the things that mom and dad did for you before they even met you!
We have been praying for you every day. In fact, all of our friends have been praying for you too! We have prayed that God will prepare your heart so that you can see that we love you and are not going to hurt you or leave you.
We think you are so beautiful, and we love you so much. (We all had to take sleeping pills in order to sleep tonight cause we're so excited!!!)
We have all written things to you that we will give you when you are older. I just wanted to write a little bit on your blog to say we love you and we can't wait to meet you.