Dallas or bust …

Sydney Grace is on Japanese soil - she's an international traveller at age 11 months. We had a LONG day yesterday, but we're refreshed and only have one leg of our journey left :)

Yesterday morning was a marathon of packing (had to buy an extra suitcase for all of Sydney's "memorabilia" that her Mom bought), Consulate appointment, and travelling. It was a surreal experience for me to be entering an American Embassy - I kept thinking about Jason Bourne - but the actual "swearing/oath" ceremony was pretty informal and encouraging. The vice-consul official said that the Guangzhou Embassy is the busiest center issuing adoption visas in the world - 7,000 last year. I thought to myself, "Let's make that 14,000 this year!" Truly, I do wish more people would catch the Chinese adoption fever to provide loving families for these babies.

(Voice transition, as Rollin takes over for Amy who is now playing with Sydney...)

We flew yesterday evening from Guangzhou to Hong Kong where we again availed ourselves of the airport hotel. We boarded our plane this morning for Tokyo, and are once again sitting in the Admiral's Club in Tokyo, SO thankful for such a refuge in a busy airport. Sydney is eating and walking around (with Grandma's help), and in a few hours we will board a 777 for home. For those praying - we were told that we do indeed have bulkhead seats and will have a bassinet where we can let Sydney sleep! Wuhoo! I'm attaching a photo of her sitting in the bassinet that Cathay Pacific let us use from Hong Kong to Tokyo, as we had bulkhead seats there too. Red-letter day for the Bredenbergs!

Sydney has done exceptionally well on all three flights we have taken with her, and we pray things go as well on the fourth and longest. On the Cathay Pacific flight, there was a flight attendant who was sitting in a jump seat across the aisle from us who captured Sydney's attention. He was from the Guandong province, and talked to us a little about our adoption of Sydney and "how lucky he (Sydney) is." Thanks to her haircut we still have a lot of people, particularly Chinese, who assume she is a boy. The funny thing is that even after we tell them she is a girl they will often continue to refer to her as "him." However, her hair is already longer and it won't be long before we can start stylin'!

On the health front, Sydney is almost all better. She still has some cold symptoms and coughs at times, particularly when she is just waking up, but by and large she is happy and healthy again. Rollin is on the road to improvement too, and if he can make it through one more climb and descent to 37,000 feet (praise God for decongestants!) he'll get off the plane a very happy man!

Here are a few photos: