T minus 2: Welcome to the USA!

Every year, we decorate the house in red, white, and blue from Memorial Day through the 4th of July. This year, we have an extra-special reason to decorate it - to welcome Sophie to the good ol' USA.

Today was my last day in the office before the big trip. It was filled with trying to wrap up a bunch of little things on my To Do list. My colleagues on the Development management team "popped" by my office after lunch (no, they didn't look suspicious at all lurking around the hallways...) and gave me a very generous gift card to Toys R Us, which EJ is already trying to claim as her own! They gave me a gift for her, a very nice travel journal. She was thrilled!

Also, many thanks to my co-worker/friend BZ, who took a few minutes today to translate a bunch of phrases from English to Chinese for me. If I get stuck and need to know where the ladies' room is, for example, I can just whip out my handy-dandy cheat sheet and point to the appropriate characters. Thanks!

I have a lot to do tomorrow - finish packing, clean the house, deliver cupcakes to EJ's class for her birthday, etc. I'll make one more post tomorrow night before we leave. Then, I'm not sure when you'll hear from me again. Hopefully, I'll have a few minutes on Thursday night or Friday morning (Beijing time - that'll be Thursday morning or Thursday night for you east coast folk) to at least let you know that we've arrived. Again, I'm not sure how easy it will be to post, but we'll give it a try!