4:40 am

Today is the day of the car wash!! I'm looking forward to it - with a BBQ & face painting, it should be fun!! I haven't been sleeping well lately - completely stressed over the upcoming trip. ONLY 3 WEEKS AWAY!! I'm so afraid I'm going to forget something or get there & realize I should've brought something. I've never had anxiety attacks but I really think I've had a couple in the last couple of days!! If anyone has any tips on what to bring - PLEASE let me know. A lot of people who read this blog has already been to China and knows the ins & outs of it so I would appreciate any helpful tips. I purchased a translator to help us in our day to day adventures in China - PLUS hopefully it will help prevent an accidental ingestion of a cat or dog. I've been reading horror stories on what people are accidentally eating over there & it's pretty scary! Brandon on the other hand will be completely fine as long as he has his daily dose of Cinnamon Toast Crunch & fries. He's counting down to August 8th and reminds me every day of how long until we leave (of course I really don't need reminding - I'm aware of it every minute of the day!). I'm really happy that he's excited. We've been searching for a treatment for 7 years and our dream is about to become real. We honestly could not have done it without so many people. This journey has really opened my eyes to the fact there are so many others who need help. We recently met a blind man in Colorado Springs who has been down on his luck. He had a cane that needed to be replaced years ago and was in desperate need of a meal. We took him to a hamburger place & fed him then took him to his apartment. That night we ordered him a replacement cane. We really couldn't afford it but we felt the need to try and help him like people has helped us. I'm sure there has been several people who donated to Brandon that really couldn't afford to but felt the need to - just like we did with that man. His new cane arrived in the mail 2 days ago & it really felt good to give it to him. He was absolutely thrilled with it and thanked us repeatedly. I wish him luck in his future endeavours. Since Brandon was diagnosed with ONH, John & I have a new respect for the blind. I don't mean that we didn't have respect for them before but we can now appreciate the difficulties they face with day to day life. That could be why God chose us to have a blind child - maybe we needed to experience this first hand in order to be more understanding and better people. There's a reason we were given Brandon & I don't really care what the reason is - we love him so much & could never imagine life without him...