Home at Last!

It's been a long and exhausting journey, both physically and emotionally. On our last adoption trip, Kris and I both cried as the plane took off in Guangzhou toward home. Bringing our child from the land of her birth to her new home was a bittersweet occasion. Over the past few years, and especially on this most recent adoption trip, we have grown to love China even more and feel a deep abiding connection to the country that has provided both of our children. I wasn't as sad to leave this time. Partly because I have some experience with sharing our children's Heritage with their birth country, and partly because I have little doubt that we will return as often as possible to continue to explore our adopted country. Our twelve hour flight across the Pacific Ocean was uneventful. We left China at 9PM on February 12th, we flew for 12 hours and both Children slept most of the flight, and we arrived in Portland at 11PM, the same day. It was still February 12th. February 12th was a very very very long day indeed. The good part about the night flight is that if you are lucky, and we were, the children sleep most of the flight which makes wrangling children on an airplane for 12 hours a pretty easy task. The downside is that after sleeping for about 10 hours or so, the children wake up and, lo and behold, it's still night time!?

We were met at the airport by a skeleton crew. Grampa Ken and Grandma Pam picked us up and Amanda came to meet Owen and help cart our luggage. Owen has taken to his car seat with no fuss at all. It seems to be the way he is approaching just about all the new experiences he is having. He is a very mellow little guy.

We arrived home shortly after midnight to find our house decorated (thanks to Grampa Ken and Grandma Pam and Aunt Amanda) and our beds were all turned down (including the little chocolates!). It seems that Aunt Amanda really heard my concerns about being unable to continue to receive turn down service after leaving the 5 star hotels in China. Thanks Aunt Amanda!

Libby was very excited to show Owen around his new home. She immediately wanted to take him upstairs to show him his new bedroom and toys. What a great jie jie (big sister)! After letting the children play with toys for about an hour at 2AM (It's just what you do when you encounter a 16 hour time change). We decided it was bath time.

Turns out Owen REALLY LOVES taking a bath. When we put him in the tub he laughs with delight and begins frantically kicking and splashing in the water until the whole bathroom is wet. We're going to have to invest in more bath towels for the bathroom floor.

This shot was taken about 3:45 or so, when Owen had finally fallen back asleep. What a sweet child!