WE ARE HOME!

We made it home safe and sound. The flight coming home was much easier than the flight going to China. It just seemed faster. The flight left around 4:20 in the afternoon China time. Emma did really well on the flight. We kept her awake until about 8-8:30, her usual bedtime. She fell asleep and slept until about 3:30 am, just about an hour before the plane was going to land. Once we got off the plane we had to go to customs and then pick up our luggage and then onto immigrations. After that we had to go through security again.

Well, this was the worst part of our whole trip. when we arrived we went straight to customs and got in line, we soon found out that it was the wrong line and moved to the right one. This one was just as long as the last one. They eventually let the adoptive families cut a head of everyone else. That was the quickest part. We then moved onto get our luggage and then we had to go over to immigrations. That is where they get all of Emma's paperwork from China. All of the people that we traveled with were there along with a lot of other people waiting. They had one guy working the counter and he was moving so slowly. The families going to Boston found out that their flight was delayed two hours, other wise they would probably have missed their flight. Our flight was in 45 minutes. This guy had no intentions to go any faster. He was even asked if he could do the Manchester group first, he just shook his head no. He would do a few of some other peoples paperwork and then one of the adoptions paperwork and then go back and forth like that. We were all getting very angry. At this point we were going to miss our flight and there was no other flights going into Manchester that night. I didn't want to spend the night in Chicago. I just wanted to get home. He finally got to us and we took off. We had to go through security with all of our bags and then go get them checked in. We left immigrations and went to go check our bags for our flight. When we got there they said that it was to late and that we might miss our flight. At the point I started to cry along with another mother in our group. I just wanted to get home. We decided to see if we could make the flight. We left our bags and didn't even get a boarding pass. They told us that we could try and make the flight. We took off to go get the tram, only to find out that the terminal was three stops away. We decided to try it anyway. When we finally got to the third stop we got off and started running again. We got into the terminal and had no idea where to go. We looked left and right and decided to go left. Wrong way! We started running in the other way and got to security with only a couple of minutes left to make the flight. Another stupid person at security. He took his time looking at the passports. We looked up and on the other side of security we saw a very welcomed face. He was telling us to slow down that he held the flight. It once again our wonderful friend Jim(who is the pilot). He pulled through for us again. He grabbed our bags and headed to the gate while we were getting ourselves together. He just made this very stressful situation so much better. THANK YOU JIM! He flew home with us and had a little time to get to know Emma. We toasted to Emma on he flight.

When we arrived at the airport I was feeling so emotional and was starting to cry. I was thinking about my boys and were wishing that they were here to meet Emma. Finally this long journey was coming to an end. A new journey was about to begin.. We headed down stairs to find a huge crowd waiting for us. It was more that I expected. The news was there with their cameras and all four families were a part of a very special story that I wrote the to them. about Home For The Holidays. They did such a nice job. We got home in time to watch it.

We finally got home and I kept Emma up until 2:00am thinking that it was around her normal nap time. She went down and I figured that I would get a couple hours sleep. She didn't wake up until 8:30 in the morning. We had to take her to the Dr's that afternoon so she didn't get down for a nap until 4:00. We got her up at 6:00 and she went to bed around 10:00pm. She slept through the night until 8:30am. She has done so well with the time change. I am almost worried that it is to good to be true. She sleeps 12 hours a night if we let her.

We couldn't be any happier with her. She is such a sweet little girl and so much fun to have in our lives. We laugh at her all the time. She definitely has brought back much needed joy into our lives. She did really well at the Dr's. She is just very tiny and not on the charts. They have me adding more formula to her bottle so that there are more calories in it. Next week she will go for some test and then over the next few weeks she has the rest.

We love her more than we could have imagined.