Home Sweet Home

We started the day yesterday (I think yesterday-I'm losing track of the days with the time changes) with our bags packed and in the hall at 6:00am. China does not allow any liquids or gels on their planes, so that is challenging for a 24 hr. trip with a baby. No diaper cream, water for bottles, lotion, chapstick - you get the picture. They did let me take a bottle of motrin on board, but only after they poured half of it out. Our flight to Beijing was great. Chloe was happy and the plane was really big. That was the first 3 hours.

We had to claim our luggage and recheck it for our international flight. It's a good thing we had 4 hours in Beijing, because other than grabbing a bite to eat at Burger King and feeding Chloe a bottle, we had no extra time. It just all took so long. It's was little stressful, but all ended well. We got to our gate just prior to boarding in time to grab a final souvenir from the Olympic store with our last yuans. The value of the dollar has dropped a little recently, so the exchange rate is about 6.95 yuan to $1.

At the gate, Chloe was surrounded by a Chinese cheer leading squad of 40, traveling with us to Chicago and then on to Orlando.

The plane was really crowded for our 12 hour trip to Chicago. As it turns out, most of the cheerleaders were in our economy plus section. This made for a pretty loud flight. There wasn't much rest to be had. Chloe did as well as could be expected. We had purchased a seat for Chloe, so that was very helpful and she played for a while. However, since she was used to going to sleep in her crib, getting her to sleep was difficult. There was quite a bit of turbulence and a lot of disturbances with all the people. Chloe finally went to sleep from about 11pm to 3am (3pm Chicago time) and Greg & I caught a wink here and there. When we arrived in Chicago, we took Chloe through immigration and customs. The moment her Chinese passport got stamped and they collected her paperwork from us, Chloe became a US citizen! She was sleeping, but none the less we took a picture of her putting her feet on US soil as a citizen. She is officially Chinese-American.
Our final flight from Chicago to Akron/Canton left a little late, but we got in only about 10 minutes late. There was a great crew waiting for us at the airport and it was awesome to wrap my arms around the girls. Chloe just kind of took it all in, but slept most of the way home.

It was kind of a wrest less night for Chloe since her body was telling her it was day time. But by about 7:30am this morning, she was out for the 'night.' We finally woke her about 1pm, 'cause the girls couldn't stand to wait any longer. She is warming to the girls quickly and just loves to bounce in her new bouncer/saucer from Mike's and Tim's. We thought maybe she would be intimidated by it all, but as soon as put her in and showed her what to do, she went to town jumping up and down.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us throughout this journey to bring Chloe home. Your kind comments and concern have meant so much to us. We take Chloe to an international adoption clinic on Monday and we'll continue to post pictures in the next few days. If you have any specific questions about the trip, leave us a comment and we'll do our best to answer them.