We're home!!

After 39 hours of planes, trains and automobiles (literally) we are HOME! It felt SO good to sleep in my own bed last night and I am just thrilled beyond words to be home doing laundry in a washer/dryer (instead of the bathtub and hanging it to dry all around my hotel room), to be able to drink the water and rinse my toothbrush in the faucet, to have A/C that I have control over, and to have seen some great friends already and my wonderful parents.

We started out on Saturday morning (Friday night for you) with a bus ride to the Guangzhou train station, where we took a non-stop train ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. Really it was a great trip - so fun to see the landscape outside and Hong Kong was beautiful - some where I'd really like to go back and visit again. We were stopped twice getting into Hong Kong for body temperature checks, and I was SO glad I'd given all the kids tylenol on the train ride. YIKES, what would we have done if Hong Kong hadn't let us in!? So, anyway, we then took a bus ride through Hong Kong and out to the airport...Hong Kong looks much like I think Hawaii should look - beautiful water, clean blue air (we hadn't seen that in 3 weeks), huge mountains as far as you could see and high rise buildings all through the downtown area. It was gorgeous!!

From Hong Kong we took our first flight to Taipei, Taiwan. We had a layover there for a few hours and then took the red eye from Taipei to LA. This was supposed to be a 12 1/2 hour flight, but it ended up taking an extra hour...and then we only had a little over 1 hour to get through customs, get Aiden certified at immigration as a U.S. citizen, and get to our next flight. Poor Tyler threw up as soon as the plane landed, only he forgot to tell us he wasn't feeling well, so he threw up all over two plane seats - yikes! I felt badly for the stewardess, but was so glad he hadn't thrown up on himself or one of us - that would have guaranteed we wouldn't make it to our next flight!

Off we went from the airplane literally running through the hallways with me holding Aiden and Brooke, Matt holding Tyler and luggage and Mindy pulling two pieces of luggage. We were hauling around people, and when we got to customs we begged our way past everyone in line to get through quickly. I took our immigration paperwork on a sprint run to get processed while Matt and Mindy took the big kids to get our luggage....it was looking really good that we'd make our flight. Yeah, that was until we had to wait almost a full hour for our luggage to get off the darn plane! REALLY!?! UGH!!!

So, we missed our flight. We then spent over an hour trying to get onto another flight and get all of our luggage checked in through the new flights we might be able to take. We finally got to the gate of the LA - ATL flight only to find out we probably wouldn't get on that flight because it looked full. We were on standby, and at this point had been traveling for 30 hours - Mindy, Brooke, Aiden and I were working off about 4 - 6 hours of sleep total; we were all exhausted and it was 3 am EST on Saturday night. The entire plane boarded and they told us that 5 of the 6 of us could board as well...we tried to explain to them that Aiden was going to sit on my lap the entire way, so really we could get 6 on for 5 seats, but they said no. So, we split up - Mindy and I took the kids and left Matt behind to wait another 7 hours for the next flight out.

Once we were on the plane they were rushing us around since we were the last to board and they wanted to leave. I was stressed trying to find my carry on bags the stewardess had *so kindly* moved half way up the plane to get into an overhead bin, the kids wanted games to play since they were wide awake, and Aiden was fussing. The lady in the seat next to Tyler and Brooke (across the aisle from me and Aiden) wouldn't move so Mindy could sit with us and I could have some help, etc. Then, just as we were about to leave I realized there was one empty seat on the plane - I was so ticked! I mentioned it to the stewardess who said "sorry, the doors are closed, your husband will have to stay behind". :-( It sure would be nice if Delta employees knew how many people were on their planes and how many seats they had available...there were no lap kids any where near there, so it was a fully open seat that got wasted. ARGH!!

I kinda hoped if the kids were ever going to be bad that it would be sitting next to this brat of a woman who wasn't willing to change seats and who wanted to sleep on this red eye...but they were great. They did stay awake and talk the entire time, so I did get a little bit of joy/justice out of that, but they were phenomenally behaved and Aiden slept the entire trip! I was a busy, busy momma keeping the two big kids busy and happy on the flight since there were no Nintendo (batteries were dead by this time) and you had to pay for the in-flight movies and games (I'm too cheap for that).

Some time along the flight I realized that I had no idea what time our ATL to JAX flight was! No one had ever printed us any boarding passes, nor told me what flight number or time to get onto next. So, when we got off the plane in ATL we walked to the next boarding area and asked the man to check for us. He looked us up and said "oh my, your flight leaves from Terminal B in 10 minutes - you'd better run." YIKES! So, off we went sprinting through the Atlanta airport trying to get from Terminal T to terminal B (two terminals away) with two kids, a ton of carry on's and major exhaustion. We got to the gate just as they were doing the final call to close the doors, and were able to get boarding passes and jump on with about a minute to spare. PHEW! After minor complications with maintenance where we taxi'd off and then had to return to the gate for someone to look at a button that wasn't working properly, we were on our final leg to Jacksonville!

When we finally arrived in Jacksonville my parents were there to meet us, as were about a half dozen families from the FCC - Families with Children from China. It was so great to see familiar faces!! Many thanks to each of the sweet, wonderful people who came out to meet us - it was a great welcoming home, and much appreciated!! Plus, when we got home we had neighbors waiting on their front porch for us and signs all over our house and in the front yard welcoming us home. Thank you Arin, Justin & Paige - you all are too sweet! My parents had filled our fridge, and stayed to help us unload luggage, get the kids baths (MUCH NEEDED) and give me some time to shower as well.

So, after getting settled in some we were all asleep by 4pm. Then Matt got home at 5 pm, and he helped me get all the kids into bed (we'd fallen asleep on the floor in the family room), and it was lights out at 5 pm. Aiden, Brooke and I are up, and have been since 2 am, but Matt and Tyler continue to sleep. I was pretty happy with 10 hours sleep with just a few minor interruptions, knowing the first night home could have been MUCH worse! I am thankful (in a weird way) that Aiden and Brooke are both congested and coughing, as that made me feel quite okay with giving each of them benadryl when they woke up in the middle of the night...okay, so maybe that is how I got 10 hours sleep! ;-)