Home At Last

We finally made it home. After the 12 hour flight to LA Mikayla was awesome as I said she did not sleep much but did not fuss much either. She slept really well in the hotel and then when we took the 2 flights (each 2 hours long) to Denver and STL she fell asleep just before the 1st plane took off and did not wake up until after the end of the last flight. Even then she did not stay up long she crashed in the car ride home and pretty much did not wake until we were inside and unpacking. Of course she was awake until about 1am but so were we. While we were finally relaxing watching some English TV Mikayla so cutely crawled up on the couch with me and crashed. She slept until about 6am just as we did so no problem there. So Far so good. I love the stork in the front yard it is awesome and the star will be a keepsake forever. We can now begin a normal schedule with Mikayla and us being home. Today, Mikayla has the luxury of having the house to cruise and investigate on her own. Come tomorrow it will be a fun and interesting day when the boys come home and they meet Mikayla for the first time. It will be all sorts of fun I am sure when they take each others toys and torment each other. I dont think I will get to post any pics today as Mikayla wants attention and I do not blame her. As for the China trip and closing that saga of our lifes I want to just give everyone especially those planning on going there to adopt or otherwise when we started this journey we were told so many things to do, not do and bring and not bring and I want to clear some of that up. First off we were told DO NOT wear any white, I can understand this for finalizing day as it is a sign of mourning but I could not understand it for any other reason. I did find out the only other reason they tell you that is that their water is so dirty that if you wash any whites they are never white again they become dingy. The other thing is that if you sit anywhere you will wind up getting brown spots on your butt as most everywhere is pretty dirty even if it does not look like it. Next, was that you are NOT to wear shirts with writing on them as the Chinese will not know what it says and they are afraid it might be something offensive to them or bad about their country. Whether that is true or not I do not know but what I do know is that there were people everywhere wearing shirts with writing, even some chinese were wearing shirts with English writing on them so I think that is nothing to worry about either. Being on clothes another mis-information I was told was that you are not to wear any shorts, cause if you do they had to be down to the knee, I dont know about any of you but my shorts are not that long, don't get me wrong my shorts are not daisy dukes either but I was told shorts higher than the knee were a NO go. Well, once again most of the families we were with had shorts on and there were many others in China wearing shorts although there were some Chinese females in shorts there were not that many chinese in shorts only americans. If I were to go again or were to tell anyone going I would tell them if you want to wear shorts by all means go for it. Moving on, we were also told if you want to use blow dryers, shavers, computers or the like that you need converters and adapters, another mis-information, everywhere we went including in Starbucks and places you could use the computer all had outlets usable for any thing you wanted to plug in. These are just a few of the things I can think of right now. I am sure there are others that I am just not thinking of at the moment, if I think of them I will be sure to let you know. The things that I will tell you to do that we were told that I totally agree with is that you should have plenty of wipes and/or kleenex for bathroom trips and also have sanitizer if possible. Also DO make sure you put at least one set of clothing in your carry on backage. Right now I think we are going to get out of the house and get some fresh air and go for a stroll although there is no sun at the moment that is ok it is still fresh air and the friendly hometown neighborhood. When we return maybe I will have my ton of mail to go through which I am sure will be a blast. Before I go I do want to thank those of you that came to the airport to welcome us home we really welcomed seeing some friendly warm faces after such a long journey. Thanks again to our personal taxi also we really do appreciate it and if there is anything we can do to help you guys out you know we are here to help just the same. Until next time.... AJ