We are HOME!

Yesterday we arrived home from China.  We had a long day and a half home.  We spent three weeks in China and had a great time.  But in the end we were so ready to come home.  If you missed our journey you can look at it on www.myadoptionwebsite.com/hope

Here are a few random pictures from the entire trip.  Hope is amazing and has transitioned well into our family. 


So a little on our trip home.  We left at 8 am from the hotel.  We were hoping to get an earlier flight out of Guangzhou since they changed our flight to later the night before and this left very little time for us to making our connecting flight home.  Our guide spent an hour and a half going no where.  She was the same guide that took us to the orphanage the night before and she was very passive and you could tell not confident with handling these situations.  So in the end we were left with our same flight that left at 1 pm from Guangzhou.  Once we arrived in Beijing we had to get on a bus to take us to the terminal.  There were two buses and it was confusing which one we needed to get on.  We finally were on the right bus.  We arrived at baggage claim and had to wait about 15 minutes before our bags arrived.  Meanwhile we were trying to figure out what we needed to do next.  Noone spoke any English and so we got no clear answers.  Once we got our bags we tried to go through the international area and they told us we had to go back around.  We didn't know where to go. We finally found and American who told us the general direction.  However when we got out we were in the main exit area and lost.  At this point I started crying, I knew we were going to miss our flight.  The same American seen us again and guided us in an elevator up the stairs.  We went up and then headed down to the international area.  We had to check our bags in again and they had to enter all of our passports.  This took FOREVER and then they asked for Hopes paperwork.   Also our luggage set off an alarm and we had to show them the souvenir swords in the bags.  After what seemed like forever she let us move on.  We had to go through another security check point which again took forever.  Conor had to have a more thorough check over since he had a pump on and so me and the little kids ran on.  We made it to the gate and Chase asked them to please wait for his dad.  The others came soon after.  Everyone got on board just in time for the doors to shut.  What a relief this was to make this flight.  One thing I forgot to mention was that we had to leave our stroller in Beijing because it didn't make it off the plane in time.

Once we made it to Seattle we had someone waiting for us to help us through customs and immigration.  Our flight to Portland was delayed so we had to wait another five hours to board our last flight home.  My parents, aunt and brother and sister in law were waiting for us when we landed.  We were so happy to see them.  We are not home and trying to settle in to the new flow of things.