Saturday, March 17th, 2007 - HOME, HOME, HOME!

Oh gosh it feels so good to be home. Even though most of us are sleep deprived and cranky as all (won't mention the main 2 who are!!!), we are home and settling in. After a VERY long, 30 hour of either flying, waiting or hanging on to the airplane seat for dear life, we are on the ground and staying put for awhile. The event on Thursday started at 4:30am (China time) for us. Bags were packed. We left the hotel late because our guide kinda overslept but came running into the hotel lobby just as we were truly about to leave (or else we'd have been late for our flights). She felt totally terrible about oversleeping! She didn't even want to accept our gifts we had for her for helping us in Guangzhou. As I explained it to her, everything didn't depend on this one morning. (She helped us like crazy!!!) Anyway, she took our gifts, helped us get to our China Southern checkpoints at the airport and went with us as far as she could, got pictures (which we will post as soon as we can find the camera) and left.

The flight from Guangzhou to Hong Kong was pretty uneventful. It was kinda like a commuter flight, your up? Then your down 30 minutes later. No biggie. Then, we had some time in Hong Kong. Ate a little bit and got on the BIG LEG of the flying. (Going from Hong Kong, China to San Francisco, California) OH MY GOSH! All I have to say is thank you Lord for the United pilots who flew our plane! It was a 747 - 400. Totally packed.....and from the time we hit air to just past the International Date Time territory, all we had was turbulence. The kind that makes your Pepsi leap up and end up on your shirt. The kind that allows your butter from your meal to be opened up and end up on your shirt. The kind that allows you to hear EVERYONE on the flight gasp because the plane is just moving and you are litterly coming up outta your seat!!! That kind of turbulence!!!!! It was horrible. The kids thought it was wonderful, laughing and saying OOOOOOHhhhhhhhh and mommy was hanging on for dear life to the seat, which is attached to the plane, which is just bouncing all over the place, (so why hold on to the seat?!?!??!) I've never prayed as hard and as furious as I did on that plane!! You know it's bad when the flight attendents serve dinner to you, give you something to drink and then the pilot comes on the intercom system and tells them to SIT DOWN for awhile. Trust me, I DO NOT plan to get on any more planes any time soon! (At least for 5 years!)

Anywho....we did end up getting to San Francisco, even if it was the harder way. We had a six hour layover there. We were starving! We were tired! Airplane food is NOT that great. We ended up going through security/Immigration with no problem. Even the officer greeted us and congratulated our Matthew on immediate citizenship! YEAH US! We got our bags, checked them through security/customs (yet again) and proceeded to get some lunch (who knows if it were lunch or breakfast or dinner by then). SF was on breakfast, so to us it felt like night. (China time) When we finally sat down to eat some Subway sandwiches, we only had about 2 hours left to board our next plane from San Francisco to BALTIMORE! Lucky us, we had to board our plane with about 50 kids who were going to take a tour of Baltimore! OH BOY! (not!) They were loud, they were mischievious, oh my! We didn't really want to fly next to them, but hey, we've made it this far. 5 hours later we were in Baltimore. That flight was turbulent just descending into Baltimore and landing because of crosswinds that were around 20 mphs. Our WOMAN pilot was awesome! Bumpy landing, but hey, we were down, we were safe, WE WERE HAPPY CAMPERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As soon as we disembarked, we got our stuff, and the first fresh face we come to was TONI B. who was waiting for us! OH GOSH was it a face we DESPERATELY wanted to see! (She was taking us home!) Even through the rain, none of cared. We loved being HOME! NO MORE AIRPLANES! That's what Rebecca said......Mommy? No more airplanes? I said, NO MORE AIRPLANES FOR A LONG TIME! God did I mean that!!!!! Toni drove us home and we got in about midnight. THANK YOU TONI!!!!

The kids didn't know whether to eat, sleep, or what. It's the time thing/body clock being thrown into oblivion! (I hate this part of it too!) We are ok but it's taking awhile to adjust. Matthew is scared of the cats, all 3 of them. He likes his room, but scared to sleep in it alone. (We have Rebecca in there with him for awhile.) He just stares at everything in the house. We have been teaching him what things are, but how much he retains is totally unknown to us. He's trying. It's alot to ask for a 2 year old.

UPDATE FROM OUR PEDIATRICIAN:

Wow, what a whopper. I knew some things were different with Matthew when we got him but just how much different we weren't sure until we would take him to our own pediatrician. Matthew has been diagnosed with a heart murmor (whether just a childhood thing that will go away? or something else, we will have to see a pediatric cardiologist to make sure), a small "male" problem that will require him to see a urologist, and of course, his cleft palate........our pediatrician feels like after seeing the photos and seeing his palate for "real" and in person, she feels like China tried to fix it. It's not complete though. He will need more work to close up a whole in his mouth that is just behind his teeth line. The rest is totally closed, which is kinda what we thought (because you can see it) but to be rest assured, wow......of course, we were never informed that China tried to fix it. OH well.....his teeth are out of align, but this is common for cleft kids. No biggie there beings these are baby teeth. The Cranialfacial team can help with this also. Apparently, the round scar (about a quarter size) on Matthew's face, has possibly come from an infection or a bite of some sort. She said he will probably have this the rest of his life. (again, no biggie to us) But, we were never told about this either. I tell ya, you just roll with the punches! We are trying to get his vaccination records up to date, but it is HARD! Everything is in CHINESE! Our pediatrician is Asian, but does not read Chinese. (AHHHH!!!!) We've pretty much decided to get tithers done on Matthew to see what his immunity is and to go from there. (With Rebecca she had only immunities to 3 things and that was it!!!) Blood work, testing and cardiac stuff to come next week! *oh please pray for us* (Especially about the cardiac stuff! My father had a murmor because of Rheumatic fever as a child and it went away.......I'm praying it's NOT the worst case scenario our pediatrician gave to us! (a hole in his heart)

Thanks for traveling with us to China! We'll post here and there about our kids as we get something to say. Hopefully we'll be rested enough to attend church tomorrow.

Kristen