Home sweet home

We are home!!! A 15.5 hour flight is brutal no matter which way you slice it but our boys were rock stars. They had more screentime than I'm going to admit, but it got us through. Joey got fussy right near the end, but otherwise was content for most of the flight. Joey became a US citizen when that plan touched down in the US!

We had a really amazing experience with a young man sitting next to us on that flight. Turns out he was adopted at the age of 7 from China with a cleft lip/palate. He is an amazing young man and it was no coincidence that he sat with us on our flight home. Hearing his perspective as a grown adoptee was priceless. There was also an older couple on the flight who watched over us and fed us snacks and candy over the long flight.

We landed from that flight and then had to go thru customs and immigration, get our checked bags, recheck them, go back thru security and then wait for our final flight home. I was literally dizzy with exhaustion at that point, but adrenaline kicked in as our short final flight home landed early...I couldn't get to my babies fast enough! However, Joey fell asleep on that final short flight and was a bear to stir and get off that plane! Poor kid, we had been going for 24 hours straight at that point.

No words can describe how it felt to see our babies, friends and family waiting for us at the airport. I felt like I could finally exhale after 16 days. What a journey. We're so blessed and so grateful. Seeing our 5 kids together made it all worthwhile.