Home Sweet Home!

We are home!   The girls were great on the way back.  In fact the airplane ride there and back was the easiest part of the trip surprisingly.  The girls slept a great deal of the way back and there were no more problems with the wearing of the seatbelt after the guide had a talk with Lily.  I have a lot of posting to catch up on our www.pomafamily.com site since that is where we were able to post for the most part during our trip.  The connections were weak so we missed a lot and I will try to get it all caught up this week.  We didn't get any part of our Guilin trip which was beautiful and I am so glad that we did.

Here is our little Lily stepping foot on American Soil and now a citizen of the United States of America. The way it works is that in China's eyes she was ours the second day we had her when we came back to the Civil Affairs Office.  In the United States eyes she became ours after the oath at the Embassy in Guangzhou.  She became an official citizen the minute she stepped off of the plane on to American Soil. We were all happy to get off the plane.  We had a little bit of a wait to go through the process of handing in her paperwork or "The Famous Brown Envelope" which you turn into the officials when you arrive.  Since that took awhile it was easy to get our bags since our were the only ones left going around and around the carousel.  We got through customs and found or driver and we were off to home.  It was light when we landed but dark by the time we got in the car so there was not much for Lily to see.  The girls were hungry and we were trying to keep Lily awake so she could eat so we stopped at In and Out.  We were not quite sure how Lily would like it since she did not like much of the Western food that was offered to her.  Take a look at the picture to see her reaction to an In and Out hamburger.

She took a couple of bikes and this was her reaction.  I think she will do just fine!

When we got home we showed Lily her home.  She was so excited and wanted to point at everything.  Every picture she would point at and say the name or pick it up and show it to the person in it.  I showed her the picture we had of her and she got a huge smile on her face.  We showed her, her bed and she ran to it and laid on it.  We then pointed out Emma's bed and Meilynn's.  She ran into our guest room and said, "Mommy and Daddy's bed."  I told her no and showed her our bed.  Then she went into the other bedroom that Meilynn had been sleeping in and pointed to the bed and said, "Kami's bed".  I told her no but I couldn't explain that Kami does not live here.  This was hard since Kami and Lily have become quite close.  We bathed the girls and then got them to bed.  It was not a good night.  They were up all night.  Mike and I would just go to sleep and then we would hear them on the baby monitor.  They were playing in the bathroom.  This happened a few times until Emma ended up in our bed and Mike ended up in Meilynn's bed in the room with Meilynn and Emma.

We woke the girls up and fed them what we could find since we didn't have much food in the house.  We decided that the best thing we could do was to get them back into their routine as soon as possible so we took them to pre-school.  Lily came along and met the Teachers and Director.  Mike and I then took her to Target to get some socks and a couple of shirts and some things that we needed.  My Dad heard we were there and could not wait to meet Lily so he met us there while we shopped.

We picked the girls up at 12:00 and Meilynn had been wanting a burrito so bad that we decided to pick them up and bring them home.

Lily with her burrito and fruit

Meilynn finally has her burrito

Emma loves burritos too!

Mike showing her how to eat it

The first bite

She does not like it!  Well we will have to work on that since we love burritos

After lunch the girls took naps and I did mounds of wash.  My Mom came over to meet Lily and played with the girls after their naps while I put some clothes away.  After that my sister Julie and sister Debbie came by and then our friends the Kaufmans so it was pretty busy until bed time.  Mike made stir fry for the girls but Lily only like the rice and fruit.  We had another rough night.  Emma ended up in our bed early and we think that Lily kept turning the light on and then it would wake everyone up.  We know she is ok with sleeping in the dark since she slept just fine with Emma in a dark room in China so we are not sure what that was about. We are happy to be home and I cannot wait to get everything put away and back to normal.  I know it will take about a week to get everyone on a normal schedule based on our past trips.