Coming Home! (aka, The longest day of my life)

I am happy to announce that WE ARE HOME!

Yesterday was definitely the longest day of my life, filled with laughter and tears, joy and frustration.

We got to the plane on time and boarded without problem. Except that Mom and I were coughing so much that the people around us probably wished that they had brought face masks, or better yet, gotten on a different flight. (Sorry Bette and Casey and families!!!) And then, Ben gagged on some rice and threw up half way to Tokyo. (Again, sorry to our travel mates!) But no worries, I had foreseen this possibility and packed a change of clothes in a Ziploc. Ok, clean clothes, clean Ben, on to Tokyo!

We didn't have much time to make our connection, so we rushed through everything, and barely had time to go potty (thank you to the nice lady who let me and Will jump line) before jumping on the next flight to Detroit.

The best part about the flight to Detroit was that Kate decided that Mommy is pretty fun. Mommy plays Ride a Little Horsey, Peek a Boo, Walk the Aisles of the Airplane, and Up, Down (where Mommy builds her muscles by lifting Kate and lowering her repeatedly). So after all of this play time, she was willing to cuddle with me for awhile!! She is coming around folks, I promise.

The worst part about the flight home was the food. On the way, the food was awesome. On the way home, the food was, well... weird. The kids meals had pizza for breakfast??? And the eggs were way salty. And served with broccoli. For breakfast.

At least we thought that was the worst part. Until we started looking around and realized that we couldn't find any of our traveling friends. No Bette and Mike, no Bob and Casey, no Greg and Jena. Uh-Oh. I even looked for their strollers when they were brought up. Nada. And I searched for them in immigration. Nope. I emailed them today, but haven't gotten an answer yet. I hope that they weren't stuck in Tokyo. Or maybe they just wanted to get away from me and Mom and our epizudic. (That's what Ma-Ma used to call a good hacking cough. She had lots of cool words for stuff.)

Anyway, speaking of immigration, it was AWFUL! We only had an hour and a half to make our connection. We waited in the first line forever before anything happened. Then, I spotted a faster moving line, so we moved. Then, an immigration lady moved us to the domestic line (even though we were told to stand in the international line). The guy ran our passports, and then sent us back to the international section, where all adopting families were put in the "Blue Line". I think it has something to do with immigrants who are joining other family members in the states. Anyway, we stood there for 20 minutes without moving up one step. At this point we had been in immigration for well over an hour, and there were about 7 or8 families in front of us. All trying to make connections.

Also at this point, immigration was completely empty except for the blue line. Finally, this one wonderful lady (God love her heart!) jumps out of her booth and says, "All adopting families, come over here for the express lane!" Woo Hoo!! There were only 2 families in front of us NOT adopting, so we ran over to this lady's lane. She then proceeds to collect our immigration documents, stamp all of our kids' passports, and get us out of there in about 3 minutes flat. And while she was doing it, she was fussing at the guy in the next booth for not helping out too! We were the last adopting family in line, so when I got up there, I said, "First of all, we LOVE you!" I then handed our stuff to her. She stamped it. And we moved on. TO THE NEXT LINE!

That's right. After waiting for over an hour and then collecting our luggage, we had to wait in another line. We stood there only a few minutes when Kate started screaming because Tim couldn't hold her and the luggage at the same time. A very nice airport guy came over and escorted us to the open lane, evidently reserved for unruly passengers - Thanks, Kate!!

When we got through that, there was another line. This one was for the purpose of telling you what line to take your luggage to for inspection. After inspection (which was where we handed in a form that had already been stamped that our bags were ok, nothing else), there was another line to tell you what line to stand in to re-check your luggage. Seriously?

So we re-check our luggage. Then, guess what? I know, you already guessed, ANOTHER LINE! Evidently going through metal detectors and body searches in Guangzhou AND Tokyo isn't enough for US immigration. We got to do it again! Oddly enough, this was the one place that the detectors didn't pick up on our fever meds and antibiotics for Kate. First of all, seriously? Second of all, Praise Jesus! Explaining what it was for would've taken precious minutes, and we needed to hightail it to terminal C!

So Tim picked up Kate, his pack, and the computer (Kate was the lightest among the three). Mom grabbed the stroller (with Will inside) and boarding passes. I grabbed my pack, all of the passports, Kate's shoes (she didn't need to wear them anyway), and Ben's hand. And we all RAN through the airport like crazy people. Poor Ben kept falling, and I stepped on his hand once. (Bless him, he said he forgave me because he knew it was an accident.) As we arrive at the gate, they were announcing that it was the final boarding call. We pushed through the people waiting to board another plane, and breathlessly handed them our passes.

Once we were seated, someone official-looking stepped on the plane to ask if I was on board. I thought this was a good sign because I knew that I had to be on board for them to put our luggage on too. The flight was fine, and Will and I cheered when we spotted our town's water tower and other familiar sites from the air. We cheered when we landed. Will said, "Mommy, you are going to see your dad soon!" Yay!

Our airport is tiny (I love it), so it didn't take but a minute to realize that only MY bag made it onto the plane. The rest of them were still in Detroit. But that was ok. I danced as I told the NW guy about our problem. He told me that I had a lot of energy for someone whose bags were missing. I was like, Dude, if only you knew how close I came to being stuck in Detroit too, you would understand. Plus, the bag that came home was the one with the clean laundry in it. So I didn't even have to feel guilty about not doing laundry right away (except for the guckies, that had to be done, people)!

Arlie took Mom home. Dad drove us home. And thankfully, we are here. Today has been a really good day, which I will share with you at another time. But right now, I am going to sleep. Night.

PS. Sorry this is such an incredibly long post, but I just had to vent. It's what I do. Kudos to all of you who made it all the way through! I hope I didn't drive everyone else away. (I didn't even have pictures for you!)