Tuesday morning started early at 5am for Chris and Me. Grace was up at 5:30. We were out the door by 5:45 on the way to the airport. After checking in another family and herself, our guide Shiyan took us to our counter for check in. Unfortunately my reservation, which I paid $25.00 to make on the phone with a United reservation specialist had not made it to their partner airline, All Nippon Air. After twenty plus minutes of searching and a managers help, they were able to find our reservation. Phew! I have heard of nightmares where reservations got canceled for some reason and new flights had to be paid for...was glad to finally be found and confirmed. Flight to Japan took off on time and Gracie did well on this three plus hour flight. We had a short bit of downtime in Japan before boarding our long flight to Los Angeles. Again, Gracie did really well. After they served us our dinner, I took her into my arms and sang some songs and she fell asleep. She slept for several hours, as long as maybe five? That was awesome.
We arrived at LAX at 9:30am. Our next flight was at 10:30. We had been in row seven, thankfully, so we hurried off the flight and down to immigration where we were about 15th in line. Got through the American side quickly but then were directed to sit down and wait for the processing of Gracie. And wait. And wait. We were the only ones waiting, but they had to process all the flight crew first...then all the people with rush passes because of close connecting flights. It didn't seem to matter that we had one as well. Grr. Finally we were called and a very nice man declared Gracie an American citizen, wishes us well and sent us on our way. We didn't have time to celebrate as we now had to run to catch our next flight. Down three hallways that stretched the length of 1.5 to 2 football fields to get to baggage and then the line for customs. But even with a our own rush pass now, when we got to customs we were stopped because we didn't have our customs form. The immigration guy had taken it and never gave it back. We now had ten minutes to boarding time. I ran (literally) the whole way back those three hallways to the first immigration guy who very loudly told me that he "never kept anyone's custom form and that it must be in my possession somewhere". I looked where we waited for Gracie's processing, where I got interrogated by another officer. Finally I asked the officer who processed Gracie, and he apologetically said he had my paper. After running the whole way back again, we got through customs and dropped our baggage to be reloaded onto our new plane and headed up the escalator with 1 minute to spare....and a security line! After begging our way into the short line, we begged our way past a few people and into line where we both had our bags pulled for review (and then sent through a second time) and Chris got frisked double time. When we finally finished this gauntlet, we were ten minutes past the first boarding time for our plane. Thank the good Lord above that there was a woman with one of those transport cars at the start of our gateway because our gate was at the end of a hallway that was another two football fields in length. We would have never made it without her. We loaded onto the plane with just a few minutes to spare. We were so exhausted after this craziness that Grace and I promptly passed out. She slept for most of the flight, at least three of the four or so hours. A blessing.
Upon landing, I burst into tears, so grateful and thankful to be home safely and so excited to see the boys. I pulled it together so as not to freak everyone out and we had a nice greeting time. It was great to see our friends and family who came out to see us. If that was you, thank you! I know what an effort it is to get to the Pittsburgh airport!
Since the six of us pretty much fill our van, it was just us in the car on the way home with grandparents and friends in other cars. Gracie got in her car seat and sat next to Jude without any complaining. We got home and had a little time at home before we put kids to bed. Grace and I were up for several hours during the night, but last night was much better, for her anyway. I'm still struggling with being wide awake around midnight or so for some reason. Hoping my body adjusts soon. Chris is in our bed, while I am with Gracie, so his sleep has been better.
Grace is adjusting as are the boys. The boys are responding as we thought they would, with Jude seeming a little out of sorts as he figured out what his new place is in the family. Grace is so much smaller than him that it is mind boggling that they are only ten months apart. I really feel that once she is able to communicate well, that they will be fast friends. She has spent the the last two days playing with the Disney Princess kitchen and food that was given to us by Carrie Jack. She loves it. We are working on figuring out what to feed her that she will
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