Great to be home!

After a grueling 25 hours (approximately) of being up and traveling, we made it safely home on Sept. 17th. We were so excited to see familiar faces of family and friends at the airport! We could not have done this without all of your support and prayers! It's great to be home and adjusting to our new life. Rachel loved her room and closet with new clothes (although most of the skirts and shorts are way too big for her tiny waist!). We spent most of Saturday just doing nothing and sleeping on and off. Rachel played hard with her brothers and a neighbor girl, Sophie, who is 6. Rachel went to bed on her own for a "nap" at around 5pm (possibly earlier - as I was dozing on the couch and didn't even know she had gone to bed). I was afraid it was too late for a nap and that she wouldn't sleep at night. To our surprise, she slept until about 6:45am, when it was time to get up for church!! She had to be EXHAUSTED from the trip, time change and playing so much on Friday and Saturday!

We went to church yesterday. She was greeted by lots of new people and got slightly overwhelmed. But she did fine overall. We went out to eat at our boys' favorite restaurant - a Vietnemese place. Rachel loved the noodles. Then we came home and couldn't help but go to bed to rest. We were trying to stay awake, but couldn't help dozing off a little! Rachel again went to bed for a nap on her own, and slept all the way til this morning. Her 2 brothers went to school this morning, so I'm sure she misses them. I said the word school in Chinese for her to understand where they disappeared to! She seemed to understand. :-)

She loves to ride Nathan's bike! She has also had cereal, oatmeal and Brazilian rice and beans! We had wondered how she would eat and try new foods. To our surprise, so far so good! At first she wrinkled up her nose to the oatmeal, but when she saw her brothers eating it, she tried it and liked it. YAY!!! She even likes iced tea (in China, they are used to drinking hot things). They don't even drink cold water. It's either hot or room temperature. Yuck! I was so glad to get back to cold water. That's why I drank a lot of coke there, more than I ever do here. We were told not to use ice as it might not be safe. So the water was room temperature on our tours. The only way we had cold water was buying bottled water and putting them in our mini fridge in the hotel room (which didn't get them very cold, but it was better than nothing!). The little things we are used to and don't appreciate them until we don't have them. :-)

We do miss the other families we met there. Hopefully we'll all keep in touch.

Needless to say, it's great to be home! Love to all who have followed our journey so far.