We're Home!!!!

Wow, at times it seemed like we'd never make it, but last night finally arrived. The kids were great on the plane, the plane itself was barely able to takeoff given all the excess baggage we had, but we arrived home, and the kids had a great night. Feeding them was difficult last night and this morning, as they knew they were in a new home and were very occupied with checking out the surroundings, but they now already seem to be at home.
We spent way too many hours at the mall this morning/afternoon. This is an experience I want to do away with. Spending our weekends at the beach seems like much better family time, than weekends at the mall.

When we got home, we arrived to friends awaiting us on our front porch. Kathy and her three adopted kids. Kathy is a single mother and is twice as good as parenting as most couples. She adopted her two oldest kids, Sam and Lina from Vietnam, back in '99. Then her sister, Melody (one of my closest friends) adopted Jack from Cambodia. When Melody passed away due to Cancer five years ago, Kathy assumed custody of Jack. It is so nice having them as friends. Her children will be excellent roll models for our kids. We have other friends here that have adopted children as well from Vietnam, China and Africa. It has been really nice to be able to talk with them as we've gone through this process. At times, it has felt like they were more excited about our kids than we were :)

Here is a photo of (in order of age) Sam, Lina, Jack, Tri and Cai.

Kathy adopted Sam and Lina at the same time, like we have.  Sam was about 9 months old and Lina I think was about 5 months old.  So she really has a sense of what we've been going through.  I can't count the number of times Virginia and I have remarked how lucky we are that we are doing this together and not as a single parent.