Day 15 Olivia's Coming Home

Friday, September 10, 2010


We got up early this morning and went down for breakfast. Olivia was so excited when they brought her own Peter Rabbit plate, fork and spoon. She was a happy camper. I filled her plate and she really enjoyed feeding herself. She is "Miss Independent".

After breakfast, we finished packing up and the shuttle at the hotel took us to the airport, which was next door. We left at 9:30 am and got all checked in, waiting for our flight to leave at 12:30 pm. Today we will be traveling through time because we leave 12:30 pm China time and land in Chicago at 2:30 pm on the same day. It looks like we are only having a 2 hour flight, but believe me it is 14 long hours.

South China Sea

Olivia only slept 2 hours on the plane. Every time we would get her to sleep they would bring food out to us and the smell of the food would wake her up every time. Of course, if there is food, she is going to eat. It's fun to watch her after she eats.  She will pick up the napkin without saying anything and wipe her mouth and hands.

I think that she was so excited about coming home that she wasn't able to sleep. She enjoyed writing in my journal that she has watched me write in all week and she would also pretend that it was the computer. She sat the journal up like a laptop and then put her hands on the area where the keyboard would be and then pretended like she was typing because she has been watching me type. One of the things that she does every morning as we get ready is sings to us.  So she sang on the plane over and over again and she also chatted with the people behind us.

After our 14 hour flight, we landed in Chicago.  It took us 3 hours to get through customs, immigration and recheck our bags. We gave Olivia's brown sealed envelope to the officer and she is now an official citizen of the United States of America. On our way to the area to wait for our next flight, we stopped at McDonald's which tasted really good. Olivia went on many walks at the airport.  She finally went to sleep and slept about an hour.  She didn't sleep much there because it was very loud and all of the lights were on.

I'm a United States Citizen

After our long wait, we boarded the plane to Paducah at 9:45 and landed one hour later. When we landed we could see Steve and Abby standing outside waiting for us. When we came in to the terminal it was nice to see some smiling faces of our family waiting for us. Olivia was really tired. She checked everybody out and didn't have much to say, but she didn't get upset. They brought her some gifts, which was a good timing because the airlines lost her bag with all of her clothes in it and if Carolyn hadn't brought an outfit she wouldn't had anything to wear. Her bag ended up in Knoxville and hopefully we will get it tomorrow. When it was time to leave, she waved bye and blew kisses to everyone.

We are going to stay the night in Paducah and bring her home in the morning. We haven't had much sleep and thought that it would be best for her to see her new home in the daylight and see her new bedroom. It is wonderful to be home to smell fresh air, see the beautiful blue sky and be able to drink water right from the faucet.
I hope that everyone has enjoyed our adoption experience as much as we have. I want to say a special THANKS to my niece Kim who has helped us tremendously. When we arrived in Beijing we found out that we were not going to be able to use our blog site. Fortunately, we were able to send emails and Kim has faithfully put in our daily blog and attached our pictures we really appreciate it.