Settling In

It is good to be home! Sorry I haven't posted before now. My computer is dead. Right now it is in about 10 pieces on the kitchen table. Dallas is trying to fix it. I don't think he will be able to but I guess it is worth a try.

I left off in Hong Kong. We left early Wednesday morning for the airport-too early. We had to wait for Continental to open to check our bags. The Hong Kong airport is very nice. We ate breakfast at Burger King, went to the Disney Store, and waited for boarding.

The flight went pretty well. Grace did extremely well. The kids in front of us were horrible the whole flight, though. The parents sat in first class and the nanny sat in coach with the kids. The baby cried the whole time and the other 2 kids were very loud. The food wasn't so good. We were almost to Newark and Zachary threw up a couple of times. Dallas and I were feeling pretty sick by the time we arrived in Newark,too.

When landing in Newark we had to go through Immigration and Customs again. We had to go through the foreign immigrant line due to Grace. Fortunately it went pretty quickly and then I had to go to the immigrant room so they could officially stamp Grace's passport. This only took a couple of minutes, too. She became an official U.S. citizen when our plane landed in Newark.

We had a few hours to spare so we grabbed a bite to eat and started our wait. They kept delaying our plane. We double booked a flight in the morning just in case we didn't get out Wednesday night. Finally at 9:00 our flight departed. What a relief! At this point we had spent 7 hours in the Newark airport and we were all ready to get home. We were exhausted!

We landed in Raleigh about 11:20. They had closed the gate out. We had to go down a staircase that was an emergency exit and through the loading zone. It was very strange. Then they said there was a power outage and they didn't know how we were going to get our luggage. Fortunately it did arrive a little later. We loaded the car and headed home.

After five hours sleep, we were up and ready for a new day. Grace had her appointment with the doctor who will be doing her palate surgery at 2:00. It is at UNC hospital in Chapel Hill. We waited for 2 hours to see the doctor for 15 minutes. He is going to try and do her surgery in November. There are several other doctors who need to see Grace before surgery. We agree the sooner they can do it the better. This is the time she is learning to talk and she can't form a lot of words the right way with an open palate.

Today we are all feeling much better. Everyone got more sleep last night. Did I mention it is great to be home?

I will be posting more pictures. I am going to wait to see if Dallas can fix my computer because I would rather load them to my computer instead of this one.