A Clear Sign

Wow, we had a long trip home. We woke up at 4am on Wednesday morning, Sept. 10th(Tuesday night in the U.S.) to meet in the lobby at 6am. Luckily, all of our luggage was already picked up by the bell boys the night before. Other families were leaving along with us, and one family woke up early just to say good-bye to us. We will really miss these people! We had a short flight to Hong Kong with the Landino family and a couple other families. Julie (Landino) and I were talking about how we need to figure out how to get our two families together more often and realized that we have 9 kids between us! You wouldn't have known it, though, as all of our children were such troopers during all of our travels.

Once in Hong Kong, we all had our own routes home. We said good-bye, and we Smiths decided to have breakfast at Starbucks in the airport. It was D-lish.

On the plane to Korea Sinclair was given her very own baby meal. She enjoyed it very much, then she took a nap on the plane as we had bulk-head seats with a bassinet for her. It worked out great. In Korea, we all rested, got some McFlurries, and played with Sinclair. I think she was happy to be down on the floor instead of cooped up on a lap or in the baby carrier.


The next leg of the trip was the longest--from Korea to Los Angeles. The great thing was that it was almost bedtime. We had dinner, got Sinclair in some jammies, and she went to sleep. She didn't settle in right away, but after a little more cuddling in Mommy's arms, she was out. We all slept as much we could; Sinclair slept a total of 8 hours.

Once we landed, we had to get through customs in the immigration line and then we got our mooncakes confiscated because of the egg yolk inside them (boo!). But finally, we made it out of the airport with all 7 pieces of luggage, 5 carry-ons, a mom, a dad, and 4 kids. It was about 4pm on Wednesday afternoon, but the wee hours of Thursday morning to us. We were so relieved to get out of the airport, that you wouldn't know how exhausted we were. Plus, we were so excited that Sinclair was a US citizen now (yeah)! As we walked up the ramp out of immigration, Anita's parents were lined up on the railing waving and taking pictures.

Matt's mom and stepdad were there, too, circling the car around to pick us up at the curb. Sinclair did not like being strapped into a carseat. I'm sure she was wondering why she couldn't sit on my lap and look out the window like on the bus in China.

But she got to go to home for the first time.











What a joy to see her in our home, her home now.