Thanks for all the well wishes

Whew! We made it! We've been home for almost 24 hours now and trying to get the bodies adjusted back to our time zone.  We went to bed about 7:30 last night and didn't have much of a problem falling asleep.  Laine woke up twice needing a diaper and she made some new noises, but she slept just as we did. We crawled out of bed about 9:30 this morning.  I didn't sleep at all on the flights and Chirstina and Laine maybe slept two hours.  It was the fussiest she had been for us.  Not sure if its the teeth coming in or not moving around much or what.  She cried a fair amount, making the older man sitting next to Christina not very happy.  He asked for a seat change right away but never got one.  That truly is a rough way to travel. We saw an episode of Brothers and  Sisters, Ghost Lab, Cake Boss, and some other tv shows and then a bunch of movies, The Invention of Lying, The Informant, Where the Wild Things Are, The One and Only, and I wouldn't really recommend any of them!  We paid a little more for the economy plus cabin on the flight home.  Supposedly you get five more inches of leg room than the economy area.  It was worth it.  Laine had a seat between us too.  But it just wasn't quite wide enough for her to lay stretched out.  She just couldn't get comfortable. Finally about 10 hours into the flight she fell asleep across my lap.  I was afraid to move and my arms were pretty dead after an hour and we moved her to the seat for a bit more rest.  Still didn't get a window seat so never got to see any of the landscape.  We flew from Hong Kong over Japan and the north to Alaska and then back down through Canada and the Dakotas to Chicago.  We didn't have any problems with immigration. We handed over the brown envelope, they opened it out of our sight so we never got to see all the paperwork in it! But it was about a 1/4 inch thick of something.  Laine will receive her official paperwork in the next 45 days.  Then we can apply for a local birth certificate.  She'll need that for school. 

There has been a lot of talk nationaly about airline security lately and we saw some interesting things in our flights.  China has pretty diligent security I thought.  They looked at our checked bags much more closely than here.  We also had two security checks in Hong Kong, the normal one going to the gate and then another right at the plane entrance where they patted you down from head to toe and checked your carry on bags again.  For some reason the US immigration x-rayed all luggage on the way into the country, thought that was odd.  Then we had to go through security again in Chicago since we left a secure area changing terminals.  That sucked.  TSA there was as slow as frozen molasses and were very rude.  We were admonished for not putting shoes on the conveyor, but in a bin, and for not unloading every camera I had separately.  He said I've been doing this for 8 years and, he didn't like my answer of I've been carrying multiplae cameras through airports for over 20 and never had to unpack each one!

But now we're home. Christina just came back from the store so I better help unload some goodies! More later.