We're coming to America!!!

We are on the countdown to leave! We take off for a 3 hour van trip to Hong Kong this afternoon. We should be arriving in Chicago Friday where Matthew will become a citizen after a 14 hour flight. Please keep us in your prayers - and you are very welcome to come meet us at the airport in Cleveland. We have arrived late on every flight so far, so please check the flight status before you come. We will be on United Flight 5207 arriving at 4:19 pm Friday afternoon at Hopkins. Please take lots of pictures if you decide to come. I can't imagine what we might possibly look like after the long flight, probably a lot more gray hairs. We sure will be excited though!

He really is a sweet boy and a lot of fun. He is starting to shake his head to indicate no, but he stills grunts and points a lot. Matthew still really isn't into toys that much, he would much prefer to play with whatever is in the room. He is sleeping fairly well at night and still takes a few bottles of formula per day. He doesn't mind the sippy cup too much, so we will slowly transition there.

Once we are back at home, we will be hunkering down at home to give this boy as much routine as possible and to introduce his new brother and sister into the mix. Hope you will excuse us for awhile till we get him used to his new home and surroundings and learn to better communicate with each other. We are still very much in a transition phase, so there are a lot of things and behaviors that do occur that we would never have allowed with our biological children, but we are picking our battles carefully with him - please just smile right along with us :) He is doing much better in the food department, but he wants to eat anything he sees. We promise to join back into life very soon. He has spent his whole life having new changing caregivers come in and out of his life. Our hope is not to confuse him too much.

Pictures below are of our travel group picture time, a few random of Matthew and of the park near our hotel that is decorated for the Chinese New Year. I would have included the group picture of all the kids, but someone couldn't stop crying long enough to be a part of it.

See you all very soon and thank you for sharing this journey with us. I will post again before we leave china if we have time or a sleeping little guy. I will update for sure when we are back at home.