We are home!

We are home after a really long trip.  We were really blessed on the trip home.  As our seats were seperated on our 15 hour plane trip, Brian got up at 4:30 am and made the trip to the check in desk at 5:30 am to check in at get our seats arranged.  He was the third on in line and the gate agent checked us in even though Richel and Megan were still back at the hotel.  He said your seats are taken care of.  Later we figured out that he had given us bulkhead seats with the possibility of using a bassinet.  This is huge as this was our 15 hour flight from Hong Kong to Detroit.  Later we left the hotel and went to get our boarding passes which was no problem since we were all check in.  We then proceeded to the security line.  We had trouble here.  They would not let us past this section as we only had two sets of boarding passes as we are holding Megan on our lap which our boarding pass stated.  We went back to the check in desk and a fellow there went with us to the security point.  He talked with the security guard and still made no progress and told us to stay and he went back to the counter.  He came back with another boarding pass with Brian’s name on it again.  The other boarding pass with Brian’s name on it had Megan’s Chinese name hand written on it.  With this in hand, the security guy reluctantly conceded to let us through finally.  Praise God!  Then on to immigration out of Hong Kong which went well with no problems.  Onto the actually security check which went smoothly with not questions about the baby formula.  Whew!!  We then had breakfast at a Burger King, which was a change after two weeks.  Wow. Now we can get on our plane to Detroit.  On our way on down the jetway prior to getting on the plane, they checked our carry-on luggage again.  We were fortunate that they did not give us much trouble with the baby formula while another family in an adjacent line with getting questioned about it.  Anyway, Megan has been very good for us and we made it to our seats.  Left Hong Kong at 9:15 am China time.  Good news when we got on our way that our flight maybe an hour less due to a tail wind.  It ended up being 14.5 hours and when you are on a plane for that long, a half an hour is a half an hour less on the plane.  Megan did really well and slept a good portion of the trip and was in a good mood most of the other times.  We got into Detroit at 11:30 am Eastern time.  We then got off the plane and headed for Customs and Immigration, we went through the line and the Customs people were very helpful with the adoption families.  We gave the all important packet to the immigration person who checked in Megan once we passed this point, Megan is a now a US citizen.  Since we got in early, we checked to see if we could get on the earlier flight to Minneapolis.  Found out it was overbooked, so we waited till our 3:15 flight.  Once on this flight we were delayed about a half hour or more leaving Detroit.  This made life interesting as we only had a 45 minute layover in Minneapolis.  I checked in Detroit what our arriving and departing gates would be in Minneapolis.  We did not think we would make our plane to Grand Forks as we were in the back of the plane from Detroit.  We arrived in Minneapolis at 5:00 pm, we only had 10 minutes to make our connection when we got off the plane.  We were going to try anyway.  We got to an information counter and asked which direction to B terminal and told the lady that our plane was leaving B8 at 5:15 pm, she immediately called the gate and told them we were on our way.  We got to the gate and the door was shut and nobody was there.  A cleaning lady came by and told us that the gate person was coming back.  After a few long minutes, the gate person came up to the door and escorted us down the gateway.  We had to go out the door at the bottom of the gateway and onto the tarmac and up into the plane and the flight attendant found us seats.  We were so thankful to be on that plane.  Praise God for His provision as we were really tired at this point.  The people around us were really nice once we told them that this was the third plane we were on and had come from China and Megan also gave them a couple of smiles.  We were the last ones off the plane in Grand Forks and were welcomed with a welcome home banner  held by our girls and were met by many family and friends.  We are so glad to be home and to have Megan as a part of our family!  She is joy in our hearts!

We will post more later.  Thanks for everyone’s prayers through this journey.  Continue to pray for us as we adjust back to this time zone and that Megan becomes more comfortable with the girls and family.