We came home to a really full house Thanksgiving Day with all of our kids, including Zach and his girlfriend, Sam, plus my parents. Made for seventeen people in the house, which sadly isn’t really that much more than there will be on a regular basis! Leah and Jessie rolled right into the house with just a little trepidation, but Riley wouldn’t come out of the van. It was just too much for her to absorb all at once. So, I brought her in through the front door and put her in my office for awhile so that she could adjust to all the people and the surroundings.

The part of coming home that the girls had the greatest issue with was our little dog, Hershey! They were and continued to be petrified of her for several days. There was one morning, Saturday I believe, were Jessie sat at the top of the steps for hours, afraid to come down for breakfast. We finally had to put Hershey on a leash and keep her somewhat contained. After a few days of that, the girls started getting used to her and, while they still jump away and scream if Hershey does something sudden, they have been able to coexist with her.

Every day they adjust a little more to their new surroundings. And every day seems to present a new struggle. Kelly started school with them yesterday and they don’t appear to know as much English as Ali did nor do they know their numbers as well. That adds a lot of complexity on to Kelly’s plate.

One of the adjustments for us has been how loud they talk! They talk loud and fast and it seems like there is some sort of requirement in China that when you call to someone using their name or title, you have to do it at the top of your lungs. I thought boys were loud, but these girls, especially Riley and Jessie, take the cake!

Church on Sunday went actually much better than Kelly or I expected. For girls like Jessie and Riley that have had few rules or boundaries, we were not sure how they would react to sitting in church for 90 minutes+. But, they all did very well and only required a little periodic direction. In fact, we had another Christmas service that night and they had to go sit again for another hour! I was pretty proud of them.

Leah has seemed to be the one to accept and adapt to the new environment the quickest. She remains pretty happy most of the time and is always pleasant with a “Good Morning” and a “Thank you”. She has caused the least amount of drama. Riley, also, has done fairly well. She still has not completely embraced this new life, and she can be a little stubborn when she wants to, but ultimately gets on board. Jessie has probably had the most difficulty, and I think much of that revolves around the fact that for most (if not all) of her life people have told her that she is not smart and have basically left her to herself. No direction, no support, little love. Even her China mom seemed a little “hard” and Kelly told me how awkward the hug was that she gave her upon leaving. The schools were content to let her under perform and, at times, apparently just sleep through class. So, you have a pretty damaged young lady. I believe that Leah had a pretty good support system, and Riley was smart so she was able to derive some self worth there, but Jessie had to get attention in other ways. She will probably take the most time and effort and yet she craves Kelly’s attention and sticks close by her side throughout much of the day. All she probably needs is a little love and a whole lot of patience!

Now I will try and catch up on a few of the pictures! We stayed at the Garden Hotel in Guangzhou and it is named that because, well … it has a large garden! It was a very pretty area and one that we only got a chance to visit on our final full day there.

Here is picture of the entrance to the Safari Ride at the park and the girls getting on the tram ready to view the animals

The tram takes you on a pretty close encounter with many African animals!

We then took the girls through the Jurassic Park area where, as I told you earlier, the girls were pretty afraid of all the robotic animals.

Even though Ali KNEW this animal wasn’t real, she was still VERY uncomfortable taking this picture!

I already told you about the experience with the birds, but here are a few of the pictures of everyone being scared to death of them landing on them, except for Brittany and Ali.

A rare picture of just Kelly waiting on the girls at a bathroom break before we entered in to see the Pandas.

The Panada’s are always great to see as this zoo has so many of them!

We were able to see many of the animals at feeding time this visit, which made the experience a lot more interesting. Here they had an area where you could buy bananas and feed them to the elephants. Since it was the end of the day, they were just throwing the elephants all the left over bananas for a late afternoon snack!

That night we went to the circus and here are those pictures.

In this next shot, there is actually a wall of water surround the stage, falling from the ceiling probably 60 feet above the stage. It was really impressive.

Add to that the laser effects and it was definitely a show worth seeing!

Again, as we traveled out of Guangzhou to Hong Kong, we were told over and over what a mistake the train would be. How difficult it would be to manage Leah’s wheelchair and all our luggage. We were told this with Ali also, but braved it anyway and found the process both an easy and relaxing way to travel to Hong Kong.

Our guide took us to the train station and got us all settled in before he left. There was a gentleman there that offered to take all our bags (seven) and manage them through the station and on to the train for us for $20RMB each (that is a little over $3 per bag). We only really had an issue with one heavy bag, as the rest had wheels and the girls were able to manage their own bags. He wasn’t too interested in managing just ONE of our bags, but in the end agreed. That was the best investment there! He kept coming back and checking on us, making sure that we had all the necessary paperwork to get through immigration and on to the train. He took us straight to the front of the line for boarding and directed us through immigration, taking our one bag ahead of us. He made sure that we got that bag checked and then proceeded to make sure we knew how to access the elevator to the train platform. He was an unbelievable asset and our little angel for the day! We could have managed without him, but he made things so much better and I went ahead and gave him $100RMB for all the help.

The train ride was, as always, very enjoyable. They had put into service new train cars since the last time, and everything was clean and neat and quite. There was plenty of room for our bags, immigration was very easy on both sides, and after a quick two hour trip, we were in Hong Kong. We then took the double-decker bus from the train station to the airport, for about $5 per person, a pretty decent rate especially considering all of our luggage! The only difference was that last time we took the bus, it was pretty late at night and I don’t remember the bus making many stops on the way to the airport. This time, however, it was early afternoon, and it stopped EVERYWHERE along the route. So, it took over an hour to get to the airport, but it was very enjoyable riding up by the window on the upper level and enjoying watching Hong Kong. The girls seemed to enjoy it and carried on a conversation for the entire trip. Here is Riley in typical fashion! It isn’t the best video ever, but does capture some of her personality!

At the Hong Kong airport, every thing was decorated for Christmas, including a giant crystal Christmas Tree that was sponsored by a jeweler.

We had a nice dinner, went to bed early, and prepared for an early flight. We went from Hong Kong to Tokyo, which was about a 3 1/2 hour flight and it went fairly smoothly. However, that morning we actually spent a few minutes LOOKING at our tickets for the Tokyo to Atlanta flight, the long 12-hour, and realized that everyone was sitting by themselves in a middle seat. NO one was sitting by anyone else. This was a little concerning, considering that Leah would have to cath herself twice during the flight, Jessie was going to be pretty unhappy sitting by anyone besides Kelly, and Riley had thrown up on the previous flight! This seemed somewhat disastrous and it was the first time on the entire trip that I felt a little discouraged. The Delta employee that checked our baggage in Hong Kong told me that he would put through a request for seat changes, but since it was Thanksgiving Day and the airline had cancelled the other flight due to lack of flyers, the plane was full. I went to a gate agent in Tokyo and she basically told me the same thing without even looking at our tickets. We prepared for a long flight of making due, when God stepped back into the picture. Just before boarding they called several people up to the counter, including us, and moved everyone around so that most of us were sitting together. Kelly, Jessie, and Leah were in one row together, Brittany and Riley were behind her, and I was behind them. Ali got stuck in a middle row ahead of us sitting between two men! We felt a little bad for her, but as the plane started to fill up, there was an aisle set that remained open closer to us. Then began the stressful time of deciding when to have Ali move to the seat before someone else did, with the realization that the person assigned to that seat would most likely show up and claim it! We took the risk and had Ali move, cringing as every person boarded the plan and walked down the aisle, all of them bypassing the seat Ali was occupying. Finally, the plane was filled an no one claimed the seat! I talked to the lady sitting with Brittany and Riley and she happily switched seats! We went from being spread out all over the plane to all of us contained in two rows all together with me right behind them. It was a huge blessing! The girls managed the flight like troopers without incident.

We arrived home, as I said, to full house. The girls seemed to enjoy their new beds in their new bedroom! They didn’t have to sleep with someone else for a change!

As we transition back a normal life her at home, one of the challenges is keeping the girls busy! The other kids have been a lot of help! They took them out on the swings yesterday, even though it was cold, and Riley went out on the trampoline. I was able to snap a few pictures of them from the house before eagle-eyed Jessie caught me and sent them into screams of displeasure!

As many of you know, our family has blessed us on the last several trips by remodeling parts of our house. With Caleb it was new carpet upstairs, new appliances, and molding in the basement. With Ali, it was new hardwood floors and kitchen cabinets. This time we made sure that the family knew that there was nothing that needed to be done nor should be done in our absence. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we didn’t say the same to our friends, and they took up the quest, with our family’s assistance, in remodeling the boys and girls bathrooms upstairs, putting in new bathtubs with tiling around them (including handicapped accessible options for the girls bathroom), new cabinets, and new tile on the floor. It was a huge blessing, especially for the girls bathrooms. These pictures do NOT show off nearly how nice they both turned out. A huge thank you to the friends and family that spent their time and money getting this all completed.

I will try and update again soon! Just a lot going on. Today is my last day off and we are planning on heading to a movie soon. Then it is back to work for me tomorrow. I think I may have gotten used to this “time-off” thing a little too much!

Cameron