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This was a sign in front of the neighborhood that the kids and D\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s folks arranged for us. We were also greeted by all sorts of decorations, signs, etc, at the house that the kids and some great friends at our church set up. Even at 1:30 AM it was great to see . . . almost as good as seeing the kids come running out of the house. They were tired (especially the boys), but happy just the same.<\/p>\n
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Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s backtrack a bit . . . This was Lainey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first \u00e2\u20ac\u0153step\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ever in the U.S, in the airport in New Jersey. Donna was born in Jersey and was there for a year before going south. For Lainey, it just felt that long.<\/p>\n
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Donna and I in the airport in Jax. Can you tell how both exhausted and relieved we both were?<\/p>\n
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The picture above is the whole crew at ~ 2:00 AM. What a crowd . . . it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still hard to believe they are ALL ours.<\/p>\n
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Ahhhh\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6..finally. Can you believe that there is apparently not ONE of these in all of China?<\/p>\n
The following pictures were taken the next day, with each of the kids taking turns holding Lainey. She was reluctant and a bit withdrawn around them at first, but warmed up much more quickly than we had hoped. It was all Donna and I could do to hold it together.<\/p>\n
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Donna\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s folks got a chance, too, before heading back up North. Lainey was getting a good taste of life in a big family. I know that Lainey can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to meet the rest our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153people\u00e2\u20ac\u009d up in North Carolina . . . we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re pretty excited about that, too.<\/p>\n
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Thanks again for EVERYONE who helped us with this trip . . . for watching over our kids here in the U.S., for your comments on our website, for your thoughts & prayers, and for your advice. It all made this trip easier than it could have been.<\/p>\n
By the way, this is what a 19 month old looks like at 3:00 AM who is still living on China time. She was perfectly content to run around the kitchen, stack DVD movies, play peekaboo, etc, until ~ 4:30 AM. Did I mention that we are tired?<\/p>\n
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This was a sign in front of the neighborhood that the kids and D\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s folks arranged for us. We were also greeted by all sorts of decorations, signs, etc, at the house that the kids and some great friends at our church set up. Even at 1:30 AM it was great to see . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}