We are home! And Ava's feet have touched American soil...

We left our hotel in Hanoi 40 hours before arriving at our house in Cortland but now we are home. We arrived on Tuesday, January 30th at around 11:00 p.m. Ava was a wonderful baby. She slept and quietly played on most of the plane rides. The flight attendants could not get enough of her. She was wide awake and very taken by the bright lights and loud noises of the airports so when we got on the planes she was pretty tuckered out. We had an 11 hour layover in Tokyo. The Tokyo airport has day rooms that you can rent and we did. It was exactly what we needed - beds and a fast hot running shower. Customs in Chicago went better than I could have ever anticipated. The only glitch that we had was trying to bring the bottle of champagne (the Tokyo to Chicago flight crew gave us as we left the plane to celebrate our new baby) through the security checks... We ended up having to give it to security. It was a very nice gesture on the flight crews part though - and we appreciated it. Grandma Belva met us at the Syracuse airport and will be with us through the weekend. Our fabulous dog/house sitter Adrienne was still here and updated us on all the local activities while we were gone - especially the snow and animal antics. We are still on Vietnam time so Ava, Mommy and Daddy were awake until 7:00 a.m. Then we we slept until 1:30 p.m. Now we are awake and trying adjust. Thanks for everyone's good wishes. We were the second family to leave Vietnam so hopefully the other 4 are on their way home or leaving shortly.

I will write more tomorrow. Grandma Marva should be here soon. We have our doctors appointment tomorrow so we will know for sure about her health issues soon.

Thank you to Renee and the girls for the cards and balloons. Thanks to Lori for the awesome food!