Home Safe & Sound

Just wanted to let everyone know that we made it home safe and sound. Not to say that it was the easiest trip we've ever made. The flight started out ok, and Samantha was really good for take-off. She and I had gotten comfortable and everything was going great. No problems during the ascent. Then things changed. Not sure what happened, but she did a Jeckyl and Hyde. She started an unconsoleable scream. I wasn't able to get her to settle down, so I handed her off to Shirley. Even her touch wasn't working, and Samantha got more and more agitated, to the point that she decided to share her last feeding with Shirley. This was at about the 1 hour mark, and didn't get much better for the next 3 hours. She had missed her afternoon nap, and it was past her normal bed time, so she was really over tired. Screaming, walking up and down the aisle, trying to get her to eat, nothing was working. I've got to say that the other passengers on the flight were very accommodating, even the poor guy that was stuck beside us and trying to sleep. We finally got her settled down, got some food in her, and she was actually playing real nice in my lap. Then, another unknown trigger and she was off to the races again. This time we walked her to the back of the plane where one of the flight attendants volunteered to try to console her. She was able to get her to the point where once again she would take some food and settle down. This time she went down and slept for 5 solid hours. We actually had to wake her to get off the plane.

Customs and Immigration were a breeze. We actually got a civil servant at immigration that wanted to help. One of the challenges is that she is traveling on a Chinese passport and Visa based on her Chinese name. This would have her immigration processed in her Chinese name. Our immigration agent asked if we had anything that indicated that we had renamed her in China. Fortunately we have a document that states that we have renamed her to Samantha Helena Penner. He accepted this and processed her under her Canadian name, which means that we do not have to go through an officical name change process.

We then had a wonderful surprise as we exited the secure area and saw signs saying "Welcome Home Samantha" from some of our friends that had shown up to greet us. We had expected Donna and Wayne, Cliff and Theresa, but Joanne and Kaitlyn and Bev and Peter were there to greet us as well. Kaitlyn is another Chinese adoptee who is now about 3.5 years old and very inquisitive. Once she found out we were bringing home a baby from China she wanted to be there to greet us.

Donna, Wayne, Theresa and Cliff had a great gift waiting for us when we got home - steak, baked potato and caesar salad. Just what the doctor ordered after 2 weeks of rice, noodles, etc. Even though we had been fed 3 times on the plane, this dinner was great. We can't say enough about how comforting it was to have someone pick us up, drive us home, and wait on us once we got there. We are truly blessed to have such great friends, and we don't know what we would do without them.

Now we just need to get our clocks flipped around and figure out what our new schedule will be. Samantha went down about midnight last night and slept until about 4:00. We then played for a couple of hours and we have just put her back down to sleep. Not sure who's going to have a harder time with time, but we're in this together and couldn't be happier.