Home at Last!

Ok, we made it home in record time, 26 hours! The return trip went very well. I was feeling much better at the end of the trip and that certainly helped. We left our hotel at 6:30 and our flight left for Beijing at 9:30am. We had a four hour layover in Beijing but it ended up not being much time. When you get to Beijing you have to go through immigration, go pick up your checked in luggage,go through customs, go to United and get your boarding passes, recheck in your luggage and then take a train to your terminal and hike to the gate. It seems the international flights are always at the very end of the terminal. Traveling with four carryons, three large suitcases and two small children is a bit of a challenge. The kids were great on the long flight and both slept quite a bit of the time. The flight left at 4:10pm China time so by 9pm they were both asleep as usual. I wish I could say the same for Mom and Dad. I think John got quite a bit of sleep but I had trouble sleeping. The guy behind me kept grabbing my seat and pulling back. Once the person in front of you lays their seat all the way back (practically in your lap) and the guys behind grabs your seat, there is just not much room for anything.(including knees) The area around Chicago was experiencing lots of high wind so the last 30 mins was kind of rough. It doesn't bother me, kind of feels like a roller coaster but lots of other passengers felt differently and people started getting sick all around us. The flight attendants were keeping quite busy passing out the air sickness bags. It was not a pretty site. I really feel for the flight attendants and the cleaning crew.
We had to do the whole routine all over again in Chicago, collect our luggage, go through immigration ( as a visitor since Luke was on a Chinese visa) recheck our bags, oh and don't forget about security. I was worried that we would miss our connecting flight but we made it with 20 mins to spare. We arrived in Springfield on time at 8:07pm. Steven and Whitney were there along with Jessica and Yue Jia. I wonder just how many of these arrivals Jessica has attended?
When we got home Luke just wanted to roam the house. He kind of freaked out when he saw Tobi and hid behind me calling, "Ma Ma, Ma Ma." He seemed ok with the cats and meowed at them. He loved Lily's room and the two of them began to play. We expected them not to be tired so let them play until 11pm and then went to bed. John took Luke with him and I had Lily. She continued to play princess dress up while I crashed on her bed. I woke up at 2am and could not go back to sleep. John was already up and working on the 150+ emails he had waiting for him. I started unpacking and doing laundry. By 3am the kids were both up too. We just played until around 6:30am and then all went back to bed again. I got back up around 10am and feel pretty good. the kids are still asleep but I need to get them up if we hope to have them sleep tonight.
I'll post a few pics here that we didn't get a chance to post on the trip. Hope you enjoy!