We are finally home!

(Photo descriptions - The final night in Beijing our agency threw a Goodbye China and birthday party for all the babies. It was a great party and such a wonderful thing to do as all the babies were between 13 - 15 months so they had never had a b-day party yet. As you can see it was festive and Lily got to really grab hold of the cake, which she liked smearing all over herself rather than eating.)

Ok Friday was literally the longest day in my life, with crossing the date line our Friday turned out to be 36 hours long. We had breakfast twice and I don't want to see an airport or the inside of an airplane for at least six months. But happy to announce we are all home safe and sound but somewhat tired.

The flight from Beijing to Vancouver was almost 11 hours and 39 babies were on the flight! Needless to say the plane was pretty crazy. Lily got over stimulated and was hard to calm down but finally slept for about 4.5 hours of the flight. Then again it was "Amazing Race" style to make our next flight and get Lily through immigration in Vancouver. We had to leave our stroller behind as we couldn't wait for them to bring it up from the plane and just left it in order to make it to our next flight. No time could be wasted and even with that we managed to miss our flight but were put on a 30-minute later flight to Toronto. I slept for most of the Vancouver to Toronto flight, while Charles and Lexi and Lily played really nicely.

We had a great welcome home visit at the airport hotel by my brother in law and his family. Thanks to them for delivering congee and tofu for Lily (thanks to my other sister in law for teaching Laurie how to make congee). It came in so handy as our car would not start (11 pm). I guess the harsh cold killed the battery. CAA came to start the car so we loaded everything up and had Lily in her car seat (first time). About 2 km later the car's electrical system just shut down while driving. We lucked out that the car decided to do this in front of a Holiday Inn so I marched Lexi and Lily into the hotel and got a room and Charles was left to deal with getting the car out of the entrance to the hotel. My car was doing crazy things and the back window was down all night, not functioning, so he had to unload the whole car again and bring everything into the Holiday Inn. We had a good rest at the hotel and a nice breakfast but my car is being towed back to London and we hired a mini van and driver to get us back to London. We finally arrived home at 10am Saturday.

Now Lily really feels like she is ours! We've given her a tour of the house. She's looked at many toys, smiled, seems very happy and had a nice lunch. I put her down for a nap and had one myself. Lexi is now giving her a piano demonstration. We thought our house was child proofed but it is not.

I'll get to posting photos later today, I know you are all dying to see her. My sister in law says she looks nothing like her old photo.

So happy to be home. China was an amazing experience and Lily is so great! We are all so happy.