Saturday, January 22, first day home = A Good Day!

So Friday night our plane landed at 10:35.  We arrived home shortly before midnight to kids who were so excited about their sister coming home that they had all stayed awake and some of them even rushed out to the driveway in pajamas and flip flops to greet Hadassah Peiwu.  By 1:00am the older five were shooed off to bed, and Peiwu was eating Ramen noodles to fill her up.  By 2:00am both Peiwu and Christopher had cleaned up and gone to bed.

Me?

So much to do!  I couldn't stop tossing in laundry, and sorting through the mail, and unpacking stuff, and various other tasks until almost 4:30am. 

Maybe that wouldn't have been such a big deal IF we could have slept in late on Saturday morning.  But we hit the ground running and were back awake by 6:30am!

Josiah had a 9:00am basketball game and Keziah had to be at a dress rehearsal for her Chinese dance class at the same time.  Christopher took all the boys and I took all the girls.  After B-ball, Christopher had sign-ups for Spring soccer and neede to feed the boys lunch.  I grabbed a bite for the girls to eat too (Yes, McD, the Wade family is back!)  Then we met up to watch Josiah's afternoon basketball game.

 Decorations for the New Year Celebration

 Thank you, Lord, for those Leapsters!

 Playing Patty-Cake with Jie Jie, Miranda

 My three princesses

 Have I mentioned that she it totally Wade?

 Watching the girls dance with her sister

 My beautiful blue butterfly girl

 Dacning their special new folk dance, the Oney Dance

 Group Picture!

(Can you tell which goofball is my girl?)

Elijah's basketball game

 Waiting on the bench for your turn is hard

 Go defense!

Great stance and hands up!

 Getting the ball back into the game

Snuggled up with Baba watching her Ge-ge play

Are you tired yet?

Now we had a few new challenges to face.  Do you remember Hadassah Peiwu's shoe situation?  Before traveling we really didn't know what her foot size would be.  She came to us in boots WAY TOO BIG for her little feet.  We did buy her a pair of tennis shoes in Nanchang, but weren't really sure what her shoe size was or if the new shoes even fit.  Life was going so well in those few short hours that we were considering trying church on Sunday morning.  But going to church in shoes that were already beginning to fall apart and had collected all the dirt and filth they could find in China just didn't seem like an appealing idea. 

Shoe shopping!  Isn't that what everyone does on their first day home?  Miranda tagged along as my helper to keep track of one little girl.  First a good pair of everyday tennis shoes that FIT her foot.  Once we knew her size, we were off to find a dress shoe for church and snow boots. 

Do you know how hard it is to find a little girl snow boots in January?  They had LOTS of snow while we were in China.  I think every store must have sold every pair of boots that had in stock except for the half dozen toddler boys' size 6 boots we did see.

Our boot adventure quickly turned into the everything else we needed to pick up journey.  Things like a baby monitor for the little girls' room so we could hear Thing 1 and Thing 2 in the middle of the night, extra step stools so Hadassah Peiwu can reach the sink to wash her hands in the bathroom. 

After all that fun, I brought the girls home so we could all eat dinner and get them off to bed (Thank you again to the families who brought us food!)  Bath time and bed time for kiddos. 

But not for me...I then dashed to the grocery store to pick up a few items (few is relative to a family of eight).  The weather forecast included a possibility of snow on Sunday so I wanted to make sure we could survive with supplies at home for a few days if necessary. 

Christopher and I dropped into bed that night...just exhausted.

Overall, it was a really good day.  Hadassah Peiwu was a real trooper.  Somehow, her day and night switch just totally flipped.  She was so busy that she didn't even try to nap or simply doze off.  She went to bed so well after a giggly girl bubble bath with Keziah.  I don't know that we could have done the same day with Keziah when she first came home.  We ended they day just so thankful for so many things.  It was good to be home and good to have our complete family together.