We Made It... And We've Come Back...

Well, we've been in California for 9 days already. It's a beautiful whirlwind here: blue skies (after 12pm) and sea breezes... 5 kids in one house... good times!!! Our flight was 12 hours of... well, I can't say it was bad, really... just 12 hours of restricted movement. Hunter ended up sleeping for almost 1/2 of it... which was surprising! It was Helena who had the hardest time settling into her little bassinet... but we arrived at LAX on Wednesday, July 22 - my mom's 60th birthday!!! The kids immediately took to their grandparents and haven't looked back!

We'd planned to take the airport bus to the airport in Taoyuan, but the taxi that picked us up to drive us to the bus ended up being big enough to support us and our luggage so we just paid the extra and took him all the way! It's a good thing we'd decided to take Hunter's car seat on the plane - we were off to a great start! The kids had fun looking at the planes and "trains" while we waited to go on our big 'airplane ride'!

Hunter didn't mind the car seat at all... until it was time to sleep.

Thankfully there was an open seat next to Tony so he ended up sleeping there.

We had a pretty good configuration... two seats at the bulkhead (for Helena's bassinet) and one seat on the aisle just across from our other aisle seat! It worked out pretty well... I think I'd request that again sometime.

Of course we had an activity planned upon arrival... we had my mom's birthday dinner at Grandma & Grandpa's house... you've got to eat, right?!?

Grandma's great birthday present... her grandson home for the celebration!!! (He was positioning himself for some cake, but hey... he spreads joy in the meantime!)

The following posts are an account of what we managed to do while we were home for those three weeks!!! It was a great visit!! Thanks, especially, to our family members who are always so generous - lending us vehicles, having us over for meals, taking us places, letting us stay in their homes, planning parties & opportunities to hang out, etc, etc, etc... we wish we could return the hospitality sometime -but I guess Taiwan is a bit far for most of them to travel! Maybe someday... Anyway - enjoy these photos... it's taken me two weeks to sort through them and get them ready for sharing... and now that I'm done, I can finally get to those household chores I'd been putting off!!!