3-5-05 LA

3/5/05

It’s almost 4:00 a.m. on Saturday morning in LA and guess who’s been up since 2:30 a.m.? You guessed it….Katie Lin and Daddy! Overall though, she’s done well tonight. It’s really her late afternoon and early evening and she slept off and on for about 3-1/2 hours. I’m so glad we decided to spend the night in LA. Having traveled all the way home from Taiwan twice last year without spending the night, I knew it would be a daunting task for two young boys and an infant.

Katie Lin was absolutely incredible on the flight from Guangzhou. She slept the majority of the time and seemed very content when she was awake. Overall, there were 23 babies on the flight, all coming home to the USA for the first time so, as you can imagine, it was quite difficult to rest. The little girl in front of us cried at least 70% of the time. It was really pretty impressive! I don’t know how she went that long without completely wearing out. There were a lot of runny noses, ear infections, teething issues, etc. with all these little girls, but they were making sweet music (funny, I bet the few business men on the flight didn’t think so!).

When the wheels touched down at LAX the whole plane erupted in applause. It was quite an emotional scene, a true milestone in the journey to bring our daughters home from China. After spending about an hour-and-a-half to get through immigration and claim our baggage. Then we headed to the hotel where we immediately noticed a Burger King across the street. It only took us about 30 minutes to make it to BK, where Katie Lin wore her first BK crown and enjoyed a real American kid’s meal with her brothers.

Here’s the fun part of the story. After we got back to the hotel, Sonya opened to suitcase that we had packed all our stuff in for the overnight LA stay and immediately noticed that it was NOT OUR SUITCASE! It was the exact same piece of luggage that we had bought in Guangzhou (obviously someone else had the same idea) and had a pink bandana tied around the handle, just like ours. I don’t have time to get into the whole bandana explanation, let’s just say it’s a common thing among adoptive parents to identify their luggage this way.

Drew and I immediately headed back to the airport (you can imagine how I enjoyed this task) and, long story short, found our luggage in the “Luggage Services” department of Delta/China Southern. The ladies there were amazed at the similarity between the two suitcases. I was sooooooo relieved to grab our stuff and head back to the hotel. Of course, somewhere there is someone who is extremely ticked at me for grabbing the wrong luggage. I hope they were staying in LA and not wanting to check through to another destination. Oh well, it was an honest mistake.

Well, I guess that’s it. I’m outta here! We will see you all this afternoon. By the way, the last few posts have been great. I am continually amazed by your support and genuine concern for Katie Lin’s best interests. Again, we love you all and God bless!!!

Jeff, Sonya, Drew, Ben, Katie Lin and Grandmother