Saturday

Today was the get-together for our first adoption travel group: five families from the original 13 who went to ChongQing together, plus two more families in the area who arrived in Guangzhou to start the in-province portion the night we arrived for our US Consulate processing week.

(I should did out the email I sent to friends and family about that night in September 2004: our adopton agency in its selfish desires to minimize trips to the airport, scheduled both groups to arrive at approximately the same time - the late-ish hour wasn't a big deal for the group arriving from Beijing and who would be in Guangzhou for their entire trip, but we had 13 babies in our group. Thea had screamed and howled for almost the entire flight from ChongQing to Guangzhou. Steve was in nervous parent mode so he wanted her safely confined to the car seat, I wanted her in my lap to see if that would settle her down. Whether it was the cabin pressure's effect on her ears, confinement to the car seat that could be used in an airline seat or just general irritation at her lot in life. Everyone on that flight knew us by the time we got off the plane. By the time we got our luggage, were bussed to the White Swan Hotel, got in to our rooms, it was really, really late, and we had to be up and ready to go for visa photos at 8 am.)

The girls are all five years old, three are in kindergarten. They all have changed so much since September 2004. Micah was the sole boy as the one family with a son wasn't able to make it. It didn't seem to phase him much, and he was in the mix and enjoying himself - and he didn't color on the walls or make any other horrific messes. Bonus.

We see these families once or twice a year, yet each time we all do get together we seem to just pick up where we left off. Photos to follow at some point.

Micah is repeating after the GPS, on those increasingly rare occaisons when I have the mute off. The GPS says, "Turn right," then the voice comes from the back seat, "Turn right." So far he hasn't managed to say, "Arriving at destination," though.