Baby Julia is Home!

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We are joyfully home with Baby Julia!

Shannon’s parents and sister Jill’s family (including husband Ron and cousins) all received us at Denver International Airport after a blissfully short <2 hour flight from Los Angeles.

Sweet little Julia was wide-eyed upon coming into her new home and has been engaged mostly with just looking around and taking it all in. It will take a while for this place to grow familiar in her heart and mind but at this point she clearly cares more about who she’s with (us) over where she is.

Everything is new to her in our home and many of her experiences today were novel. This afternoon included her first ride in a car seat, first meal in our home, first bath in our home, first time in our rocking chair, in her crib, etc, etc, etc.

We want to give her ample time to adjust to it all.

She is still happy to be hanging close with the family and has been in good spirits despite the long journey home and associated tumultuous time change. At 14 hours difference between MST and China time, the readjustment task required of the circadian rhythm seems about as challenging as it can get but everyone is holding up well all things considered.

We are so thankful to Shannon’s family for greeting us at DIA and ferrying us home from the airport only to make a family dinner for us! And we are thankful to my parents for helping us right to the very moment of parting ways this morning. What a great family on both sides!

It’s great to be home and see familiar faces this afternoon including the Larsons and Beckers! Our kids missed your kids!

What a wonderful thing to drink clean water, breath clean air, feed the baby on a clean high chair, change the baby’s diaper on something over than a public floor, and eat fruits and vegetables again!

We again are humbled by your well wishes, prayers, and hospitality as we returned to a well cared for home with freshly stocked kitchen with meals and thoughtful provisions from so many of you including Baltzes, Polizzottos, Grimes, Fays, Mulherns, Eckerts, Billups, Gallegos, Reeses, Manns, Levitts, and Krouts! To those many others I am forgetting to mention in my sleep deprived rambling, Thank You and Forgive Me!

Thanks to all of you!

We are hoping to post just a few more updates about settling in with Baby Julia before we shut down the blog!

JC

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