Welcome to America!

To answer everyone's quetion, we made it home!!! After 22 hours straight of travelling, we touched down in Des Moines with a big sigh of relief. Nicholas did really well the first half of the long flight but wasn't a fan of the last 4 hours. But we made it to the ground in one piece and he hardly stirred on the flight to Des Moines.

We managed the van ride to the hotel, bus shuttle from the hotel to the airport, check-in, cell phone return, exchanging our leftover Korean won, and airport security all with time to spare. This gave us a chance to use the children's play area in the airport which as you can see was greatly enjoyed by the little guy!

We also took the opportunity to take some more pictures for the baby book. He can show how cool the plane was that brought him to the US, and we can talk about how grumpy he was about having to sit in the seat (instead of bouncing in the aisle) during landing!

Here are a couple of shots when he was enjoying the flight. We requested a baby bassinet that attached to the bulkhead hoping he would be able to pass some time there... and here is him using it for the 2 minutes that lasted! But it did make a great place to stow all our stuff within reach. He was also amused with the video system in our seats. He caught an episode of Pororo (a Korean children's cartoon) on mom's lap, and we got a kick out of him wearing the headphones!

We were pretty much loaded to the max with our baggage as you can see. Too bad we didn't have another hand to get a picture of this plus us pulling along our 4 suitcases. But we're quickly learning that if our arms didn't buff up hauling luggage, they will from the sudden shock of carrying a 20 pound kiddo!

Here's the last shot in the "how tired of travelling do we look" series just before landing in Des Moines. I guess we could still smile for the camera even if we couldn't think straight about this time! It was great to have a bunch of people waiting for us at the airport to welcome Nicholas... and to carry our luggage, point us in the direction of home, and keep us awake long enough to make it there.

Now that we're home, we're settling in nicely. Nicholas is adjusting better than we expected and it generally pretty happy. Besides his sleep schedule being WAY out of whack, he's having fun playing will all his toys, getting to know the dogs, and making us laugh! Now begins the unpacking, laundry, putting away, and getting caught up on sleep part. Thanks again to everyone for following along on our trip. We looked forward to you comments and e-mails everyday... and it gave us something to do at 3 AM in Korea when we couldn't sleep!