Our very own China doll :)

5/31 was Megan's actual Christening and she was pretty good during the ceremony. She cried a little bit when they put the water on her forehead, but we knew that was going to happen. My aunt was right, she was too aware. Oh well. She looked adorable in a cute little white dress Robyn got her with a white sweater from Grandma. As the unofficial offical videographer, I taped the church porition but I gotta say, it was weird. I felt like I was being a bad Catholic. 

My camera battery was pretty much dead so I have few pictures from the day and currently get them uploaded bc my computer is refusing to recongize my camera. Always awesom

e. I got a few on my phone and she started running towards me and smiling so I think by Christmas she should hopefully be smiling for pictures, instead of us trying to steal them from her. 

Megan learned the excitment of walking on her own about a week before the 

Christening, thanks to daycare. I guess a little tough love from another one of the little kids was all the motivation she needed. She's so well adjusted already, I still can't believe that just months ago she had never met any of us. I don't think Teresa could have gotten any luckier 

with Megan. She is truly a lil China doll!! She seems to have developed a little swagger and knows that it was her house and her room. She was very interested in who was in her room without out. Its cool to see her personality develop and watch her change so much already.

This past weekend they went and saw another lil girl who was supposed to come home on our trip but was delayed to April and she sent a few pictures for me to get printed for her. These are 2 from the bunch she sent that are of Megan. Too adorable. 

PIctures

So i finally uploaded the pictures from Megan's Christening party. They are on webshots for now but will be moving homes at somepoint in the (hopefully) soon future. I used up all my picasa space with just he pictures from in China.

Click here to view them. They are a from my camera, Teresa's and my Grandparents.

Megan has changed so much in the short time shes been home. She had four teeth as of the party and was getting ready to start day care full time. She apparently enjoyed it the first week and they all ate her up (who doesn't?).

I'm still on the never ending job hunt, beep your fingers crossed for me! My best friend is planning my life as a teacher so i need to find something fast before she puts me in a trance and i agree to the madness.

April and Pictures...

Happy April!!

No April fool jokes here and thankfully that  threat of a virus doesn't seem to have harmed anyones computer. Let's just hope it doesn't happen later on. I can't believe it's April already but I love the fact that it is. It's much more spring like sounding and I'm down with lots of rain. Each day this week it seems to have alternated weather pattern (warm and sunny, cooler and rain) continuously. Easter is just a week away and for some unknown reason I've always liked Easter. Can't think of any real reason why, but I always have. Maybe it's the spring like colors and chocolate bunnies, or the fact that it's the time I usually go to CT and see the family I usually don't get to see (or that its usually within a week of my birthday). Whatever it is, I'm glad it's almost here thought. Looking forward to giving out the last of my China gifts though, since they are in my way!  

Speaking of China, I meant to post this a few weeks ago but of course I forgot. Not intentionally, but not being attached to the internet like I'm used to really throws me off. I have to make a list of online tasks and something always gets forgotten! This link is from my mom who has taken a helping of the photos and cleaned them up a bit. She's just great like that. You can order photos from this site and have them sent to you. The prices are very good and its Kodak so you can't go wrong! They are already sized, so all you need to do is chose which ones you'd like. Click on the link below and it will bring you to smugmug where they are posted. You will have to enter a password and then you can view the pictures. Enjoy them!

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/7437290_jjQMH#486139423_i5SzR

Tomorrow I am going to visit a few friends in Bloomsburg for the night. Probably the last time I will be going back to be honest. I've re-dived head first back into the job search big time. Last night I could barely send the email to one job because it made me so nervous (maybe just maybe I really wanted that job?!). Hopefully something will come through sooner than later. Till then, Staples and Dollar General rule my universe!

New Pictures

are up from this weekend with Megan. She is getting cuter by the day, but still sleeping in her own version of time, although it is MUCH closer to US time than she was. Teresa has found her own way of getting Megan adjusted and I think it's working well. (We heard back from a few other families that are still struggling with getting the kids adjusted and from the sounds of it, Megan is doing the best).

She was all smiles and giggles, and is getting closer to letting us actually take a picture of her smiling that she knows about. Right now it's still hit or miss with the smiling pictures. If she's smiling she has no clue that the camera was on her, but thats good because she has a smile that lights up her face!!

The weather in PA got nice for a few days. I think we have started the April showers a little early, but as long as its not white stuff falling from the sky, I'm O-K with that. Time really seems to have started flying though, because it's almost April and that means Easter is just around the corner! I will be TomTomming my way to CT since the last time I went, it got a little confusing. 2 roads of the same name in neighboring towns is just NOT COOL. C'mon people, lets get some original with the street names. Thankfully since I know just enough about the major roads in CT to get around, the TomTom will be helpful (and this will be it's first offical trip. I attempted it to Staten Island one time, but it wanted me to take roads that just suck if you know them, so i ditched it that time).

Random piece of advice: when you go to a copy center, don't ask if you can get copies made there. its kinda the POINT of a COPY and PRINT center. and when you come back to pick up your copies, please say your name or something better than "I'm here for my copies" and then get MAD at me for not knowing EXACTLY who you are! This happens all the time and I don't get it at all.

Spring has Sprung

So I'm pretty excited because today was the first day of spring and it lived up to my expectations. It was sunny and I was able to roll the car window down during my Target shopping experience. It was an experience because I had to go and fight for my DVD that does not work. Their silly little policy is in my way, and their most recent suggestion is to take it up with Sony. Oh yay. Just what I really wanted to do....call California (or India...not really sure yet). I'd personally rather go visit than call. I'm just saying.

Anywho, I am headed to the Isle of Staten tomorrow to visit with the fam and see the munchkin. After this weekend, I think the countdown to Easter will begin. I haven't seen mom since September and I'm beginning to have serious withdrawal I think...so CT will be the place and just in time for me to give her her birthday gifts before we hit mine. As long as it's before mine I think we are still doing OK on how off we truly are.

I've also decided to attempt to figure out WTF Twitter is so this is my newest project. I think that since I majored in Mass Comm, regardless of my current job, I need to keep up with these things to understand what is happening in the media world. We shall see how this goes...it's something to keep me occupied at the very least.

Here is the link to the most recent pictures from when we got back that never made it up due to jet lag. Sorry it's so late, but I will try to get this weekends pictures up muchhhh faster as a I have broken down and teethered my BB to my laptop for internet access like a normal human....

How many miles was that?

So I was thinking about all the traveling we did in such a short period of time and decided to add it all up. We took 6 flights in a 14 day period and traveling a whopping 16,118 miles roundtrip for all them. How crazy is that? The flight from JFK to Hong Kong was 8,059 each way! The amount of hours we spent flying is pretty crazy too. The flights in all took about 33 hours total, plus for the 2 long flights to and from JFK we were awake for 26 hours. No wonder I can't get over this time difference. I'm not even functioning on China time...

I have made it back to PA. I drove back yesterday afternoon. It was an expereince to say the least. I haven't felt that uncomfortable in a car since I took drivers ed, and even then I think I might have been more comforatable. My car felt so weird and it's taking some adjusting too. I feel like someone just gave it to me yesterday, instead of having driven it for the past 3 years. So weird. While I was driving, I felt lost though. Thankfully I know the drive from SI to PA by heart, but even still, I would see the sign and have to think, I go that way right? I did have to stop at one point and walk around because I was getting really tired and it was only like 5pm. I guess getting over this jet lag is going to take much longer that first expected. I fell asleep last night at 8:30pm ish and woke up at 5:30am. By 9am I was napping. I'm just a mess. I go back to work tonight...hopefully I don't fall asleep before we close.

Have to go now...and fall asleep most likely

The Joys of Jet Lag

So we have made it home. The jet lag is still getting to us, but I have been trying to stay up till 10pm each night and manage to wake up by no later than 6am. Of course by 6pm, I am fighting to make it till 10pm. Hopefully this viscous cycle will end soon. Teresa got sick on the plane ride home (which was another experience itself), so she has been trying to not get Megan sick, who is working off another time zone also. It seems she has moved on from China time, but its not New York time either. Unfortunately, I have to go back to PA on Wednesday and rejoin civilization on Thursday. Not looking forward to it. Of course with limited internet access, this blog will not be getting updated as often and it will probably begin to change from all about Megan to more about how its Easter and the weatherman is promising this is the last snow storm this season (for the 20th time). Oh well. C’est la vie.

Megan was amazing on the trip home. She cried a little on the long plane ride to JFK a few times, but was so confused, who could blame her? She kept falling asleep on my arm or leg, making it fall asleep, so when I had to move, she would wake up. She and I walked around and visited other people on the plane from time to time to see how the others were doing. Most of them seemed to be out cold for a portion of the ride, much to their parents delight.

The morning that we left, we did the usual routine of the buffet breakfast at the hotel, the last meal for hours most likely and finished packing. We all meet in the lobby to take the bus to Guangzhou airport, which was a 30min ride to Hong Kong. This first plane messed up the rest of the day though. It arrived late, got disembarked late, got our bags late, boarded us late and left the runway late. LATE. It’s a short plane ride scheduled to take off at 2:45pm. Our connecting flight leaves at 5:35. We take off closer to 3:30p,, arrive in Hong Kong at 4pm, don’t get off the plane till almost 4:20pm. Do you see how this is going? The first airline checked our bags straight through to JFK so one less thing to worry about I guess. This trip through the Hong Kong airport was a little bit less confusing than the first one, but on a time crunch, this airport is just too big. By the time we find the ticket counter, there is a line and its quickly approaching 5pm. There are a few other families that were also on our end of the line and its taking forever to get our boarding cards. By the time the tickets are finally issued, it’s like 5:10pm and they are wrong. Way wrong. Each of us had our own seat, but in different rows. The woman who said that our tickets were ready and everyone has a seat managed to screw this up badly. She never flagged the 3rd seat for a child, so the seats were broken up. Why in the world anyone would think hey this woman purchased 3 tickets for the same plane and doesn’t want to sit with her party is nuts, but that’s basically what happened.

It was not just us that it happened to from our group and the guy from the airline had to walk us to the gate to make the plane, while calling the gate to see about getting seats moved. Megan can’t sit on her own. She can’t even make use of her seat unless the seatbelt light is off because she’s too young. So this guy takes us all over the place to get to us to a security line that is not the same one everyone else went through because it was on a different floor in a different building. Megan meanwhile is getting pushed in her stroller very fast and she is loving it. She must realize something is up because we haven’t heard a peep from her the entire time, but she is wide awake. We get to the gate at 5:35pm and they are still working on this seating screw up and not exactly getting results we wanted. They come up with 2 seats together in the middle, plus another seat in the dead center of the plane, 3 rows up for me. That’s nice of them. I decide that we are going to ask each person around them, starting with the guy that is sitting on the 3rd seat in a row. An aisle seat. Next to an 1yr old. It’s risky because who will seriously give up an aisle for a middle, especially on a flight as long as this, regardless of a little kid. I got the flight attendant to do it and he agreed. Thank god, because just a few hours into this trip, Teresa started to get sick. How would this have worked originally? She needs to get up and use the bathroom or just stretch and she then carries Megan over to me, over people’s heads. Gee, people would have been loving it. I didn’t see it really lasting. The point of the 3 seats was so that we had some more room to spread out. That middle seat allowed for Ms. Wiggle Worm to have a few inches of freedom, gave us the chance to have a little bit more stretch room and more surface for everything else we needed.

Of course, the first 2 hours of our flight was non-stop turbulance so we were attached to our seats and there was no food being given out. Unfortanetly for us, we hadn't eaten since about 9am that morning and were dying by the time the flight took off at 6pm. They brought Megan 2 little dinner rolls and she had the insides and we attacked the outsides. The food was not as good as it was on the way over either so we were pretty disappointed, even though it was a shorter flight (2 hours is 2 hours). Immigration and customs were not too bad. The valuable brown envelope that Teresa had been carrying was finally handed over and Megan is now a US Citizen! Yay!

Currently we have spread out in grandma and grandpa’s house for a few days. Teresa got some medicine yesterday and is starting to shake what she came down with. We have been trying to entertain Megan and get her used to the time difference and new people. We seem to be her comfort zone after a little bit of time with someone else till she has warmed up. She is doing well, although the teething is coming fast and strong. Grandma got us the homeopathic teething tablets so she seems to be better now that we have our own supply. Somehow with all the bartering of stuff in China, we came back with enough Cheerios to build a house. Megan is still very messed up with the time difference, but is taking more naps throughout the day to catch up. It seems to be helping and is getting closer to US time. I am still off of the time by a few hours. By 8pm I am fighting to make it to 9pm. I have been trying to get to 10pm but I think I have passed out before then most nights. I am up at 5 or 6am though, so if anyone has an early morning job, I might be on that schedule. Or any job in general would be great. Keep me in mind. I’ll answer phones, or anything you need me to do.

Anyways, I hope you have all enjoyed reading the blog and seeing how the journey was. As I said before, this will not be getting updated as frequently and the contents will change over time. I will probably not be getting to see Miss Megan for a month or so, but when I see her again I will post about it with pictures. I am going to sleep now. I actually started this post on my laptop around 4:30am today, but was unable to post it from there...the internet was being funny and then I was entertaining Megan for a while until visitors came to see her. So this was started when I first woke up and is finally being posted hours and hours later on Grandma's computer. Of course since I'm about to fall asleep, I can't be bothered to reread what I wrote earlier so I really hope it was in English and not a made up language. Thanks for reading and see you all one day soon I hope....