Home Sweet Home and First Birthday!!!!

We are finally, finally, finally HOME!!!!!!!!!! For those who are new to the blog, we switched to Lighthouse, Ann Arbor, MI from another agency and our dossier went over this past July. We got our referral in Sept. and met the baby in Oct., had court Nov. 10th and here we are!!! It was a quick, pain free process with Lighthouse! (Our dossier with the first agency went over exactly a year ago today.)

We made it safely and soundly, with a few hiccups getting home, but the main thing is we are here. Cassiana was amazing on the plane. She only took a few short cat naps on the 12 hour flight Singapore Air portion and was happy to sit and play during the rest. She did watch some Barney (over the course of the flight, I played the only episode they had on the flight over 7 time for her, though I think after #6 she was starting to see it was the same one--lol!)

We almost missed this flight, despite getting to the check-in stand 2 hrs. and 15 minutes early. The dimwits at the stand swore up and down that Cassi didn't have a reservation. It was a long, awful ordeal, resulting in us waiting 1 hr. 45 mins. (mean time, Cassi is getting hungry and tired, crying on and off) for them to finally reissue Cassi another LAP ticket that I had to PAY for again. We had to RUN to the gate, having to go thru passport control first, where they gave me a hard time about her having a Russian passport. They wanted to see her birth certificate and something was really funny as they kept laughing and taking their sweet time. I said, "She has an immigrant visa for the US and our flight leaves in 15 minutes!!!" On cue, Cassi started to cry and they finally agreed she was legit. Whatever!!!


We went thru security, which was another ordeal and then ran to the gate where they were saying the same dimwits that checked us in were telling us to hurry. I was like, well, if you all hadn't taken almost 2 hours we wouldn't be in this situation. One of them asked if she could take any of my bags and I said it was a little late for help now. It was infuriating to put it lightly. I'm going to call the travel agent later to see if we can be refunded for one of the the TWO lap tickets we had to purchase for the SAME flight.


Then, on to Houston, where we had to explain the whole thing and Continental said they had a record of her and that she didn't need a boarding pass because this portion was domestic. It sounds like the Singapore folks didn't know what to look for or something because Continental had a record of her ticket. So, at this point (we had to go thru passport control and then immigration, then customs, so it was quite a while later---oh yeah, and when we had to get our luggage to go thru customs and then re-check it, we had to find another passport photo of Cassi for immigration because there weren't enough in the packet. While doing this, Bo-Bo the customs sniffing dog, honed in on Cassi's apple flavored baby cereal in the diaper bag, so we had to deal with that. He was looking for fruit brought in from another country--- I was like Pa-lease!!!), Cassi is screaming because she has on a wet diaper and is hungry. I changed her and fed her and then we went thru security AGAIN (I don't understand this part since there's no access from the outside portion of the airport) and then on to the gate. We had a sandwich and celebrated making it to the US!!! Here's a photo of the first time Cassi's feet touched US "soil."

Now, on to less stressful times. Cassi's first birthday was Saturday, so we celebrated yesterday, her first day in the US! Dan got her a cake while we were gone (one for us and one for Cassi to devour, which she did!). They did spell Cassi's name wrong but we didn't care as it was such a happy event! Her Nina and Grand Dad got her the sparkly ballerina Mary Jane socks, which matched perfectly with her dress. Also the bib and the first birthday napkins. We girls do like to co-ordinate!!! Yes, I do have on my pj's!!!! I could only "get it together" that much.

I took some video that I may upload later. Here is the "before picture."

And, the after!

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY, CASSIANA and WELCOME HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!