Monday Night - At Home

(From Jay)

Unfortunately, although it's 11:40 at night here, for the third night in a row for us, it feels more like mid afternoon.  The last two days we have slept from about 4am until around 1:30 pm.  I had always heard the term jetlag, and heard stories from others that talked about how tired you are, but before this trip, I didn't really understand it or believe it.  We have learned first hand on this trip both going and coming back that this stuff is all too real.

Lori is struggling with it also.  She wants to roam at night and sleep during the day.  She has started each night in her new bed in her new room sharing with her new sister, Chloe.  But seems to get up in the 2am timeframe...which hasn't been a big deal yet, because I've been up.  Tonight, everyone is in their beds, except me, and we are all gonna try to have a 'regular' night.

It's surreal walking around the house looking at all my kids in their beds.  I went in to check on Lori a few minutes ago, and I smiled to see her asleep in her bed with her shoes on, and holding her Shee-Ya-Ya doll (a popular cartoon character in China).  The girl loves her shoes.

Today, after sleeping most of it, we just took time to be together.  We played outside some, sat around the house, played candyland, and had our first home-cooked meal and devotional as a family in over two weeks.  I didn't want it to end.

But reality is coming with a swift strong arm...work tomorrow is going to be tough.  I love my job, but its going to be tough being away from the family, and dealing with the desire to lay my head down and sleep all day!

There's been another source of reality that we're all getting used to...for the last two weeks, we have been staying in hotels, eating in restaurants, and having strangers do our laundry.  Getting home, in addition to the tiredness, and the newness of Lori, we have also re-entered the reality of not having someone to clean our room, change our sheets, clean our bathroom, cook our food, clean up and do our laundry.  I think after a couple weeks of living out of hotels and restaurants, I hate to admit we were getting a little spoiled.  I think both me and Camille were at some point today either working on laundry or dirty dishes, and said something to each other like, "where's the person who's supposed to take care of this for us?"...we both admitted after the past two weeks, we were spoiled and ready for an Alice.

So please pray for us as we re-enter reality.  We have worked for months on getting Lori here, spent two weeks going to get her, and now we are back...and learning to adapt to our new normal.   Please pray for our family, as we relearn each other, and establish our new routines.