Day 1 - The real adventure begins

Our 60 days in Kazakhstan were tremendous, but the truth is that those two months were really just the prelude. The real adventure began yesterday, our first day at home! Now we get down to the business of being a family, of assimilating all of the parts of our lives (church, school, work, skiing, camping, and just hanging out) into the tapestry that is the Morningstar Family of Five.

Our first day was roughly 10,000 times better than I thought it would be. Sasha slept 13 hours straight and didn't wake up until 9 am - she's the least jetlagged of us all! The rest of us managed to get in a decent night's sleep as well, with the exception of Sam who woke up at 3 and didn't go back to sleep. He's normally our early riser, but that's taking it a bit too far!

Sam went to school in the morning (it was only a half day, so we're not being too mean) and had a lot of fun showing his classmates some of our souvenirs from Kaz. Then we all went to lunch at Chick-Fil-A (the family favorite!), had a quiet evening at home eating from our fabulously stocked cupboards, and nobody fell asleep until after 7 pm. We'll have that jetlag licked in no time.

Sasha is adjusting so well to life in Utah. The kid is simply amazing. She's learned to navigate the stairs pretty well on her hands and knees and is clearly already showing an interest in the Xbox, proving one more time that she's a Morningstar through and through. We've managed to find lots of stuff that she likes to eat - oatmeal, soup, yogurt, and bananas are the current favorites. And she loves sitting in her booster seat and feeding herself. It's so nice to be home where we can let her explore and enjoy her environment!

Sash and Nez are adjusting to each other. For the first few hours Sash was simply terrified of Nesbitt, which makes sense since Nesbitt outweighs her by 60 pounds and she's never seen a dog before in person. But Sasha is starting to understand that Nez is her friend and she even gave her some nice pets this morning! Of course, Nesbitt is happy to have a new person who will throw her food from the booster seat and is pretty disinterested in Sasha unless there's food in it for her.

It'll take us a few more days to really feel like ourselves again (which of the children in this picture slept 13 hours the night before?) but even with the jetlag, Day 1 was a complete success. We sure do have some quality kiddos.

I'll leave you with a short quote from Sam on the topics of plane flights and adoption, because it's just too sweet not to share:

I'm not going to have a flight like that for a very long time. Not until my family goes somewhere to adopt. I just know in my heart that my family will want to adopt, too.

Wow, that's some kinda great kid right there.