You would think that I would have learned a thing or two by now...

...but no, of course not! Another child of mine has made me eat my words. Of course, in this case I am more than happy to eat them as Ethan was........AMAZING on our trip up to New Jersey!! He absolutely, positively could not have been any better. He sat quietly while we sat on the tarmac in Fort Lauderdale, with an air traffic delay in New Jersey for over an hour. After we took off he decided he wanted to take a nap and snoozed for about two hours. For the last half hour he sat quietly eating some animal cookies and watching a little TV. Katie has always been an easy traveler so I felt quite blessed today indeed.

After we landed and were navigating ourselves and our luggage to the rental car area, I spied a woman with a daughter from Asia. I could see the child was about Katie and Ethan's age and so I quietly asked her if her daughter was from China. If the child is a baby or toddler then I feel comfortable asking but I do not ask families with older children and just wait to see if they approach me. Well, this woman said that her daughter was indeed from China and as we spoke, I found that she was from JiangXi, which is the same province that Ethan is from and that she adopted her daughter just the month after we adopted Katie Starr. I then asked her if she was from New Jersey and she responds back that she is from FLORIDA! Where, I ask? She responds with Boca Raton which is about 15 minutes from us. Now we are both so excited and we find out that we have a good friend in common and that she had been invited to the Picnic that our FCC Chapter just held but was not able to come. We left each other shaking our heads incredulously at what a small world it is when it comes to adoptive families. We will definitely get together when we get back home.

When we were in Newark's Airport, we also tried to hook up with an adoptive family from our FCC group that was just returning from China via Newark to Fort Lauderdale but because of the delay in Lauderdale we missed seeing them by a few minutes...BUMMER. I would have loved to see their new Princess.

We ended the evening by seeing Marc's Aunt Tina, Uncle Jack and Cousin Cindie who were lovely enough to treat us all to dinner and brought the DD gifts to boot. They are always so wonderful to us when we see them and we always enjoy our visits. We always leave saying that our time together is just too short.

Tomorrow is Marc's cousin's Bat Mitzvah, which was the primary reason for this first leg of the trip. We always have a blast with Marc's family so we are all looking forward to a great day.

Hugs from the cold cold north where it is presently 28 degrees but with the wind chill feels like 9 degrees. For this Florida gal, that is way COLD!!! Now that I think about it that is probably cold to just about anyone; that is unless you are a hockey mom from Alaska (smirk) Sorry, just could not resist!

Here are a couple of pics of the kids crashed out on the plane ride, then Ethan quite involved with his TV show and finally the DD hitch a ride on the luggage cart on the way to the hotel room.