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Photos:

1. "I'm a US Citizen!!!!" Moments after clearing Immigration and getting Visa stamped!

2. Post-Ike breakfast... note the spoon :-) She still won't pick food up with her hands and put into her mouth, but she's VERY enthusiastic about the spoon and is already clumsily feeding herself (with some help)

3. More breakfast

4. Gdansk, Old Town

5. Gdansk, Old Town

6. Paulina seaside in Sopot

7. Sopot

Well, we made it in Thursday night to be greeted by Ike... when we left Poland the forecast still had it heading south of Houston... boy what a difference 18 hours makes :-) The trip was very long, but uneventful. Paulina slept about 30 minutes on the flight to Amsterdam, and then stayed up and kept me company during our 5 hour layover. I have to say, if you must have a layover, Schiphol is a pretty good place to do it. Lots of shopping, "baby stations" everywhere - they have dedicated restrooms with sinks, changing tables and chairs, they even have a baby lounge with soft music and individual little "cabanas" with cribs and supplies... All free of charge. Also, NO SMOKING in the airport!!!! I felt like we were back in the real world. We were seated in the bulkhead row and got the wall-mounted bassinet for Paulina. She slept a total of about 3 hours on the 10.5 hour flight, but was pretty good-natured when awake. She did want to "walk" around a lot so a couple of the really sweet flight attendants would take her every few hours to give me a break. We came through Immigration in Houston and Paulina became a citizen with stamp on her visa :-) The best part was seeing Hayden, Tom, Mamaw and Papaw waiting for us when we made it out of Customs... wow. Such a wonderful sight... Aunt Reagan, Uncle Aaron and cousin Emily were waiting for us at home with a Texas flag cake, welcome home banners, balloons and Papaw picked up Pappasitos fajitas for us... SO GOOD!!!!

Paulina took it all in stride, she didn't seem overwhelmed at all, even when Maddie greeted her with "kisses" in the face :-) I put her down to sleep at 8:30 and she slept all night through 8 Friday morning. We spent the day Friday preparing for the storm - Mamaw had stocked the house with everything we could need, thank goodness since everything was closed Friday!

The storm was a little scary, but no real damage for us, thankfully. And, in case you were wondering, it really does sound like a freight train. The winds lasted from around 10:30pm - 7am - it was really bad from around midnight to 4am. In the morning we'd lost a couple of trees and part of the fence fell down, but all in all... unscathed. We lost power around midnight and yesterday they told us our neighborhood would be without power for 5 days... after hearing that we talked to some friends in Katy who still had power and were planning on heading out there today (Sunday), but around 11pm last night the lights and more importantly, THE AC!! came back on. So 24 hours total - feeling pretty darn lucky all the way around.

I'll get some photos up later in the day, my camera is in the room with Hayden who is sleeping soundly. NEVER wake a sleeping child :-) Paulina is doing so well... she is exploring a lot, she still prefers to be held, but she finds walking around holding your hand an acceptable alternative :-) She seems to be ok with the dogs, she doesn't cry or seem afraid, but she's not in love with them yet either.

More in a bit, going to try and get some of the house cleaned up and stuff unpacked before the kiddos wake up!!