WE ARE HOME!!!

Wow!  I can't believe I'm writing that we are home.  It was a rough trip, a few tears from all of us at different points during the trek home, but we made it.....praise the Lord!!  And thank you every one for lifting us up in prayer during our homeward journey.  I haven't uploaded pictures yet, or unpacked, and I know I have not posted since we busted these two out of their old lives, but I am pretty exhausted and have 6 kids running around here today that need to have some structure.....so this is going to be about it for today.  We just wanted every one to know that we made it home safely and more pics and details will be coming........

Homeward Journey Begins Today!!

Good morning to you all!!  Today is the day....I can hardly wait : )  Aimee and I are spending the morning packing up and then we will have one more lunch here at McDonald's.  We get picked up around 1:30 pm and load up all of our luggage.  Then we head to orphanage to get Julia and Aaron.  Once we are all dressed and ready to go, we head straight to the train station.  The train leaves at 4:25 pm.  This is the 6 hour express train.  It will obviously be late by the time we get settled in and we won't have internet from the time we leave this apartment until we arrive.  So please be patient with pictures and updates.  We are spending Tuesday at the embassy.  Hopefully we will have some time to upload pictures before we fly home on Wednesday.  Keep the prayers coming that we have an uneventful next few days.....

Last visit before Gotcha Day!!

Monday, April 25, 2011 is Gotcha Day!!  Today is the last day we visited before leaving the orphanage for the last time with Julia and Aaron with us....YAY!!  Tomorrow will be a day for Aimee and I to pack for our trip home and I need to work on filling out some paperwork for the embassy. 

  

 Julia was holding this ball and shaking it back and forth for a very long time.  She loved listening to the sound of the jingly ball inside.  I took two minutes of video, but again, I can't seem to get it to upload here.  It was uploading for a half an hour and then stated there was an error occurring.  Not sure what the problem is...bummer!  It is so cute to see the concentration on her face as she shakes the ball.  At one point, she dropped the ball on her face and it must have smarted.  At first she had a very startled look on her face, rubbed at her face with her hands, and then a few seconds later started crying.  It is the sweetest, softest cry you have ever heard.  You would probably not even know she is crying by the noise, except for the look on her face.  So pitiful.  For about 10 minutes the tip of her nose remained red.  I loved her up and gave her back the ball and she quieted down.  It is so pitiful to hear her sweet cry, she had me in tears.

 Aaron is very attached to me.  When we are at the visits here, Aimee and I are usually with John and Amy Hinz visiting with their children, Dusty and Sonya.  They have noticed that whenever I leave the room or walk away, his eyes are on me and sometimes gets upset.  I have gotten in the habit of making sure he knows I am coming back.  His whole face lights up when I return.  It is also very obvious that he knows I am his mama apart from Aimee, John, and Amy.  But he is also not overly physically clingy.  I suppose this is a good thing, since at home he will be one of 6!!  Today he was getting very frustrated with his building.  Something was not going right and he threw one of the blocks in agitation.  I tried to help him, but since I can't understand what he was saying, I was kind of useless.  I just brought over some more blocks for him and watched.  He must have figured it out because he was eventually satisfied with his structure.  Our driver, Edward, has been immensely helpful in communicating with Aaron.  A few meltdowns have been averted due to someone being able to translate between us.  I am sure the meltdown will happen at a point when no one will be there to help us communicate.  I was joking with Edward today that I should buy him a plane ticket for Wednesday and he come home with us until Aaron learns sufficient English. 

I can't wait until Monday when I will be able to post pictures of Julia and Aaron wearing something different : )

The Welcome Home Bus!!!

For anyone interested, I will be driving our Church bus up to the airport to welcome home Aimee, Aaron, Julia and my beautiful wife, Carey. I have 11 of the 29 seats occupied. We will be leaving the church at 6:45pm on Wednesday of next week. Their flight arrives at Dulles at around 7:45 and I figure they will be tied up with passport control/baggage claim/customs for a bit.

If you'd like to ride the bus up with us just leave a comment below. The address of the church is 5120 Harrison Road, Fredericksburg, VA 22408. I can't wait to see them!

Aaron's orphanage

These pictures were actually taken yesterday.  We went on an outing to get Julia and Aaron's passport and visa pictures taken.  We first went to Aaron's building and I took a few pictures of where he sleeps and spends his days.  Then we went to get Julia and got in the car for our first trip out of the orphanage.  Julia was absolutely wonderful and did not seem phased at any point in time while traveling.  She did get a bit distressed when they were trying to get her to look straight when taking her passport picture.  But it never escalated to anything disruptive and she was just as happy after as she had been before.  So from what we can tell, she seems like she will be a trooper while traveling home.  I can only hope and pray!  Aaron was very excited to be going somewhere as he was getting dressed.  And as you can see from his picture down below he was all smiles about it.  I made sure it was explained to him that this was not the day he would come home with me.  So he knew he was coming back to the orphanage afterwards.  He was fine until about half way to the foreign passport office when he became agitated about the seatbelt.  He was progressively getting squirmy and irritated.  Tatiana was explaining to him why he was to wear the seatbelt.  He would be okay for a little bit, but started getting more and more restless.  He started swaying his head, seemingly displaying some sort of "self-soothing."  Aimee and I were getting a bit nervous of where this was going to go.  When we got to passport office, I picked him up and carried him across the street.  There was some construction being done that was fairly noisy outside this office and he promptly covered his ears with both hands.  He seemed to not like the noise at all.  Aimee was carrying Julia who is still completely fine with all of this.  The only thing that seems to bother Julia the most is the sunlight.  We cupped our hands over her eyes and she was okay.  I brought some sunglasses that will strap around her head, but I forgot them.  I'm not sure she will like them, but we will try them if needed.   Anyways, when we got inside, I sat him down on a bench.  While we were waiting to get taken back for his picture, he was displaying the same head rolling behavior and sometimes looked like he was about to cry.  He was very squirmy and could not sit still.  Then, finally, I saw him pinch himself between his legs and I finally realized HE NEEDED TO PEE!!!  I quickly asked Valentin to find out where a toilet was.  Once found, I raced him in and the poor little guy went for about 2 minutes.  He really had to go.....and was fine afterwards!!  Phew : )  I was so relieved that was all it was.  Now I know what signs to look for AND I know he can hold it for quite a while. 

I know many of you are wondering what the time line is from here on out.  The passports should arrive here on Thursday.  All the paperwork will be overnighted to the embassy for it to be submitted on Friday. Then we have the three day weekend for the Easter holiday.  Gotcha Day will be the Monday after Easter and we will travel by express train Monday evening.  This will be a 6 hour train ride to Kiev.  Tuesday we will go the embassy and take care of the kids medical and receive their visas and passports.  Wednesday we have a 2pm flight from Kiev to Frankfurt and then a one hour layover (yikes....pray that this is enough time) until we fly home to Washington.  Please also pray that we can get a bulk head seat with a bassinet for Julia.  She does not sit up and is rigid with her back, neck and head slightly to severely arched most of the time.  This will be a difficult trip if I cannot lay her somewhere flat for at least some of the time.  I have been told that the bulk head seating is set aside for passengers with small children and people with special needs, but it is also first come first serve.  With only a one hour layover, this in not likely if I can only request this at the gate in Frankfurt.  I am going to try to request this when I am in Kiev, however, I don't know whether this will work or not.

 The room Aaron and his "groupa" sleep in

  

 Room where Aaron and his "groupa" play and watch TV

 

 Aaron's bed

 

 Aaron's name tag on his bed

  

 Aaron getting dressed for our outing

  

All ready to go!!!!