Sweet day...

At last we saw our girls !  What an emotional day it has been.  As I sit here and write this, I am debating if I should wait until morning to blog or do it now, because once again the exhaustion has hit me.  Our day started by getting off the overnight train at 6:15, with a night of no sleep, believe it or not, Russie actually stayed up the whole night reading an entire book.  He said his nerves had him so bad that there was no way he could sleep.  We were picked up at 11:30 am from our apartment and we headed to the Children's home.  We were not to go until 2:00 for our appointment there,but the inspector could not meet then and we went earlier, which worked out for us, we got to spend more time there.  We walked in and were sat in an office for about 45 minutes and told to wait.  People came in and out of the room, with no acknowledgment we were even sitting there.  At this point the nerves were at a peak and we were analyzing everything.  We continued to wait, and finally we were told to leave that room and stand in the hallway.  After standing there a few minutes, we saw 2 girls turn around the corner with smiles on their faces.  You could tell they were unsure if they were allowed to be happy or if they had to hold  it in and show no emotion until after the meeting, this is something many other couples had to do before us, act as if we did not know the kids.  Regardless, of how much we all tried not to show emotion, we all failed and we gave them huge hugs.  As we were hugging them, a women came out of the office and started yelling and hitting the girls to stop.  They hugged right through the warnings until we let go of them.  We all stood there exchanging smiles when we thought no one was looking.  We were called into the room first with the director, assistant director, local inspector, doctor and Syvetta, our facilitor.  I have to say it was a little intimidating to sit there with all eyes on us.  The doctor was staring me up and down for several ackward minutes. Once again, most of the questions were directed at Russie and they started with, how old are you?  We told them our ages and they then asked why do you want to adopt older kids when you are so young?  Russie shared that we had met them in America and fell in Love with them.  They asked how many other children we had.  They all could not understand why we wanted these girls?  After several answers of reassurance that we did in fact want them, Svyetta said they think it is fabolous, they just don't understand.  In Ukraine, 1 or 2 children is average and 3 is considered a very large family.  They asked us about our house and how big it is and asked to explain our jobs and if we make enough money to take care of them.  The doctor told us they were healthy, asked if we had any questions and then called the girls in.  

They asked them a series of questions, of course we don't for sure know what they were saying, but the ones we could understand were about America adn wanting us as a mama and papa.  They reminded them of the fact that they were going to be in a large family and the girls were always quick to answer, yes, that is what they wanted.  After that, we had to leave quikly to make it to the office to get our papers notarized, Syvetta was worried we would not make it there in time and said we would lose 2 days if we didnt make it there today, we made it and we were releaved.  We headed back to the orphanage and went up to the girls group room to see them while Syvetta talked with the director.  We showed them pictures and videos I had saved on my laptop.  They enjoyed watching them with us.  As soon as the other girls came from school, they were all gathered around and intrigued by the photos.  The girls were all excited to see us and introduced themselves and we enjoyed meeting them. We were there for about 2 hours and then we headed to the art room to meet Mick and Janel McCracken to spend time with the kids there.  Within minutes of arriving, the kids started coming in one by one to check things out and say hello.  Many we recognized from pictures and many we had never seen before.  Some come for the food and leave and others stay the whole time.  We know that the time with these kids in this room is going to be some of the best moments of the trip for us.  We enjoyed skyping with my Mom, Eric and Dema, who just arrived to America yesterday !!!  What a happy little boy Dema is !  We stayed there for a few hours and took pictures, made funny faces, tickled each other and laughed a lot.  We met many great kids today and are looking forward to spending more time with them.  I will post more pictures of the other kids.  We are planning on taking the girls iceskating and to the circus tomorrow with the McCrackens and their Vika, so we are excited about that