Welcome Home

After two days of travel and insanity, we finally made it home. We came home to snow and Luke has stamped out Welcome Home in the snow in the front yard. So sweet. We were welcomed home by our boys, the Johns, Baysore and Clark families. It was wonderful. The brought tons of food, gifts and tears...yes, they were all crying when we came in!!







The girls were very shy at first. I'm sure they were wondering "what in the world is going on?" They were a little clingy at first but finally got down and explored the house. The girls did NOT like our dog Truman. He is a rat terrier, so not a big scary dog. But no matter how small he was, they were scared of him. Liza would scream bloody murder. Ava would climb up your body if she was standing on the floor. It didn't take long for Ava to warm up to Tru Tru as she calls him. Now she won't leave the poor dog alone. Loves on him, kisses him and covers him up with her dolls blanket. Liza will tolerate him, won't really touch him, but they can at least be in the same room and she won't freak out.

We have such a wonderful church family. I don't think I had to cook for about a week and a half. Everyone brought us wonderful yummy food. It was so nice. I was so tired from jet lag and just emotionally exhausted, I was so grateful for help with dinners.
The girls have been home just over 6 weeks now. What a difference 6 weeks have made. They are honestly different children.
It was tough the first few weeks. Mainly, going from 3 to 5 kids, two of those being toddlers--that don't know English. Communicating with Ava was really hard the first few weeks. But she is now understanding us most of the time and she is picking up English fast. Liza is also picking it up--she just tries to repeat what Ava says.

I was really worried about Ava at first but things are so much better. She used to cry.....she would get into a "zone" and just cry and moan. It was awful and there was nothing we could do for her. She had to just work through it. I would just hold and rock her. It just broke my heart. She hasn't had one of those episodes for some time now. I guess that was her way of mourning.....
I'm a "fixer" and it just tore me up to have to watch her go through that. Liza never really cried like that, she was just very needy and wanted me to hold her at all times. Which was hard when Ava was having a break down. Believe me, we still have our moments, but they are much more spread out.

The girls have really come out of their shells and are showing their personalities. We laugh a lot at them, yes-at them. They like to perform. They love playing with their brothers and following them everywhere. Every morning Ava and I go through the same routine.....Ava: Owen? I say- he's at school. Ava; Luke? I say..he's at school too. Hannah....she's at school. Da da, he's at work. We usually go through this 3 or times before she is satisfied. Both Daddy and Luke have been home the past couple of days with the flu and she is totally confused!!!

Leaving Ethiopia

Even typing the title brings tears to my eyes. The day we left Ethiopia was an emotional day for us. We missed home and our boys so much, but leaving was tearing me apart. I was scared, I was sad, I was homesick. But I was grateful, happy and a new momma to two beautiful little girls.

We finally took our "group" picture that we had talked about all week, we could never seem to get all of us together at the same time. Someone was either gone or napping :)



So here is the gang. It's amazing the bond you make with these people. I know some of you reading this may think...how? You only met them a few days ago and only knew them a few days....But it's strange. Ask anyone who has adopted and stayed at a guest house with other adoptive families. There is an instant bonding. I don't know how else to say it. Luckily, we had wonderful companions on this trip. The other families were all so sweet and so funny. We laughed a lot....a lot. And now Facebook and emails let us keep up with each other and find out how all the kiddos are doing. My heart is so full thinking of my friends and their beautiful children.

Darren and I packed, or should I say, I packed and Darren and Hannah tried to keep the girls out of my way. They kept "unpacking" stuff as fast as they could. They loved to "help" mommy. We left for the airport with several other families in tow. And we waited in line.....and waited. I hate to admit it but I did feel a little uncomfortable at the airport. We had a few stares and a few glares. Once we boarded the plane the craziness began. I laugh now, but believe me, I was NOT laughing then. Liza slept all through the airport, waiting in lines and boarding. Five minutes before take off, guess who is wide awake. Of course. She did not like the seat belt at all. She was a wild little monkey trying to escape. The kids are not able to stand or walk around anymore. They told me she literally had to be strapped to me while in the air. It was insane and I was slowly becoming delerious. My whole body hurt from trying to keep her sitting. Ava, Darren and Hannah had a pretty good stretch of sleep on that flight. No, I'm not bitter.....:) As we took off I began to cry....the lady next to me patted my hand. I just couldn't help it, I felt like I was leaving a part of my daughters behind. I cried for them.

We landed in Frankfort to ice and snow. Yeah fun. We finally took off about 3-4 hours after our scheduled time....all of that sitting on the plane on the runway. Holy Cow. Now it was Ava's turn to freak and I continued to try to stay awake and calm her. To say the least I failed miserably. We have been up for over 24 hours now and I got no sleep on the first leg of the flight. We settled in for another long flight and we did get in a nap or two over the course of 9 hours or so.....there were alot of kids on the flight so it wasn't just my two being loud...thank goodness. But it was still hard. The girls were scared, hungry and tired. I could only feed them so many cheerios before the "fun" and "newness" wore off. The food on the plane was not great and there was no way the girls were eating it--nor did we. So the ride continues to get worse and worse. We had a row of huge German men behind us...HUGE, they were not happy with the crying and they let us know by kneeing the back of our seats just a bit too hard to be an accident. The last half hour of the plane ride I was sobbing.....Ava was crying, Liza was squirming, Hannah had her Ipod on full blast trying to drown all of us out and poor Darren was pretty much trying to calm all of us. Unfortunately, the flight crew didn't really help..they tried a couple of times but eventually they just let us wallow in our pain.

When we finally landed in Chicago we were a mess. Everyone passing us getting off the plane just looked at us...with pity, I think. One lady did touch Darren on the shoulder and tell him "he had a beautiful family". At that point, Darren about cried....that was the first nice thing anyone had said to us in over 24 hours. We just wanted off that plane. We walked into the airport and a ton of weight lifted off our shoulders, we were finally home. Well, almost. We had a 2 1/2 hour drive ahead of us. We got our luggage, went through immigration with no trouble at all. I have heard horror stories about waiting in line at immigration. We handed the man our packet and walked to the bench to sit down.....I didn't even get my back pack off and he called our name and said we were done. Woo Hoo. The guy scanning luggage took one look at us and told us to go on through. I guess crying for an hour and looking a mess does have it's perks. :)

Hannah, the girls and I waited for Darren to get the truck. I really think he parked in Indiana. It was snowing like crazy and the girls were wound up. They were running back and forth in a little hallway. Of course, I had dolled them up with huge flowers in their hair and everyone was commenting on how cute they were. Man, it was nice to be home!!! We dug out winter coats for the girls and piled them in the truck. They really didn't know what to think of the snow. They were great on the way home and we were very anxious to see our boys.

I will continue the homecoming on another post. It has taken me all day to write this. I had to stop for lunch, to pick up the older kids from after school meetings, dinner, Luke's basket ball practice etc.......you get the point. And I am now finishing this after putting the girls to bed. I usually get Eliza to bed and Darren gets Ava to bed. Well, I had double duty tonight, Darren is out of town. I put Ava to bed and laid down with her. She tossed and turned for awhile and I wasn't sure if she was asleep. At one point, she reached over and felt my face. She let out a long sigh and rolled over. At that moment it hit me that she was making sure I was there.......I think she knows I am her mamma. I think she is realizing this is for real and this is her family now. I always tell her I love her and she will repeat it back to me. I'm pretty sure she doesn't really know what she is saying...just repeating. But I think her reaching out touching my face might have been the first time she said she loves me. I am bursting with happiness..and of course crying. I seem to do that a lot.......