We're home!

It was quite the homecoming at the airport w/ LOUD patriotic music playing. Babooshka and I thought it was for the US' two newest citizens, Daniel and Maria. It was really for a WWII event and arriving passengers....hard of hearing passengers. At the airport, Daniel and Maria got to meet PawPaw, Aunt Gay Lynn, and Rick, Cherie, and Caroline (a soon to be Russian adoptive family recently returned from visiting their new son for the first time). Also at the airport was Aunt Elena who did something they'd not had since their Atlanta arrival - speak to them in Russian. They checked out all of the flight attendants and men on their way home to see if they'd speak Russian with no success.

When we arrived home, I'm not sure what the biggest hit was - probably with Maria the ceiling fan and these dangly hair things to make pony tails with - Aunt Elena helped her make ponies w/ dangles last night and she was proud! With Daniel, I'm not sure....he loved it all. Y'all definitely shared MANY interesting things to keep their attention for a LONG time, and they tried to check out a lot of it on night one.

Momma was exhausted! Babooshka and PawPaw went off for a night away - not sure who was more exhausted - Grandma, who labored hard helping bring them home, or PawPaw, from having lived for 9 days without Grandma!

As has happened throughout this journey home, God absolutely answered prayer and blessed us WAY more than we could even imagine on the 11 1/2 hour airplane ride from home. Momma and I had prayed that we would have someone that spoke Russian and English in the seat next to her since we knew they might could help answer some of the questions Momma's limited Russian couldn't. He went WAY beyond that - and provided a man who'd lived in the US for 30 years and was a citizen but was a Russian native still fluent - and who took pretty much the whole trip sharing himself with the children. He even gave up his seat entirely to get Daniel some very much needed sleep and soothed him to get him to the point he could. Then, after trying to get Maria to nap, he played with her and talked to her for hours. She loved her new playmate and rubbed his beard for well over an hour and kept waking him up to show him more things from the pictures of she and Daniel she had in her backpack. He made her pipecleaner bracelets and necklaces (he's a jeweler) that she adored. God absolutely answered prayer in His usual manner - way more than we could even imagine in our wildest dreams! We'll be keeping up with a certain Florida jeweler, and I suspect a little Russian girl might need a real necklace from him down the road some time....along with a picture and "thank you" showing the how they're doing now.

Oh....bedtime has been nearly non-existant for the children. After 2 hours of wild screaming and playing, bananas and grapes, prayer time, new people, new home and all of that they settled down reasonably quickly after both checking out Maria's toddler bed at the same time, sneaking in a few extra toys, and the normal sibling discussions (ok...in Russian) they went to sleep without further fanfare. Momma is thankful and it definitely is nice to be on the way home.

Its 3:30 AM and Momma's washing clothes, writing this blog, and enjoying "Momma" chants from Daniel in his sleep - happy chants as he rocks from side to side to go more soundly to sleep. If he's going to rock, I like the happy chants that let me know he's on his way to KNOWING he's loved and adored by his momma. Of course, I pretty much enjoyed seeing my more violent sleeper, Maria, sleeping completely quietly in her new bed.