Home at last, home at last,

Thank God Almighty, they are home at last!

Touchdown, spike the ball, funky endzone dance, the kids are in the house!

When we got in the car in the airport parking lot, Fred briefly looked over the papers he had been given by the escort and said, "I don't know if we have the [such-n-such] we were supposed to get". I said, "Drive. Just drive. I just want to get these kids in our house and anything else can be straightened out later"!

So we've been home with them about three hours now and they're doing great. We got home late b/c their flight was delayed. But we had dinner waiting in the crockpot, then gave them an abbreviated tour of the house, and showed them their rooms. They are reacting completely as I had expected: Julia is all excited and bubbly and looking from one thing to the next, where Borya is wearing more of a shell-shocked expression. As is typical for him, he is taking it all in quietly, scarcely saying a word. Julia loves her room, and get this, had a poster hanging on her walls within two hours. Oy, preteens. Daniel has been busily introducing Borya to each of his stuffed animals. Borya sat down and quickly drew an amazing picture of Puss-n-Boots that he presented to Daniel, and Daniel just about fell to the ground in worship. He showed it to me and told me he would file it with his "special papers". Tomorrow I will post a picture. The first ever picture of our family of 8, taken at the airport. But tonight I'm exhausted (not much sleep last night, like a kid on Christmas Eve), so I'm afraid uploading and downloading will have to wait till daybreak.