We Are Home At Last

Just thought I'd post to tell everyone we made it home yesterday, safe and sound.  The past few days were a bit crazy, but we made it.  

Thursday, court went smoothly and the kids were so cute and I think the Judge really liked them.  Natasha had bought them all cokes for lunch before court.  Troy and I tried to talk her out of giving them caffeine before they had to sit in court, but to no avail.  While we were waiting at the court house the kids were running and swinging each other in the waiting room and bumping into things.  So Troy took them outside and found a rock to play soccer with on the side walk.  While they were out there an older man went out to smoke and talked with them a little bit.  When we went into the court room we found out that he was the Judge.  They asked us a bunch of questions and then asked each of the kids if they really wanted to go to America and they all said yes and it was done.  One of the witnesses asked if he could come visit us, since we had an extra room.

photo with the Judge 
before court in front of the court house

Nadia, works with the director at the orphanage, took the kids home and we drove like crazy to Odessa to file paperwork for their birth certificates (so that only one of us will have to go back to pick up the children).  The woman there wanted to know about their father, but the parents were never married so we only had paperwork on the mother.  So after that got worked out we headed back to Micholi/Micholiva to get a bunch of thing notarized.  The woman had old forms so everything had to be redone.  We left her office at 11 pm.  We returned to the orphanage to pick up our bags and say good bye to the kids.  We had to wake them up and they were pretty out of it.  We finally got Natasha to tell them it would be two weeks before we could come back (she had been telling them a couple days!  frustrating).  Hopefully they'll remember and not think we've abandoned them.  

So we headed for Kyiv at midnight to get to the airport at 5 am.  We were almost to the airport when my mom texted saying that the first leg of our flight at 7 am had been cancelled!  So we got to the airport and found out that representatives are only in their windows two hours before flights depart.  So no one was going to be at the Polish Air window until noon.  We talked with another airline (we thought was one of their partners) and they found us a flight to NY at 1 pm.  They couldn't book it for us unless we got someone to sign off on it at Polish Airlines.  We called their number and were told their Kyiv office would open at 9 am.  So we went back to Vladimir's car and slept until 8:30.  Poor Vladimir had been driving for the past 24 hours and was looking beat.  

We talked to Jane at 9 about our situation and she sent us to a different ticket counter in the airport that would have to sign off on this change.  The guy was not happy because the other airline was their competitor and didn't want us flying on their airline.  So after an hour of searching and finding there were no other flights that could get us to the US on Friday he finally gave in and signed off on the change.  Which turned out to be a much better flight for us.  The flight ended up being delayed for an hour and a half, but we boarded and made it to NYC.  It was a long flight (10 hours) and only some of the movie screens were working, so we read most of the time. There had been a storm that day in NY and a lot of flights were cancelled or delayed, except for our connection.  It was on time and just leaving as we were at the ticket counter.  So we stayed at Days Inn by JFK and ordered a ton of Chinese food.  It tasted so good.  We had a hot shower with water pressure and a king size bed.  It was like heaven.  We got up and headed back to JFK at 5 am because we were going to have to try to catch a flight on standby to SLC.  We got on the 8:30 flight and 4 1/2 hours later were in glorious Salt Lake.  It looked so beautiful and smelled so good.  My dad picked us up and we went home and just hugged our kids for an hour.  It was wonderful.  

Troy is ready now to go back and pick up the kids... I think it'll take me a few more days of being home before I can think about heading back.  Not because of the kids, they really are great and will be a good fit with our family.  I'm just a little spoiled and want to have my bathroom for a few more days.