Finally Home!

Hello Everyone! We are finally home. So sorry it took me so long to post but adjusting to life with four children has been a priority. Things are really going incredibly well. Better than we ever expected. The boys are just perfect and Em & Joe are so happy to finally have their brothers home.

We finally made it back to Chicago around 10 pm on Sunday night. All the travel is a story in itself. Our flight from Dubai left an hour late and landed 45 minutes late... making for a miserable 14 1/2 hour flight. When we got into Immigration and Customs in New York it was about 85 degrees and there is NO air conditioning in the room. (Made for some lovely smells.) I don't know how we did it but Brent sweet talked some people and we make it through there in about one hour. We talked a driver into trying to get us to LaGuardia in time to catch our 6 pm flight to Chicago. We had a wonderful driver from Jamacia and he did everything he could but the Mets Game had just gotten out and traffic was horrific. We made it across town in about 40 minutes and just as we were getting to LaGuardia Fayisa got car sick and puked all over the place! I ran out and went up to the United Counter and they said there was no way they would let us try to catch our flight. We ended up on another flight to Chicago about 2 hours later. We were just thrilled that we were getting out!

When we landed at O'Hare Emily, Joey, Auntie Margot, Uncle Mike and Grandma Margaret were there to meet us. Fayisa did great but Manny had just woken up and was a little on the shy side. He did start to open up in the car on the way home and when we finally got home Manny was VERY happy. He jumped on his new bed and was squealing with delight. We all did eventually get to sleep. We let Joey and Emily play "hookie" from school and Monday so that we could all spend some time together.

We have been just working on getting the boys comfortable with all of us and getting them used to our routine... it is really going well!

I will try to post again soon.

Thank you all for your prayers and well wishes!

Amy, Brent, Emily, Joey, Manny and Fayisa

We have our boys!

Well, here we are, finally able to get on the web and get a posting to our blog. The best laid plans seem to always have a bump in the road, and we hit that bump while in Ethiopia and being unable to get quality internet service, without traveling to a major hotel, such as the Hilton or Sheraton in Addis.

We were able to have phone service and texting capabilities, so we did keep up a little bit with that mode of communication. We are sorry that we were not able to keep all of you updated like we originally hoped to do.

I/We will try and recap our week as best as possible. It may take a few postings, but I/We promise to bring things up to speed over the next few entries.

We surely thought it would be good to try and let everyone know, that we have our BEAUTIFUL boys, we are on our way home, but it feels like we are never going to get there. There is just no Shortcut home to Elkhorn, from Addis. We are all exhausted from traveling already and have only made the first leg of the trip. It is currently 5:35 a.m. in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Sunday, June 6. We will be catching our flight to NYC in about 3 hours. I just hope that everyone is able to catch a little shut eye on the plane...at least through some portion of our marathon 14+ hour flight to "America", as Manny puts it. The boys are AMAZING and we can not wait for you all to meet them. They are everything we ever dreamed they could be and even more.

We thank you all for your love, support & prayers over the past week!

We love you all,

Brent & Amy

Our week chronologically and to the best of our memories:

Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - We arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and went directly to our home for the next 4 1/2 days, The Newflower Guest House. We were greeted there by Sue Hedberg, executive director for CCI (our agency), her daughter Julie and her college roommate Christy, who were all in Ethiopia to escourt two other children home to the United States. We settled in for a little while, prepared a few things to take to the transition house and then we were off to get our arms around our two boys.

Traveling to the transition house we were told that it would probably be naptime when we arrived and that we would go directly up stairs to tour the transition house and not cause a stir to the napping children....MUCH to our suprise, we climbed the stairs and standing in the living room dressed and waiting, were Amanuel and Fayisa, who immediately came to us and embraced us with hugs of love and affection. Definitely one of those "Priceless" moments. We have pictures and video of our initial meeting and hope to post them when we get home and are able to reconnect with our cords that are need to transfer them to the computer (they are currently in a suitcase sitting and waiting to be boarded on a flight to New York City).