January 15th....Bittersweet goodbyes..
Today is the day! We are FINALLY moving forward to go get our son. Tonight we drive to Billings, MT spend the night and board a plane first thing in the morning. I am sooo excited I can hardly contain myself! However, I have to say goodbye to three kids I love so much. Three kids who I have never left for as long as what we are planning on leaving them for. Three kids who I love so much that they will never understand how much I love them until they someday have children of their own.
Today the kids got to skip school and spend some time with Mommy. We went to icecream land and then over to get the girls their nails done;) As much as I tried to focus on spending some quality time with them, I had still a ton of organizing and packing to do. (I pack best at last minute:)
Love these kiddos!
So after a fun afternoon with the kiddos we returned home and started to prepare for the trip we have been waiting a year for. Before we left we got one last family photo....of 5 anyways:)
Last family photo of 5!
Shortly after this picture we had to say our goodbyes. Bayley started to cry and had a hard time letting go:( I remember having a rotten feeling in my gut. Knowing we were about to leave these guys, hop on many planes (which every time I do I worried I'm going to die) and enter into one of the most dangerous countries there are. It was not an easy goodbye....
January 16th...Airborne!!!
We hop on our first plane of 8 total. This is REALLY HAPPENING! We are on our way! In a few days we will be united with our son! We fly from Billings, MT - Denver, CO - Chicago, IL - to Brussels Belgium. And that is as far as we make it before we have to spend one more night away from our son:) Jeff and I have horrible luck with planes. We always seem to run into delays and miss our connections. This trip was no exception. When we boarded our plane in Chicago we sat there for about an hour while they tried to fix a malfunction. Then they had us de-board and catch a later flight. Therefore we missed our connection to Kinshasa and had to stay the night in Belgium. This was actually a blessing in disguise as we met a few wonderful people who were also on their way to Congo. Jeff and I aren't much of world travelers, and traveling into a war torn country pretty much scared us to death. Such chickens!! One of the people we met was a sweet lady named Susan. She has lived and worked in Congo for 10 years and is from the US. It was nice to be able to visit with her and hear about her experience and she really put to ease some of our fears. Plus she spoke French which was definitely a plus as our only french words were Bonjour and um...Bonjour... Yah, we weren't going to let this woman out of our sight:-) We were tagging along with her whether she wanted us or not!
January 17th....HELLO CONGO!
Upon arrival into Kinshasa you could literally see the moisture enter into the plane. We went from snow to HOT and HUMID! We landed in the evening which was actually really nice as it was not too busy. Once we landed we had to get thru customs and of course we stuck as close to Susan as possible:) One of the first things I remember is the man at customs checking my passport, and says "yah Go Obama"! One of our agencies representatives was there to meet us and was very helpful even though I tried to push him away a few times:) I was told that many people would try and help us with our luggage and to only let our representative help. He finally tried again and said "Jeff" and then I realized who he was:) The rest was pretty much a blur as I was just too excited to finally be in the same city as our son! We knew we were not able to meet our little man till the following day so we got settled into our hotel room and rested up for the big day!
January 18th.....GOTCHA DAY!!!
(post coming soon:)-
