Sunday, February 7, 2010

Home Sweet Home

We made it back home in good shape.  We stayed up the whole night before leaving St. Petersburg because our translator was going to pick us up at 3:45 am anyway.  We packed and Tom watched T.V. and I read all the blogs over again.  It didn't seem like we were staying up all night.  We thought that if we did it that way, we could possibly sleep on the plane.  We arrived at the St. Petersburg airport and we went thru their check station.  When I say they check everything, I mean they check everything.  They went thru all of our luggage, not just glancing, they took everything out and opened everything.  Very through check in.  We went to the Lufthansa gate and waited becuase the gate was not opened yet.  When the gate did open, people rushed to it, it was kinda weird how they all rushed to it.  When we got to the door of the gate, we had to go thru another check in station.  This one was even more thorough and nobody at the check stations smiled at all.  They were all business, not very friendly, and a little intimidating.  We made it thru with no problems and sat on the plane, they had to deice the plane which took a while.  We were flying to Frankfort, and we only had 1 hour between flights so we were getting a little worried that we would miss our connecting flight.  Well God has it planned and they had a special transport for us who were going to Chicago.  Yeah, no extra walking and a much faster way.  We did have to go thru another security check point and they stopped the man in front of me, they made him take a bunch of skin tests, with wipes, they even were wipeing his shoes and belts, and clothes.  He had to wait and I was able to go thru with no problems.  Thank you God.  We made it to the plane with just 5 minutes to spare and it was a very full flight.  I was able to sleep so not sleeping payed off for me, not so much for Tom.  Poor guy, he has not slept well at all on this trip.
It is good to be home, now we just need our daughter with us.  The boys loved watching all the videos we took of her, and Tyler is looking forward to going on the 3rd trip to pick her up with me.
Lots of work to do here at home, we still have not received our FBI clearance check, I am truly worried now that I read that it is a 10 week wait.  That would be just about the time we entered our fingerprints to them and get them back in 6 weeks for our 2nd trip.  It will be close.
Now to do the wash, and watch the Super Bowl Game.

1 comment:

carolinagirl said...

Welcome Home! I found your blog through Amy at "He Wanted 2, I Wanted 4". I went back and read from Feb 1st to today. Wow - that brings back soooo many memories for me. We have been home 4 months TODAY with our daughter. She was in Baby #4 in St Pete. All those photos look soooo familiar. Isn't Nevsky beautiful? We LOVED the main Coffee House chain, and our favorite was on Nevsky walking toward the Hermitage/ Naval Building but on the other side of the street from you.

I cannot wait to follow your story. It's amazing how the experiences are so different depending on your agency. It seems that Chinese adoptions run like clockwork and everyone has very SIMILAR experiences.

Anyway, I wanted to say hi and welcome home. CANNOT WAIT to see your little one's photo. It was so hard not to post one of Emma until she was ours.

When do you find out about a court date?