Returning to Ukraine

As you all know and can imagine Sunday January 3rd was a terrible day. Ira and I started packing her things on Saturday to be ready to leave Sunday morning. She actually left most of her clothes and Christmas gifts here as she wanted me to keep them safe for her for when she returns home. Sunday morning came too quickly and we headed down to the airport where she and I flew to Dulles. We arrived about 1:30 and the best part of the day was we were met there by a wonderful lady from Maryland that had adopted a little girl 1 year ago from Ira's orphanage. She had called me on Thursday to let the girls talk and said she would love to come to the airport to be with us and to let the girls visit (thank you!). The two girls were best of friends in their orphanage and watching their reunion was amazing! They had the best time catching up on the last year and because Ira's friend now spoke English we were able to do tons and tons of translating - it was fantastic!!! The girls know that they can be friends here in the US and that we are only a few hours away so we're planning visits for the girls already! That visit all afternoon at the airport, as well as visiting with other host families, and watching all the host kids share their adventures with one another was fun and a great distraction. But all too quickly the time came to an end about 5:45 as the kids flew out @ 6:10pm. There were many many tears from me, from Ira and from everyone else there. I think the thing that tore me up the most was when Ira first saw that I was crying. She reached her hand up to my face and said "no momma - Ira back home soon". Well as you can imagine that did it for me. I was trying so hard to keep it together but it was impossible. Ira shed just a few tears but once she passed thru the security machine, she turned to wave, then dropped her head in her hands and started sobbing. That was one of the worst moments of my life as I could not get to her. But true to Ira fashion, she quickly pulled it together, put on a big smile and waved as she left. The one thing that did help us both though was knowing we were saying "see you soon" - not "Goodbye". She knows we're coming as quickly as we can to get her and that everyone is hopeful it will be no later than middle of March. The flight home the next morning was very hard for me. I obvisouly was in public, but all I wanted to do was curl up and cry. The next few days were sad, quiet and empty but very soon Tom and I got busy with dossier additions and corrections and planning the trip over!