We're Back! Our time in Ethiopia....

I've been a little MIA on the blog lately.  I made the big announcement that we had a court date and then disappeared for almost 3 weeks!  But we're back now and I'm here to tell you all about our time in Ethiopia and meeting our daughter!!! I can't believe I'm saying that, we finally met our daughter! Ahh!! But I don't want to get ahead of myself, I'll start from the beginning!
       So, almost 3 weeks ago, we got word that we had been issued a court date, and we needed to be in Ethiopia in less than 2 weeks!  It was an amazing God moment, and we are so thankful that God has been so faithful to us.  We booked our tickets(probably one of the craziest experiences of my life, I literally felt like a crazy person. It's peak season to fly over there now and tickets were crazy expensive, but they've more than doubled what we paid already in just 2 weeks now!) and the packing started.  I packed for what seemed like a whole week, which turned out to be a good thing, because I ended up getting some sort of bug the day before we were supposed to leave and spent the day in bed, so it was a good thing we were ready to go!  We had to fly out of DC because tickets were so crazy, so the Thursday before last we drove up to DC to spend the night and we flew out the next morning!! On the way there, we flew through Dubai, and then on to Addis, it was about 17 ours of travel total. And it was not much fun to be feeling the way I was feeling on those long flights.  But finally, on Saturday afternoon, we arrived in Addis! It was so surreal to finally be in the country we had been dreaming of for almost 3 years!  We found our driver after getting through the airport and they drove us to the guest house we were staying in.  We had planned on going to meet Ryah that afternoon, but since I wasn't feeling so great, we stayed in and I slept for most of the afternoon.  I ended up spending the first 3 days we were there being sick-not exactly how I imagined meeting our daughter.  The jet lag was crazy and we were both awake at all hours of the night for the first few nights we were there.

        Sunday came- the day we would meet our sweet girl!  We both were so excited and up way too early even though we hardly got any sleep.  I was feeling a bit better that day, so we wanted to leave as soon as we could! The driver came and picked us up around 9:30 that morning.  We thought it would only take us about 15 minutes to get to where she was, turns out it was more like 45, as we soon found out, everyone always said it would take 15 minutes to get anywhere, but that was rarely the case. We walked into the big black gates, and quickly realized we were the only ones there who spoke English.( I am realizing now, that the only pictures I took were basically of us and Ryah, need to make a mental note on the next trip to take other pictures!) One of the sweet nurses said Ryah's Ethiopian name, and we said yes, and they led us up the stairs to where she was.  This also did not go down like I imagined. I didn't have any time to prep and get the camera ready and find someone to take pictures for us, they just took us up the stairs and there she was!!! It was the most surreal moment of my life and the tears started flowing. My daughter was sitting just feet away from me.  Her nurse sat her in the floor and said, "mommy, daddy" and Ryah looked at us with the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes you have ever seen.  At that point I fumbled the video camera around and turned it on for the nurses to video us meeting her- so we have 3 precious minutes of that video.  The 3 of us just sat in the floor taking each other in, and I just still couldn't believe it.  She was even more beautiful and precious in person than in all the pictures we've gotten over the last 4 months.  3 years of waiting was realized in that one moment, it was so precious.  We spent the next 3 hours with our daughter. They let us feed her, and after being there for less than an hour, she was asleep in her daddy's arms.  That was such a precious gift! Given her age, we weren't sure how she would react to us, but that moment was amazing(it probably helped that it was very close to nap time when we got there).  After we had been there for a few hours we started to see more of the behavior we expected from adopting a toddler.  She is very attached to her nanny, which we are so thankful for, and that is a miracle itself, so after a few hours with us we could tell she was done and ready to go back to her nanny.  We didn't want to overwhelm her too much, so we said our goodbyes for the day and headed back to get some rest.
    That was one of the best days of my life.  To finally get to hold this amazing little girl and tell her how much we love her and how we've been waiting for her was so surreal.  I still have a hard time believing it actually happened even now that we are back.  But y'all, she is amazing.  She is the most precious little girl, and she fits perfectly with us.  All the glory goes to God for creating our beautiful little family.  I was going to write about the week in one post, but that's going to be too long, so I'll write about the rest of our time tomorrow.  Thank you all for praying for us and supporting us and encouraging us over this journey.  More to come....