Airport

So I left off when we were heading to the airport after our day of sight seeing. After our driver had taken us all around Kiev, we headed to the airport that afternoon-to see my most favorite faces in the whole world. 

My hubby waited outside (where we were instructed to wait) but I impatiently waited inside-right outside the door to customs-to see the faces I had been missing for the past several days. After what seemed like forever (but was probably only 30 minutes) they walked through the doors! 2.0 saw me and I grabbed his hand and held on as the chaperon and one of our in country host coordinators maneuvered 12 children (from the Seattle flight) outside. 2.0 was very concerned that Papa was not there, so I ran to get him-where I had left him-as he tried to make his way over to his boys with 2 suitcases (1 a big mama suitcase at that), a backpack, and 2 grocery bags full of stuff. (He was not pleased...lol) 

S and V both were in their own little worlds at first- (All the kids were exhausted).

We gave all 3 boys Shevchenko jerseys that we had bought in Kiev. :) 

We took one last family picture.

S snapped a few pictures with my camera before we had to say goodbye. 

Then came the time to say goodbye to S and 2.0. :( And no, they didn't have to drag me away kicking and screaming....but that's what I felt like doing in reality. After giving them many many goodbye hugs, where I could see S was just barely holding it together, and 2.0 was holding on to me crying-and I was crying of course-we had to get on our van and head out to the orphanage. However, I do know they were in good hands and they made it back safe and sound to their respective orphanages. 

We then had a lovely 8 hour drive over some really interesting road conditions-traffic, potholes, hot van, etc etc. It was the most miserable van ride of my life. (And that counts the really "wonderful" ride we had driving across the Dominican Republic a few years ago) We finally arrived at V's orphanage at 2 am and dropped the kids off. (9 of the kids from the Seattle flight were from that orphanage). All the kids seemed relatively happy and relieved to be back (they may have just been happy the van ride was over though). We dropped off another host mom and her hotel and then finally made it to our apartment sometime after 3 am.