We have Julian!

2 down, 2 to go! ;) We picked up Julian today and it is so nice to have him with us! I came to the internet cafe by myself to type this up and when I left Alina was showing him how to flush toilet paper down the toilet. :) (In the orphanages and many other older toilets it is thrown in the trash can.)

We had a very hot and long car ride. First we went to both orphanages and we picked up the director at Julian's. So Kostya, Kevin, Alina and I all sat in the back seat of a Lada driven by our facorite taxi driver. Alina was on my lap and it is a very hot day! The camp where he was is about 2 hours away. We arrived and all the kids came running to greet us and the director. Julian hugged his sister and went straight to his Papa. So sweet. Alina was so happy to see him she just held his hand and kept touching him and smiling, like she didn't believe he was there! We got to hang out with him for about 10 or 15 minutes and a caregiver whisked him away to shower him for us. We were taken to eat lunch with the director. The children had just finished up lunch when we arrived and were all headed to their rooms to rest. After we ate Julian reappeared in the outfit that we brought for him to wear home (thanks Uncle Jeff and Aunt Melissa, the clothes fit great and are so cute). We wanted to take some pictures with his friends but they were all resting. We got a few pictures and walked outside to leave. All the kids were hanging out their windows to say good bye to Edik and the rest of us. I got some pictures of that. They are too cute! I feel like the whole process has been crazy with him. Poor kid will have very few pictures to look back at.

He is so sweet and cute! He sat in Papa's lap all the way home. Alina slept in my lap next to him and they held hands and chatted the rest of the time. I can't wait until we are all together tomorrow for the first time.

Tomorrow we will go to the oprhanage to pick up Lily and Tate and throw parties for their groupas (and Alina's). Then we will take them home with us! Saturday we are leaving on the train for Kiev. The tickets were all sold out for tonight, tomorrow night and all weekend. Kostya was telling our taxi driver and he said he could get us some because he knows someone who works there. Each cabin holds 4 people so we are buying 8 tickets for the 6 of us so that we have two cabins to ourselves. Both Alina and Julian have been on the train with the orphanage before and both want to sleep on the top bunks again. By the way, since we have spent so little time with Edik he has no idea we are going to call him Julian. We will add it in slowly like we have done with the others.

Also, I accidently erased all the wonderful comments everyone wrote us yesterday. Thank you so much. I read them and somehow I deleted them, I think. Thank you for all your kind words. :) I better go. Papa is home with the kids and they are probably waiting for some dinner. I will try to post more pictures tomorrow. Hopefully one of the six of us all together!