the arrival of zhenya....

wow! where to i even begin??? this has been quite the adventure so far. but, the eyermans are all about excitement these days.

on saturday, we started the day with breakfast with keith's sister and her three kids and mimi. my kids LOVE when the walshs come to visit!! so, it was a fun filled morning. my parents came over around noon to watch the little kids so keith and i could head to the airport with tj, andrew and henry to pick up zhenya. so far, the day was going just as planned.

i should have known better :)

of course we hit a ton of traffic heading to the airport. living by the beach during the summer has its ups and downs. luckily for us, the plane that the children were on coming from rome was delayed by an hour. so, we actually arrived at the airport just as the plane was landing.

unload three kids (which seems easy now adays), balloons, gifts, cooler of water bottles, poster, snacks, etc. and head over to meet the others waiting for the group from ukraine to arrive.

well, costoms ended up taking the group about TWO hours to get through!! i wish my story ended there....but it doesn't. i have to backtrack a little here and tell you who we were waiting with. a lovely couple from deleware who is hosting an eleven year old girl, the translator, and a man from cincinnati who will be hosting a twelve year old boy. now, this poor man flew in from cincinnati the night before with his wife (who was helping the group try to get through customs). earlier that morning, they were walking through the park and he was suddenly struck with severe pain. after a trip to the hospital, it turned out to be a kidney stone. they released him with pain killers and instructions to get back to cincinnati quickly to his doctor. so, this man was with us in the airport, in lots of pain, and waiting and waiting and waiting.

the group finally came out....one caregiver with eleven children from an orphanage in the ukraine. but, the arrival was not the exciting, happy celebration i had envisioned. there was lots of chaos. talk of lost baggage (although, zhenya only came with a plastic bag, so i'm not sure what "baggage" they lost) and lots of concern about the missed connecting flights. half the group was continuing on to cincinnati and half was continuing on to california (minus zhenya and the girl who was going with the deleware couple.

anyway, there were hours spent trying to figure out different flights. during this time, we gave the kids snacks, i gave them coloring books and crayons. we gave zhenya a stuffed shark which he was super attached to and proud of! zhenya broke off from the group for a while to play around with tj and andrew. it was really sweet! eventually, the california group finally found a flight out. however, the cincinnati group didn't have so much luck. so, now we were all trying to figure out what to do about the rest of the group. during this time, as you can imagine, the kids were exhausted. they just spent about 18 hours in flight, and now they are couped up in an airport......an atmosphere they, clearly, are not used to. there were kids running around, riding the escalator, playing in the revolving doors. as i was trying to keep all the highly excited ukrainian children under control, while holding henry, i lost sight of andrew!!

when i say this was the closest i had been to pure panic, that is an understatement. i told everyone around me i had lost andrew, a little boy in a green and blue bathing suit. keith ran one way, the deleware couple ran another. i could feel tears being forced back behind my eyes. it was hard to breathe. after about three HORRIBLE minutes, andrew comes skipping out of the bathroom. WHAT?? he has NEVER gone to the bathroom on his own in a public place! after lots of hugging and telling andrew NEVER to do that again....i was emotionally exhausted.

now, going back to the plans for the missed flight. ends up, they found a flight out of a different airport the next morning.....at 6 am! so, of course, we invite them all to spend the night at our house! five kids from ukraine and the cincinnati couple ended up spending the night at our house. we got all the kids showered, fed, and teeth brushed. we set them up with couches to sleep on and everyone fell asleep around midnight.

keith got up at at 4 am to drive the group to the airport. it was a short stay, but i think it was good for zhenya to have his friends here. he seems to have adjusted very well to us and there doesn't seem to be any lonely feelings or sad feelings. i think having his friends here...if only for a little bit, helped.

so, now begins our adventures with zhenya. so far, he is a super sweet, super cute little guy. i'm looking forward to the next few weeks.


here are a few pictures of our adventure thus far.....